What’s Epic About the ‘Odyssey’? Everything.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:26)
So what I'm hearing is, we're going to get an ancient Greek translation of From the New York Times. This is The Daily on Sunday, and we're going to read it.

**Emily Wilson** (0:36)
Natalie, do you want to say, Chai Re Teh with us?

**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:39)
Okay.

**Madeline Miller** (0:39)
All right.

**Emily Wilson** (0:40)
One, two, three. Chai Re Teh.
Should we do it again?

**Madeline Miller** (0:45)
Yeah. Okay.
You did more of like a Chai Re Teh. So should I get? Okay. I'm going to do that.

**Emily Wilson** (0:49)
Okay. I will say hello and then you say your line, Madeline.

**Madeline Miller** (0:52)
All right. I will.

**Emily Wilson** (0:54)
Chai Re Teh.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (0:56)
Greetings. This is the Daily Speech of The Grey Lady. I'm Natalie Kitroeff.
The news from the city of Five Boroughs on the Day of Helios, the Sun God.

**Madeline Miller** (1:17)
I was trying to sound like a news like-

**Emily Wilson** (1:19)
Yes, I like that.

**Madeline Miller** (1:20)
I was trying to match Natalie's-

**Natalie Kitroeff** (1:29)
Christopher Nolan's new movie, The Odyssey, is coming out in theaters this Friday, and it's gonna be a big cinematic event. In fact, it already is a big event. Nolan's version of Homer's 3,000-year-old epic tale is generating a ton of excitement, much spirited discussion, and somehow, before it's even been released, backlash. So today, to prepare us all for this upcoming spectacle, I talk with two people who have produced critically acclaimed and widely read interpretations of The Odyssey. Emily Wilson, who translated The Odyssey and is the very first woman to do so, and Madeline Miller, author of Circe and Song of Achilles, two best-selling novels inspired by Homer's poems. It's Sunday, July 12th.
Emily, Madeline, hello.

**Madeline Miller** (2:24)
Hello.

**Emily Wilson** (2:25)
Hello.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:25)
I am so happy to have you both here.

**Emily Wilson** (2:27)
Happy to be here.

**Madeline Miller** (2:28)
Yes, definitely.

**Natalie Kitroeff** (2:30)
This is going to be like the most exciting thing I do for a very long time. It is really making me love my job that we get to do this together. So we have you both gathered here in order to talk about something that really fascinates me, has fascinated me for a long time, which is The Odyssey. And we want to prepare people for this movie in a way that I think only the two of you can. But first, for people who may not remember the plot of The Odyssey, I am going to attempt a quick recap. The very, very short version is that it's the story of a man, Odysseus, who is trying to get home. He fought in the Trojan War for 10 years, and then he spends 10 years working his way across the beautiful but also very scary Mediterranean Sea in order to get to the island of Ithaca, which he is the king of and where his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, are waiting for him. It is all very dramatic because there are a bunch of suitors trying to get Penelope to betray Odysseus and marry one of them, and it is famously extremely difficult for him to actually get there, to get to Ithaca. There is sex and murder along the way. There are fantastical creatures, vengeful gods, helpful gods, awesome gods. The whole point of it is that he is really smart and really resourceful, and he gets home eventually, not because he's the strongest dude in the world and really good at war, but because he essentially outsmarts his enemies.
Emily, I hope I did an okay job with that. Very self-conscious doing it in front of you.
What was it about that story that first got you, that hooked you?

**Emily Wilson** (4:13)
So going back to childhood, I mean, my first exposure to a version of that story was when, as for many people, was when I was a little kid and I got to be in a school play, I got to play Athena. I thought this is such an exciting story about goddesses and there were these kick-ass goddesses. Who doesn't love stories with gods, with giants, with the possibility of being eaten alive? That's exciting. And these questions about whether forces that are more powerful than you might be plotting and you're in the midst of these mysterious plots and you don't know where you are in the world. That to me very much resonates with the experience of childhood. And then once I was older, I got to learn Greek and Homeran Greek sounds fantastic. And that also hooked me in a whole new way to how it sounds on the level of the line, the passage, the voice, the speech, and the rhythms of the language.