 to two companies. Maybe you can find a place that wants municipal internet and then use tax money to pay for it. I feel like the problem is any place that wants municipal internet probably, well, any place that doesn't have municipal internet that's also rural that fits what we're talking about, the people there are probably dumb and red-stady and would definitely not want a municipal ISP. I'm talking about a place that already wants municipal internet, they actively want internet. But the places that actively want internet and want municipal ISPs and have enough people and government will and everything probably already have internet. We can do the same. It's basically do the same thing that like baseball stadiums to you make the tax money pay for the stadium, but then you sell all the tickets and you take all the money privately. I feel like those places don't generate enough tax revenue. We can find a place that will use its tax revenue or even if it's a town it could steal money from the state coffers to pay for internet. We already got someone watching. Go home. Go home, Odysseus. Props to what's his name who fucking just fell out of the ceiling and died in a Cersei's house. Oh, I love that guy because I like how he comes back and you like talk to him. OK, props to Agamemnon. I got hercules shows up and he's just like, yeah, I'm fucking hercules. Everyone else is dead and stupid, but I'm just still cool. And everyone's like, oh, I guess you're right. Yeah. Even Achilles. He's like, yeah, he comes out of hell and he's got his bow out. He's just like, I'll fight you. Even Odysseus was a little bit like, whoa, OK. It's Thursday, July 19th, 2018. I'm rim and this is Geek Nights tonight in the Geek Nights Book Club. We're talking about Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's The Odyssey. Not Odyssey. The. There's like five people watching as people are waiting for this. No, go away, people find something better to do. Let's do the opening bit, but no news because I don't have any news. Anyway, I got tons of news just. I don't have it. All right, I think your thing of the day was. All right, right, right. That thing. Yeah. And mine is Tom Dempsey. I knew about Tom Dempsey. What did you know about him? Do you know about his foot? Yeah, you know about the role they passed? Yeah, I think it's you have to wear an actual shoe. Right. It was more than that. You can't you basically can't even feel if you if you're a missing part of your foot, you can't even like fill the shoe with anything that isn't like very foot like the rules are very specific. And the rules were written specifically because of him. Well, now people kick like a soccer ball and not like with the front of their foot anymore. Yeah. And I saw something in college. There's some people in college who still do the front on kick. And they're OK because they're not they don't know better than doesn't. Yeah. I mean, theoretically, someone could be good at it, but NFL kickers are so good at it. Yeah, they keep hitting it from farther and farther away with more and more reliability even now every year. So they have to, you know, they're like, they really want to push back the extra points that, you know, yep. I think they actually did. And I stopped paying attention because murder ball. Yeah. And giant suck anyway. Yep. All right. Let's see. So yeah, no news because it's the Geeknites Book Club. I guess what I should point out is that if you're new to Geeknites, we have a book club and we've been doing this for a long time. So even though it takes a long ass time for us to read a book, it doesn't take a long time to read the book. It's just we don't spend enough time reading. Yep. Partly because we had a lot going on. We probably only took me like maybe less than 10 hours to read this book in total. Yep. But it just took those 10 hours to spread out over many, many months, at least three, at least six. But anyway, the deal, we're going to get right into it. We're going to have things today, but we're going to get right into this book club is that we're not. We're assuming you read the book, meaning we're not going to explain the plot to you and we're going to casually spoil everything. Granted, I feel like I don't feel like you can spoil the oddest. Yeah. Guess what? He makes it home. I mean, if you don't know the story of the Odyssey, even if you never read the Odyssey, I knew the story of it, the general story before even reading the pop up book. Yeah, well, partly because the word Odyssey, I learned the story of the Odyssey from other things that I watched in my child or read my child. And then I didn't read the Odyssey and my freshman year at high school. There was a multi part DuckTales episode ahead and yeah, was the Odyssey. There was what else was the Odyssey? That's the one I remember the most. But there was, I think I read, you know, those like a children's video, one of those like story books that you see at the library that hardly moves. You've got that awesome pop up book that you got at Mocha a long time ago, the Odyssey. Well, that's, you know, I mean, that was more recent. I didn't actually read the Odyssey, like for real, until ninth grade, because in my high school, ninth grade was the year you did Greek literature. So you did the Odyssey and all the like all the tragedies and all that stuff. And we didn't actually read all of the Odyssey. And I wasn't really realized that till I read the Odyssey again later. There was only mythology in our school. If you elected mythology in high school, and I think then they made you read a whole bunch of mythology, but I did not elect that. I elected science fiction and also a hippie anti-war book. Mythology was its own thing. But the Odyssey in Greek literature was not opt out of all that was core. Like even even the dumb side of the school, like the regular basic class English, it was still Greek stuff. The snooty that basically there were three literature electives for snooty smart kids. And I chose none of them, which was Shakespeare, mythology and Mark Twain type action. And I chose none of those three. I chose all the other ones. And all right. Yeah, I just tested out of everything except the one class I couldn't test out of. Yeah. Where I had to read all those terrible books, Tree of Red Stars. We will never do a book club book on the Tree of Red Stars. I promise you, I guess we should warn people against it. Anyway, three stars run away. So the point is, you know, we know the Odyssey, but this is a new translation of the Odyssey. And you know, I've never read any other translation of the Odyssey that wasn't some simplified children's or papa book. Wow. I've never read, you know, I've read some other. I've read I've mostly read in high school, one translation. I don't know which one was in our textbook. And I fully read a different translation. I'm pretty sure it was a penguin book, but I don't know anything about it. We're not talking about that. It's like there's like four different ones in Amazon and you don't know which one's good, but I'd never read a modern or modernized translation until this. But again, really, like we're going to assume you read the book. You can continue to listen to this episode if you didn't read the Odyssey. But that's like when you're at a convention or at a party and you're hanging out on the outside of a circle of people talking about something and you have no idea what they're talking about. And you're just standing there kind of nodding along. You really don't want to be that guy. Rim is that guy. No, I usually know what's going on. All right. The other thing is to talk about this book, right, is kind of hard because I feel like the introduction and also the notes at the end sort of say everything there is that I could possibly say. And I don't have any special knowledge about, you know, Greek history, literature, Homer, anything. So it's like, what can I say other than reiterate what was already in there, right? It's like there's already these people who study this for a fucking living. What do I have to contribute? Well, that's why rather than talk about the forward, which if you read this book and didn't read the forward, the forward is what the forward is the what you're paying for. The forward taught me a lot about the Odyssey. Oh, yeah. And it also reinforces something that a lot of people don't seem to realize that when people say Greek, they always think like Athens and Sparta. That is way, way late Greece. There's a lot of Greek and quote unquote Greek history before that. Yeah. Homer comes way before, say, Euclid. Right. Homer comes way before Athens and Sparta as you would know them. Yeah. I mean, they still, you know, like Sparta, they mentioned Sparta in the book, right? It exists. Yeah. But the Sparta of 300 was far, far away. And arguably they might not even be the same thing. Yep. They could just have the same name because, you know, there was the Dorian invasion, which may or may not have been an actual invasion. In Homer, they're talking about Mycenae. Like it's a present thing. Mycenae is like the ancient Greek civilization that was lost and we don't know enough about. Yep. You want to have a, you want to go down or that was present to Homer's writings. You want to go down a rabbit hole? Go read about the Greek Dark Age, because I realized recently what BC number are we talking about here with, you know, when Homer was supposedly possibly writing the Odyssey? Like we're talking like literal, if the Trojan War happened, like that era. This is so imagine on a super rough scale, because I'm not, I don't know that much about those. I was going to Wikipedia and see. Current, current, the Greeks that you think of, like Sparta, Athens, Marathon, like, and after that is Alexander, like on a really broad stroke. The great one. So before the Athens, Sparta stuff, you know, not, not Wayne, the great one. Yeah. Is the Greek, effectively the Greek Dark Age, like archaic Greece, the Dark Age, and then before that is the Homer era. But yeah, we're not going to try to give you a history lesson. Greek chronology, the sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. That's a long time before the battle of Marathon. That's, that's like less than half the distance between us and Jesus, who didn't exist. I mean, the battle of Marathon, the one the other side, the battle of Marathon, which is what most people, that era is what most people think of when they think of ancient Greece. They're actually, I think most people think of like classical Greece, like Roman Greece, but anyway, or like all those like way later eras was 490 BC. So the stuff you think about it from 490 BC is not the same as what we're talking about in years. So it's as old. It's basically the distance between us and the medieval times is the distance between Homer and the Greece you're normally thinking about. But before we get into that, we do have. Oh, things of the day. I just forgot to do things of the day. No. And you started book club. No, I was I was doing a pre moment about the book club because we haven't done one in a while. And I want to remind people that we have a book club and you just go look at the old episodes. And if a book looks good, read it and then listen to our show about it. You should read books if you want to be an intelligent person. If you come up to me and say I am a person who does not read books that consist only of words, it doesn't matter if they're e or paper. Audiobooks don't count for me at least. But if you are a person who does not read books, my respect for you is diminished. You are below other humans on the respectometer compared to humans who do read. So my thing of the day is this video. SB Nation is pretty good videos about like sports history and sports. It's fun stuff. And this one is about Tom Dempsey, if you don't know, held the record for the longest field goal in his in football history for 43 years. So people knew how to kick. Well, it wasn't just until people know how to kick stuff changed and technology changed. There's a lot of things that changed. Also, steroids, more of a thing like there's lots of things that kickers are on steroids wouldn't be surprised. They don't use the kickers. Usually the tiniest, tiniest people with one big like Trogdor looking leg. Yeah. But anyway, the deal with Tom Dempsey was that he was so good that they made a rule to basically prevent anyone else from ever kicking like him. And the reason he kicked the way he did is because he was literally missing half of his foot and his foot was basically a club that he used to great effect with terrifying power. And the NFL literally made a rule that specifically prevented anyone from ever doing what he did ever again. And it's just a pretty interesting story. So what do you got? So it would have been a Monday thing of the day. But whatever, I don't even know if this is real because I didn't try it for myself. This could be like a scam website that's like fooling you into thinking this is real. That'd be really funny if it is. But yeah, so one thing people in the wet who work in the web always talk about is links, L, Y, and X. There's also another one, L, I, and usually in the context of you made a modern website, but will it work on links? Right. So look at how long my neck beard is. Links is a web browser that runs in the terminal and is like only text. So it's sort of like if you make your website good and accessible enough and adaptable enough, someone should be able to use your website fully from links in the terminal with text only. And it's sort of like a litmus test, but sort of a bullshit one. Yeah, I'd say it was a legitimate litmus test until about 2002. Yeah, it had its day, but it's like no one is no one using links. Maybe there's one guy. The point is it's a way to browse the web from the terminal and it works. Even today it works, but in some web pages, it works better than others. And what someone here did is they made a thing. What's it called? It is called Browse Browse for I guess it stands for browser shell or shell browser. And it's basically a web browser that runs in the terminal, but it takes advantage of all the features of modern terminals and modern computers, not which are things like color, right? Links and links, you know, both spellings are two different texts, right? They can run on like a VT 100 and they'll work, right? That's one of those old term like hardware terminals. They just got a green screen, right? But Browse can run in, say, norm terminal or X term or RXVT or the I term on your Mac. And you know, all the modern terminal emulators that you're running on your real computer that's made in the 2000s. Yeah, this will run on like a VT 100 that has colors and sounds and you have a mouse and all these sorts of assumptions and a scroll wheel. So it basically uses all those modern features of your browser to render a web page just like a real web page. The thing is the resolution is just really low. Well, the resolution, the pixels on anything that is not text, because it's all icons, it's all icons in a pixel grid. The well, in a grid, not a pixel grid. The pixels in the images are each exactly the size of a tile that would have a character in it, like a letter. Yep. So but yeah, it's you can even watch video in it. Look at images, click on links, read text. It's like it's a full on web browser. What's really what's really weird like anyone who knows how to use a web browser could use this. It would just look really pixely. What's really weirding me out is just like looking at these images. They look so much like the resolution you got in old PC games, like police quests that is giving me a weird nostalgia for games like police quest. It would be like if you ran, it feels almost like you ran actual Chrome. But on DOS and the resolution of the screen was still 320 by whatever the fuck it was in old DOS, but your CPU was strong enough and it actually just kind of worked. But you didn't have any advanced GPU and your resolution was still 320 by whatever with 256 colors. Got in the DOS era. I had a monitor that was 12 inches and it it's max resolution was 800 by 600. I think we had a 15 inch. He is full fancy. No, I didn't have that. But then I had that giant 19 inch super CRT that I brought to RIT. Yeah, I brought it to RIT 17. Yep, that 19 inch. That was one of the only thing I've had to move in my life that was harder than moving that monitor was the fucker that couch. And then the people who took away that bugger just get away one, two, three. Yep, I was really saddened by that. No problem. So yeah, and then at a moment, whatever, we're going to be a PAX West, the real PAX. We're doing a panel. It's not only going to be live at PAX on Monday, but it's going to be live streamed on the official PAX Twitch. So if you don't go to PAX, I don't know which one of them. The thing there might be two or three official twitches. It will be probably PAX two or PAX three. As soon as we know, we will let you know. We'll probably tweet when it's starting to. Yeah, I will probably schedule all those tweets well in advance. Follow Geek Knights on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all the different social places because we have accounts there. Also, if you're listening to this podcast, you could actually watch us record it live on YouTube. There are currently five people watching us do this on YouTube. I would already discourage you from listening to this podcast. I'm just saying you could. It's not worth your time to listen to this podcast. It's even less worth your time to watch the podcast being recorded live. I'm just saying you could. I didn't say you should. And also, we just did another judgey anime by its cover. That video is up and it's on Scott's YouTube. And a lot of you only follow my YouTube. You should also follow Scott's YouTube because some Geek Knights style. Some project of great evil possibly on my YouTube. Oh, is this one I know about? Or is this a new evil? I told you to you recently. OK, I think I know what you're talking about. Anyway, if you do that, even a little bit great. So we're not going to try to analyze the odyssey. I think we're going to mention that. There's nothing we can say. Well, anything I could say would either be me basically poorly reiterating things I learned in high school. I feel like if you write a book about physics and then try to say things about physics, it's like. But more importantly, like qualified where consumers are not, you know, it depends on what the book is. Like the ear, the eye, the arm. There aren't a lot of book clubs that talked about it. So we tried to analyze its themes and do like some serious lit crit. But I don't really want to bother with that with the odyssey because the odyssey is one of the most studied stories in human history. You can read way smarter people than us. So I want to approach this talking about this translation and like it, how it worked for us and more importantly, I also want to talk about the story at face value as we read it, like as though we just read this book and it had no history. But I'm not going to try to read into it. You can go read the debate over whether or not Odysseus was justified in killing all the slaves. So having not read completely other translations, I've read, you know, small portions. Yeah, that's why I'm really curious from your. So what kind of person do you think Odysseus is? Is what I really want to ask you. Well, that's the thing, right? Is like, so on the one hand, you sort of feel like, well, this story is so old and not advanced, right? It doesn't have modern sensibilities. It has the most ancient sensibility possible. Yep, almost the most ancient human sensibility possible. So you assume that it's sort of really straightforward and not complex, right? Odysseus is a straightforward hero, good guy, dude, right? He goes to a war, but it can't get home because the gods are tormenting him. But he's a smart, good, awesome dude, which is why Athena likes him. I love he's so smart and good that the opening to the book is basically just Athena being like, hey, Zeus, remember Odysseus, we should do something about him. And Zeus is even like, oh, yeah, he's like the one smart one. All right. All right. His special skills are lying and fighting. That's pretty much all he lying, fighting and then crying about the aftermath of fighting. Those three things. But he's a good person. He cares about his family, right? You know, he cares about his crew people, right? Even though he's banging a hot goddess, he still wants his regular old life. And frankly, his crew people, not the sharpest tools in the shed. You know, and then, you know, he gets home and, you know, he takes care of things in a way that, you know, it's a modern sensibility. He seems evil and cruel. Wait, what do you get home? What does he do? First, he lies and then he fights. Yeah, exactly. Those are his two things. Those are his two things. I guess he's OK at voting. I guess what I enjoyed the most that didn't come out because when I read the old, when I read this originally, I read the Odyssey in high school and and was that it. I like, I didn't really get him. Like it said, like, oh, yeah, he's a good liar, but I didn't really like think about it. Like I had to have that analysis sort of spoon fed to me and it didn't really come out from the text that he was a good liar, other than the text telling me over and over again, he's good at lying, reading this. He is good at lying. He lies all the time. Comes up with incredibly complex people are like, Oh, who are you? And he comes up with this complete character. I'm from this town and this place. And I met this person. Art Vandalay, right? He's got like a whole story just out of his ass with every minute detail of a person's life. That's mostly believable. So I know there's something his own dad. I noticed something I did. The only one the only person he does not fool is his dog. I love how his dog is like, doesn't the dog just die? The dog sees him and is like, well, you're back. I see you. Now I'm dead. I was only waiting to see you. Yeah. So I think the thing about his lying, though, right, is that is that the structure of the book actually sort of like the chronology of it was totally messed up. This is the thing that I noticed the most. And most people don't seem to notice this way. Oh, yeah. So normally you think of the story of the odyssey, right? And it's like, well, what order do the things happen? This is the order of the things happen, right? He's at the war, runs away from the war. Well, they win the war and he leaves. He leaves the war. Then all those adventure things happen with the Cyclops and the men, right? Then he gets trapped on the island with the goddess. Yeah. Then he escapes that island to get to the island with Naushka. And then from the island with Naushka, they actually help him get home. And then when he's home, he deals with all this shit. And then he gets that's the actual chronological order. And all this shit at home, like Telemachus and all that is happening in parallel. But what order, if you actually read this book, are these things told to you? In the book, he starts on the island with the goddess. Yeah. And then he goes to the island with Naushka. And then he tells them the story of the things that happened between the war and being on the island with the goddess. They don't actually say show you those things happening. That's Odysseus telling that King Naushka's dad about those things happening. And the thing that and when he's telling him those things, is he lying? I am so sure he's lying. So once I realized this, but he all those things about the sirens, all the famous parts, the sirens, the war, that that that's only Odysseus telling a king, those things happened, right? Are they actually true? Is the stuff that happened at the war even true? Well, first of all, the same time, though, happened at the war is corroborated by other people like Menelaus. Yeah, because Telemachus. We see him actually going around and talking to people. And they like they all agree on the history of the events. Right. Yeah. The second thing is that even though once I realized that and I was like, oh, maybe all the fantasy famous adventure shit that's in one chapter of this book, by the way, all that's in one chapter where he tells the king that is that part a lie. Because everything, every story Odysseus tells everyone else is a lie. But some of the things he knows later on, like in the even towards the end of the book, there's a part where Odysseus is thinking to himself. And he's like, he's like, oh, man, this isn't as bad as he's like, am I going to fight all these suitors? And he's like, well, I killed the fucking Cyclops. And it's like he wasn't lying about the Cyclops. Because why would he unless he lied to so much that he convinced himself? I was about to make a point that that is the only potential disruption to your read of that is that people who are very good at lying and tell certain lies consistently tend to accidentally start to believe those lies and internalize them. There's also other truths, for example, so we everything that happened to the war was confirmed by other people who are also at the Trojan war. Yeah. And he did leave on a boat with a bunch of dudes. And those dudes are gone. What the hell happened to them? If his story is a lie, right? So I'm pretty confident that the story. Well, all the dudes who went with him, we know what happened to them. According to him, they all died. I'm fairly confident that all the things that he said happened between the war and being on Calypso's Island were mostly true. Yeah. But and then when he's because it's, you know, it's primitive writing from the ancient times when he's telling stories to other people and the book. The story makes it obvious to the reader that he's lying because he's usually starts those stories by saying he's someone other than Odysseus. Yeah. But at the same time, when he tells the King, he's Odysseus. He's not lying. But he also like reading those passages where he tells the story. The thing I noticed being a pretty good liar myself. I'm good at lying, is that he he you in the telling of the story. He does the things that someone who's good at lying would do when they're lying, like lampshading the fact that he lies. He half his stories are so I lied to this other motherfucker. And I'm telling you about it. That is like that is one of the best ways to convince someone you're lying to that you're not lying to them is bring them into the trust of, yeah, so I lied to that other guy about this thing. And he also like he starts to include very specific details sometimes in the manner that someone who's lying might do that about exactly how far away the rock was thrown. But the thing is that other people when they're telling stories and not lying also include all those details. Because remember, this is these ancient times are before books, TV, cell phones, distractions, whatever, right? So people mostly spent their time entertainment with storytelling. So people were good at telling stories or remembered lots and lots of details. But so I feel like if you showed up at, say, a king's house asking for to spend the night and they asked you about your life, they would expect you to have all those details because that's how everyone has can tell stories like that. True. But at the same time, it sort of implied that being a really excellent liar is a core fundamental aspect of great Greek men. And one might notice that all the people telling these stories are great men and are probably maybe they're all lying to each other all the time. Great in quotes. Yeah, I'm making quote marks. And Telemachus is too young to know how to lie effectively. So he's just earnest. And I did you could look at it that maybe other people are lying to him. So so so Telemachus, right? People that Telemachus basically glossed over and not paid attention to when people adapt or homage to the Odyssey. Yeah. Right. So the thing about Telemachus that's interesting. Well, one, he's 20. Yeah. But the book, it treats him like he's seven. The book is like he is too like he is too young to know anything about anything like it even walks outside. Like they're worried he's going to die. Well, I mean, look at Odysseus. He's got the time of the scar he's got. The people know it's him for sure. But the story of how he got it, it's like he was doing adventurey shit from a young age. Telemachus, I think, was sheltered in this wealthy house. Yeah. Even though he's 20, he wasn't doing adventurey shit like Odysseus was. Arguably his first adventure is because Odysseus isn't there and he goes out to try to deal with that. Yeah. And you know, and the thing is he's not he's not like herped a derp. It's like, you know, usually he learns. Yeah. Usually when you have that sort of character, like the weak young kid who never went on adventure is like they suck. But Telemachus actually doesn't suck. He's just inexperienced and he, you know, shows that he clearly he's the son of Odysseus. Yeah. Well, look, you're the son of Odysseus. You're not actually going to suck if you practice. Look at his baby's first deceit of like, well, don't tell my mom I'm leaving. Yeah. Like, but then you compare that to Odysseus and his like, so here's what we're going to do to trick the Cyclops. Right. And even though he doesn't like, you know, he can't physically do anything about the suitors, right? He totally just smack talks them all the time. Yeah. He has no problem, you know, talking back to them, but he just can't actually. That's something that didn't come out either. When I read the Odyssey originally, he isn't just like, oh, poor suitors. No, I'll do it. I really like you fucking assholes. Why don't you get the hell out of here? But I really can't make us. He's like, you're right, I can't, but you guys suck. I really read Telemachus as this kind of wishy washy, like milk toast piece of crap kind of like that. He wasn't aggressive. And then he was weak, but reading this translation really brought out how he's doing what he can. Yeah. And I think it's partly just that the dialogue is much more natural. Yeah. If he was a badass, he probably would have just murdered them all in day one, but he wasn't. So yeah, but he's got this kernel of it. Like he's got the kernel of violence and the kernel of lying like ready. So let's see. But I just the way Odysseus tells that story because another way to look at this, like you said, is he lands on this island after the war alone. Tells this elaborate story and then the kings of all the people on this island give him enough treasure to basically account for everything he would have had if he'd gone to the war. And then he just goes home with all that. I do like it's kind of sad as an aside, though, that that island gets completely fucked over for helping him. Like that is not really talked about much. Like, yeah, Zeus or Poseidon just punish them forever and they're gone. I mean, I think, you know, Odysseus doesn't really care about. Anyone other than himself. He doesn't care about like, you know, side consequences. Yeah. You know, it's like the whole Trojan War is like a huge, like basically natural disaster and he doesn't give a crap. Yeah. Of course, it's hard to say because I don't care about his man who died, you know, even though he makes at the very end, he makes peace of those families, but it doesn't care that they're unhappy. Well, notice so he when they're leaving Cersei's house, there's what's his name, props to my man, whatever his name was. I can't remember who got drunk and just fucking fell to his death from the ceiling because he was dumb and drunk. And Odysseus was like, well, we got to go. So they just didn't like, they just left him laying there. And the only reason he goes back and buries the guy and does all that stuff is because he meets the guy's literal ghost and makes a promise to that ghost. And then he has to follow through on the promise or I'll get in trouble. Yep. I feel like if he does what, you know, and the other thing is that people, you know, oh, Odysseus is so smart and so powerful and so awesome. 90% of the time Athena just says Odysseus do this and he does that. And then Athena makes him strong. Athena puts a disguise on him. Athena, you know, tells him exactly where to go and what to say and what to do. It's a little bit. Are you really that awesome? If Athena is just some goddess is just, you know, helping you out and getting you specific. Now, because if you look at the story, Athena didn't help him with Polyphemus. No, there, you know, there are definitely things that Athena didn't help. Athena didn't help him with Cersei. He dealt with Cersei on his own mostly. Hermes gave him some advice there. Yeah, but it's still, it's like, there's a lot of God interference going on, right? But there is a lot of non-God interference, but I do like, I read Athena very differently too in this translation. She's very like, oh my God is Bel Dandy magical girl. Like there's a lot more stuff going on with her that comes out in this text. Cause she's actually kind of chill and a little bit snarky and a little bit like, yeah, I'm going to help you out. Like do this, let's go. And she's also really good at lying. Well, she's also like sort of eager to do certain things. Yeah. And Zeus is sort of like, whatever, right? So there's a lot of times where she's like, I really want to help this Odysseus guy. She's like, Zeus, I want to do this. It'd be so fucking awesome. And Zeus is like, all right. And then she's like, yes. She goes down and she's like, yeah, let's fuck these humans. Yeah. Yep. And she's on Odysseus' side so other people get fucked. As opposed to Poseidon, you get the impression that he's just looking around like someone in Philadelphia just waiting for anyone to cross him. And then he just comes down on them. He's like, who's burning lots of things and sacrifice to me? Those people good? Those people good? I don't see a lot of smoke coming from over there. Yeah. Who's that smoke for? Not for me. Is any water near these people? Let me see. They got any boats? Let me sit here. Any boats moving? Yep. And it also reminds you. Boat move, I'll be back. How powerful Poseidon is that even Zeus is like, yeah, Odysseus really got the short end of the stick, but I can't really do anything about what Poseidon wants. Like even Zeus can't really tell Poseidon what to do. So I like how Zeus is like he's the God of strangers. Right? Yeah. You can tell me about that. And like most of the book, like there's one more. I mean, there's a lot of morals, but the number one moral of the book seems to be if someone comes to visit you properly, yep, you got to be just nice to them and don't treat them like shit. And if you visit someone, you can totally expect them to feed you and give you treasure and it's sort of like, hey, everyone, if people are traveling around, even if you don't know who the hell they are, you should be nice to them and treat them nicely. And that's a lesson I think that is good for the modern world. Yep. But also based on the context of the forward and a bunch of reading I did about the old Greece is that there seemed to be this idea that people who shared food and did this stranger thing, they would then basically be allies and not make war against each other or cause trouble for each other. And that was a way to sort of prevent like local warfare so that to the rest of the world, the Greeks are these roving like murderous barbarians that just come to your shores and fucking kill everything and eat everything. I mean, I guess in newer times than this, right? You know, lots of nomadic peoples have the same kind of thing hospitality, right? Where it's like, you know, you come into my tent, you know, kind of thing. Yep. Well, we've shared water. Now we can't ever go to war. Yep. But we didn't, neither one. We know there's people. Let us be friends. But we know there's people on that other island. Did you ever have water with them? No. Let's just go steal all their shit. It's like, yeah, they were jerks when he visited them. And it's sort of like, well, nice people who treat foreigners nicely are treated nicely. But even the people who treat each other nicely, if you're a shithead, won't treat you nicely. It's sort of like, it's okay to kill jokes. Yep. Because I noticed when they, when he's telling the story of all the different places they land, like all these short vignettes, they land on the one island and everybody tries to eat them. And they land on Pilefimus Island and he just eats them. And then he goes by Skilla and Kribdis and Skilla just eats six of them. A lot of people get eaten. Yeah. I mean, it's a good, this is also a good lesson for the modern world, right? Don't get eaten. Be nice to everyone, except jerks. Jerks, you can treat like it because they're jerks. I do enjoy, you know, you talked about like- You don't have to tolerate intolerance. How the gods do a lot. But if you notice, as most situations where a god or goddess helps Odysseus, they're only helping them with the part, with him, with the part that he can't do anything about. Cause there's one point where Hermes is like, and I think Athena says a similar thing to him at one point. You can't, Cersei definitely says this. You're a human. You can't do shit about what the gods want. If a god tells you to do something, you do it. That's right. Ghostbusters taught us that lesson. But, but, but- The next time a god, someone asked you if you're a god, you say yes. This isn't a lucky position where the gods want good, happen to want him to do good. But he's in the unlucky position where the- He's in the unlucky position where the gods are interested in him. It's this double-edged sword. If the gods notice you, it's generally more bad than good, even if they want to help you. But because the gods notice him and are fucking with him, at least he has other gods who like him enough to help him. If you want to know about god's noticing you, you should watch Clash of the Titans. Yeah. Or possibly read the Prince of Nothing series, depending on how that goes in the end. Cause that is definitely, do not let the gods notice you. What do you see? The Lord of the Rings. You don't want the Eye of Sauron upon you. You do not want it to see you. But, oh, I had, there's nothing I was thinking of, along the lines of plefimus and all these people eating people. Right. So the gods, like they make all these points about how you can't do anything about the gods. You can only do things about people. And the gods really only help out as he is with the gods stuff. And he really just deals with the people stuff on his own. And he's pretty good at it. But at the same time, with the people stuff, he very often makes mistakes. Like he doesn't tell his crew the full truth. And then as a result, they do something stupid. And then he gets fucked over by it. That happens repeatedly. Or with the cow eating situation. Yeah. He's just like, yeah, don't do this thing. But he doesn't really tell him why. Or like, don't open this bag. But he doesn't really tell him why. And then they do something stupid. And that ruins him. But should he have, I feel like he could have lied to his guys or he could have told him the truth. They both would have worked. But instead, he just omits the truth. It seems like omitting is worse than both lying and not lying. And that seems to come up multiple times. Yeah. I mean, it's like, I know he was sort of following the instructions he was given, right? And he was like, but he can't make anyone else follow the instructions, right? If I see a lot of times where he sees Athena and no one else sees her, right? Stuff like that. And it's like, if I saw a God and it told me stuff, and then what am I gonna tell you? Hey, Ram, I saw Athena and she said, do this, you put me in the crazy house. At the same time, at one point, Telemachus is like, Athena told me to do this. And everyone's like, oh, then you should do it. If Athena tells you to do something, just do it. Everyone agrees that God's are literally real and come down to the house. It's like, oh, Zeus, send me a sign. It's like thunder. It's like, oh, all right. Immediate thunder. But there's one thing in Emily Wilson's translation that I noticed specifically. I remember when the siren bit, which is so short, it's like such in passing. It is weird that that's like the number one most adapted thing in other tales. Yet it's like a page. Not even. It's less than a page. But I wonder how that became, like that portion of the story became the, as the story was adapted over the years, how that part was magnified and the other part was magnified. I feel like Sexy Bird Ladies sells. Because it's fun. Yeah. Actually, the forward talks a little bit about that, especially because it points out that the thing the sirens do so disses with is not any of the things you think. I love that a lot. That, yeah. They literally tried to seduce him with we'll tell you about what happened in the war that you fought because you clearly have PTSD. Yep. Imagine, Ram, if there was like, you're going past some sirens, right? And it's like, you know, people tend to think, you know, with the sirens, they were just singing such sweet music. It was so wonderful to hear. You wanted to go over and listen to it forever. Cause it was like, you know, I'm mystifying. It's like, no, the sirens were like, hey Odysseus, we know everything. He's like, uh-huh, all right. So he's like, Ram, I know everything. I'll tell you what dark matter is. Oh, no. I just went over there. It's like, I'll tell you. I'll let you play this video game. Then I'll let you play a quest for glory. But when Cersei warns him about the sirens, she basically says, I'll tell you what happens in half life three. She says, like, like plug your ears. If you want to hear it, like if you're curious, get your men to tell you up like if. But when Odysseus tells his men about the sirens, he says, she told me I have to listen. I thought that was really, really funny. That that divide between those two lines. I mean, that stood out in my head because I got to the side of it. Because if you're a smart person, at least you're a curious person, right? Yeah. So Odysseus were told as a smart person, smarter than the other people and the sum evidence of that. Yeah. So you know, he's curious as hell. He wanted to know what the fucking sirens are. And also it's smart. Because if he was like, yeah, guys, I really want to listen to this shit because apparently it's awesome, but none of you can. You know what happened? One of his idiot people would have pulled the earplugs out and he's can't tie everyone to the path to the mask. Because and he knew who's going to row the boat and he learned his lesson because all the other times his crew fucked up. So it was both smart that he did that and really funny that that's how he did it. That stood out to me really strongly, even though I read that part a long time ago, because we announced his book club in like March. OK. So I mean, I really, really like this translation and I really like the story. The main thing that, you know, that I like about it is that it's just way easy to read because usually when you have translations of things, they're they're all written in a way that makes them difficult to read or you have to read them slowly and carefully. Not just easy to read, but more like I intrinsically got the parts that were funny or the parts that were supposed to be scary. Like I can just I can both breeze through it and not have to read slowly and carefully and also gain a complete understanding of what's happening. Like they go like a lot of the ones are written in sort of fake, oldy English. You know, they're written the way that Shakespeare actually wrote, but fake Lee, right? Yeah, put in like these Mr. Thou, Mr. Thou. Yeah, Thou's and these and whatever to sound old, even though the Shakespeare was thousands of years after Homer, the difference between current English, you know, the English that we speak on this podcast in the English of Shakespeare is a spec compared to the difference between Shakespeare's English and the Greek of Homer. So what's the point if you're even if you use fancy old words that they're not any old, they're not really as old as Greek. So what's the point, right? But is the difference between a lot? It's all make it to someone can fucking read it like reading a paragraph or a stanza or whatever. And then there's the note that's like, Telemachus is being snarky here versus just reading and be like, Telemachus, yeah, get him. And like the ghosts were not scary at all in high school. Like when I read that bit with a ghost, it was just like, so what, these people just like walk over and talk to him. This part, it actually was like creepy. Yes, it felt in order to proceed. He had to go into hell and back. Yeah. And it's like, oh, shit, where's he going? I like that bit a lot because he's like scared. But then he starts to do it and then he's like really into it. See, like his I forget all the details. But like he sees his mom. He sees like all these dead people. He sees captain. What's his name? Who fell to his death? Yeah. Right. Like that guy's just like, oh, yeah, I fucked up. He sees Agamemnon. But Agamemnon is there later to see the suitors. Oh, yeah. That was funny. Agamemnon at the almost at the very end of the book, all the suitors are dead and Agamemnon and Achilles are there. And isn't someone else there? I forget. But basically those are the two important ones that are there. And they're like, oh, all the awesome dudes from Ithaca. Why the hell are you dead? And they're like, we were trying to get with Odysseus's wife because he disappeared. And they're like, well, they knew Odysseus in life, right? Yeah. I like have the ghost. You're like, motherfucking Odysseus. Oh my God. Yeah, we're dead. And then they're like, you know, because they didn't think the suitors were bad because they weren't paying attention to what was happening in the real world. And then they're like, but then Odysseus actually came back and his wife didn't, you know, like was actually loyal to him and wouldn't get with any of us. And Agamemnon's like, man, what an awesome wife. Not like my bitch wife who killed me. Yup. Because Agamemnon is really like his advice to Odysseus is pretty shitty in sexes because he's like, yeah, don't let your like, don't tell your wife too much because you might do something to you, you know? And then at the same time, he's like, the Penelope is pretty smart. Yeah. My favorite bit of the ghost. And we talked about this before the show. Was that Heracles comes out and he's just like, all the other ghosts are like sad and mournful and wistful and like they're, they're very weird. And then, and like, yeah, we're dead. There's no substance to us anymore. And it sucks down here. And then Hercules just comes out with a bow and arrow. Like, like you see, so Odysseus know that the ghosts are afraid of his sword. And he's just like, I'll fight you. Like he comes right out just being badass. Like, yeah, all these other people are dead, but I'm a badass. I'm Heracles. What do you want? Let's go. What up? Yeah, you know, it's also cool that even in whatever BC, 1000 something BC, sex and violence are still really awesome. And people today still really like sex and violence. So not much has changed humans. Yeah, but the story does like many parts of it feel very natural to a modern sensibility if you just translated with natural modern language, like the like the lying and all the things Odysseus does like a lot of it fits very well with the way we talk, act and think today. Humans back then weren't that different from humans today. And you can see most basic adventure stories you read today really aren't, you know, have to have a lot in common with this. Right. You know, it's like, oh, I'm in a tight spot. I go on a little journey. I get into another tight spot and a little journey. I have a goal in mind of a place I want to get to at the end. You know, the big bad guys, they get there. They get their comeuppance. Everyone's happy at the end. Yep. And this is in the forward. So I don't really want to go deep into it because you can read the forward if you didn't. But I really like how specifically this calls out the slaves everywhere because that's just that pre like proto Greek society, like the Mycenae, you know, all the civilizations that disappeared around the Sea People time probably built the most entirely on slavery. I mean, you know, most people they think if you if I say to you ancient Greece, most people in their mind immediately have a picture of like, you know, Athens with the white pillars and buildings everywhere. One, those those pillars were painted in the most gaudy paint. You can imagine also, you know, Parthenons, right? And then lots of dudes in togas walking around, right? It's like, that's what you think immediately. But it's like, no, it was way ancient human times before even feudalism. Sparta invaded its neighbors and enslaved them to similarly to how the United States enslaved Africans. You had a rich dude and then like chattel slavery, not not all those other forms of slavery from like later Greek or Roman times. Rich people who mattered in society, at least. And then a whole bunch of slaves and servants and other subs, you know, servile peoples below them. And even like Cersei has nymphs as slaves, like they're just slaves everywhere. And you see all these times of disease has so few people with them that even on the trip, he's always like, so I'll send you three and take a slave, like he'd send slaves along because he didn't have that many people to do stuff for him. But they're never mentioned in it. Like the people until he assigns a slave to like one of his scouting parties at no point is anyone with him described like until it matters and like, oh, yeah, and some slaves. Like you wouldn't have even known he had slaves with him. At the end, though, they do make they they make like this special note. Right. It's like, OK, well, there's the swine herd who's like the best slave and he's a good person who lets people in his home and treats them well. Still a slave. He's still a slave. But because he's good, Odysseus treats him good. There's the cowherd also who's good. Yeah. I mean, I stayed loyal to Odysseus, so he was treated well. And then there's the goat herd, who is probably the worst motherfucker. The goat herd is worse than the fucking suitors. He's just an evil asshole who betrayed Odysseus and tried to help the suitors, even though he was Odysseus's slave. And it's like all the other like the suitors, they just get speared in the head or whatever. The goat herd, man, he gets like chopped up into pieces. They like chop his nuts off, I think. He gets it bad and they sort of, you know, it's like he deserves it bad because, you know, I guess he did a worse thing than what the suitors are doing. Yep. But those are the bits that are very different compared to a modern sensibility of a story. All the stuff around the slaves, all the stuff around the retribution against like the women after the suitors were killed. All that stuff definitely reeks of this very old and messed up age. I like how he tells the grandma, the nanny slave grandma. He's like, I don't need you to tell me, you know, which women are good and which ones aren't good. I'll figure that out myself. And then when it actually comes time, he's like, hey, Granny, which of the ladies should be. Well, which ones are going to get hung outside and which ones are at state law? Well, I guess it definitely comes out very clearly that Odysseus's primary attribute might not even necessarily be that he's good at lying or good at lying and fighting. But it's that he spends almost all his effort controlling what other people think about him. And making sure that the story people tell about him is exactly the one he wants them to tell. I mean, he gets a bunch of his, like he gets his men killed leaving Pileff and Mrs. Cave because as soon as he's out of range, like as soon as he's on the boat, he turns around, is like, yo, guess what? My name's Odysseus, fucker. Like he risks everyone's lives just to make sure someone will remember his story. Also, even when he's lying and saying he's not Odysseus, he includes Odysseus in his story. Yeah, I met this. He's like, yeah, my name is so and so, you know, and what's my story? I was traveling around and I met this totally awesome dude named Odysseus and he was doing this and then we parted ways. And then I ended up here. You know, now that person who believes that lie may know of Odysseus because he's so famous, but also now believes awesomeness about Odysseus. I would actually believe a specific party lied a lot in is the part where he's recounting all the dead people he met. Let's assume that he did go to Hades and some of that is true, which does make sense. Yeah, I guess there's no that he could be lying about going to Hades. But he's like, he I think he learned of what happened to a magamemnon there in a way that he might not have been able to. Well, like it's possible to argue that he learned things from them that he couldn't have learned otherwise. But I would read that even if he literally did the Hades thing and literally met some of those people, that he lied about most of them because it goes from like my mom, like specific people who were learned something important. And then it's just like he name dropped fucking everyone in all of Greek history. It's like, oh, yeah, and Hercules was there and I got Memnon was there. The thing is, it's like on the one usually what happens in a lot of stories, a common trope is there'll be fantastical elements. Yep. Right. And those fantastical elements, it's like, oh, that was actually that none of that literally happened. That was just shown to, you know, you thought it was literally happening. But actually it was in a dream or an imagination. Well, you want a good modern example of that? Kill Bill, the crazy 88 at the end of Kill Bill. Like there's this crazy fight scene is like the climax of the movie. The second movie when the crazy 88 comes up and someone tells the story, they make it very clear. Yeah, there weren't actually 88 of them. Well, there weren't 88 of them in the movie. But, you know, there was a crazy fight and the crazy 88. But that line of there weren't 88 of them in the way it's like just thought it was cool to call them. But anyway, but not but the way that is more like, you know, Utena, where there's like this explanation for the supernatural parts that they do not real. Yeah. Even though you see, you think the whole time you're reading the story, supernatural parts are real. And then they're not actually real, right? They were just made you believe they were real. But actually, no, in the Odyssey, the supernatural parts are within the world of the Odyssey. Real being Zeus is making thunder. Yeah. It's like, so there's no reason to question the Hades part or the seriously turning people into pigs part or the goddess in the island of Calypso. But I would potentially question that based on based on their supernatural. Oh, yeah. But based on the the shorter, the kind of the giant name dropping that happens after the important ones really feels like he's just throwing in a bunch of more stuff to keep because he's got the he's basically got all the important people on this island listening to his story. But you what I'm saying is that you could easily modify the Odyssey so slightly to where you could be like, well, all the most of the supernatural stuff happens on the one chapter of adventure after the war, right? Yeah, that's most of the supernatural stuff is there. You could retell the Odyssey in such a way to where nothing supernatural at all happens outside of that one part. And yes, Odysseus actually is lying about all the supernatural things. You know, that would be kind of a cool, you know, way to think about that's not what happens in this. Nope. You know, the thank you to go one step further. I think I think you could even tell the story and I never considered this possibility until I read this translation. You even tell the story of he might not have even made it to the fucking Trojan War. He might have gone to this war, bailed, had trouble, ended up on this island and then just tells this giant story gets his people to give him a lot of loot and then goes home and fucks up the suitors like you could you could think that you could argue that the entire middle was a lie. But I really enjoyed it. And I want to read pretty much anything that Emily Wilson translates at this point. What is she going to translate that? So this is the the Iliad, which comes before the Odyssey, which is the actual story of the Trojan War. There's the law. There's a lot of ease and Agamemnon and everybody. There's supposedly some sequel that the tell us something that is a it's the sequel to the Odyssey that was written way later than the Odyssey, but way ancient still, like still really in really old story, but supposedly it's lost. It is cool that, like, even in this ancient, ancient times, a thousand years before, you know, actual grease, there was like, you know, like sequels, right? It's like, you know, it's like to keep bringing up Achilles and all this stuff. And it's like, yeah, that was from a different book. It's like, it's like they're expecting you and they tell it when you're reading the Odyssey. It's sort of assumed you know what happened in the alien, right? It's like, oh, there's Agamemnon and there's Menelaus and Helen and everything. And it's like, you know, you're supposed to know. Yep. It doesn't tell you who Achilles is. It assumes you know. Yeah. And I mean, it was just like, yeah, I saw Achilles. And everyone's like, yeah, Achilles. Oh, man. Fist bump. It's like you're supposed to know. I just can't get over Herakles coming out of Hades. Just like armed and ready to fight. And just like, yeah, I was in hell. No big deal. All right. So I guess we're done here. OK. What have you thought about what the next book will be? I got some ideas. All right. I won't hold you to it now.