The Odyssey Episode

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Josh Clark (0:11)

Hey, and welcome to the epic cast. This is Josh, there's Chuck, Jerry's here too. We're all wearing breastplates.

And that means this is Stuff You Should Know.

Chuck Bryant (0:21)

To protect our chest.

Josh Clark (0:23)

Yes, I'm also wearing a cod piece, but that's not unusual for me.

Chuck Bryant (0:27)

To protect your cod.

Josh Clark (0:29)

I know, why is it called that?

Chuck Bryant (0:31)

Fish of the day.

Josh Clark (0:32)

What if you dated somebody who referred to that as your cod? Wouldn't you be like, please stop calling it that?

Chuck Bryant (0:40)

Yeah, it's like, do you mind giving me some privacy? I'm in here washing my cod.

Josh Clark (0:45)

Right. They would say, I'm sorry, I majored in the Canterbury Tales.

Chuck Bryant (0:50)

What a weird way to start the Odyssey.

Josh Clark (0:53)

I know, I know. And you're the one who wrote those lines, so.

Chuck Bryant (0:57)

I know, that's true.

Josh Clark (0:59)

Yeah, we're talking about the Odyssey. You saw the Odyssey, and you were like, how's the Odyssey work? And here we are, right?

Chuck Bryant (1:06)

Yeah, you know, I saw the movie.

I thought it was really good. I am no Christopher Nolan fanboy. I'm about 50-50 with him, maybe 60-40 with ones I like.

Josh Clark (1:17)

Which ones do you like, aside from Memento, obviously?

Chuck Bryant (1:20)

Well, I liked Memento, I liked The Prestige, I liked the Batman movies. Mm-hmm, yeah.

Didn't love, I mean, Oppenheimer was, quote-unquote, good, I guess, but it was a bit of a slog for me, and like I never wanted to see it again.

Josh Clark (1:33)

I could see that.

Chuck Bryant (1:34)

I think you and I had the same problems with Interstellar. Yeah.

I did not see Tenet because I heard it was so bad. So yeah, he sort of hit or miss for me, but I really thought The Odyssey was great, and it kind of hit me after I saw it. I was like, it's kind of just crazy, this idea that this story that's this old, like one of the oldest stories, like can still resonate with an audience in 2026 And like, what is it about that story itself? And I knew nothing about just The Odyssey as a literary piece, and I didn't know much about Homer. Like, I was an English major, but we didn't, I guess I didn't do the classes where we studied this stuff.

Josh Clark (2:14)

Well, in your defense, it was written in Ionic, not English, so.

Chuck Bryant (2:18)

Yeah, good point.

Josh Clark (2:20)

So, yeah, I can totally see where you're coming from, that this story has legs, I guess, is how you'd put it.

Chuck Bryant (2:27)

Yeah, it's just kind of fascinating to me as a piece of work.

Josh Clark (2:30)

For sure. And let's talk about this piece of work, because there's a lot to talk about, not just recounting the highlights of the story and spoiling the movie, I guess, for anybody who hasn't paid attention over the last, like, 2000-something years.

Chuck Bryant (2:45)

Yeah, if you can't spoil something written in the 8th century, then I'm just sorry.

Josh Clark (2:53)

Yeah. Yeah. So about almost 3000 years ago, the 700s BCE, right?

That's where they think Homer first put this to paper. But the whole thing, and it's attributed to the Greek poet Homer, who I guess this would have been post-Bronze age, like after the Bronze Age Collapse, I think, is when Homer was walking around. If Homer was even walking around, we'll talk about in a second. But they attribute both the Odyssey and the Iliad, which is kind of the prequel to the Odyssey, to Homer. And they think that it was first written down, like I said, in the 700s, the 8th century BCE, but that it was probably around way longer than that, because the whole thing is set up as a form of oral storytelling.

Chuck Bryant (3:47)

Yeah. I mean, you know, just you mentioned quickly that it was sort of a sequel, or the Iliad was a, did you say prequel?

Josh Clark (3:55)

You bet I did.

Chuck Bryant (3:58)

Well, the Odyssey is 24 books, one book for each letter of the Greek alphabet, but the Iliad that you were talking about talks about Agamemnon's return from the Trojan War, and then the Odyssey basically covers Odysseus, his return from the very long delayed return from the Trojan War.

And what was your question that you asked before I sidetracked us? Do you remember?