“The immortality the Greeks understood was of other people remembering you and telling your stories — as we are still doing with Odysseus.”
— Emily Katz Anhalt
Hello friends,
Some of you decided to reward my work by becoming paid subscribers, so while this episode is available for everyone to watch for free, there is a deep-dive section attached below for paid subscribers only, as a ‘thank you’ for rewarding my work and to be honest making it possible to do this at all.
~ Vashik Armenikus
Emily Katz Anhalt is Professor of Classics at Sarah Lawrence College, where she has spent her career asking what ancient Greek literature still has to teach us about how to live.
She is the author of Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths, Embattled: How Ancient Greek Myths Empower Us to Resist Tyranny, and Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times: Why Humanity Needs Herodotus, the Man Who Invented History. You can also read her wonderful piece for the American Scholar here
In this episode, we talked about: Why does one of the greatest poems ever written begin not with its hero, but with a son who has never met his father? Why do the gods keep appearing — and what are they really? And why does Homer build his entire epic around a man who is, by his own admission, a brilliant liar? Professor Anhalt has spent her career inside these questions. In this conversation, she opens them up completely.
For the deep dive, including five quotes from this conversation I haven't stopped thinking about; a reader's guide to the Odyssey's first four books and everything Professor Anhalt said about what this poem does to the way you live — consider becoming a paid subscriber to access the material below.
