Conversations: What Makes a Serial Killer, Mythological or Otherwise? w/ Debbie Felton
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Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, as always, Liv. And today I'm here with a conversation episode. It's the first conversation that I have recorded since moving, and we started with a bang. I spoke with Dr. Debbie Felton, who...

who studies, you know, boring things like monsters and serial killers in both the ancient world and the mythology. So, you know, this conversation was a real slog.

I hope the sarcasm is clear. I realize I probably shouldn't do that when I'm talking about guests who don't necessarily know me. But for real, this was so much fun. We talked about mythological serial killers, what it means to categorize someone ancient, mythological, or otherwise as a serial killer, how that ties in with

modern studies around that, but we also talked about monsters more broadly. Medusa, surprise, surprise. A lot about Polyphemus. You might recognize some thoughts from the conversation or the

the Battle of the Bastards episode that Michaela and I recorded earlier this week, because that was coming shortly after I recorded this with Debbie. And so you could, there's a lot of overlap. It was absolutely, utterly fascinating. And I'm just very excited that you all get to hear. Conversations. What makes a serial killer, mythological or otherwise, with Dr. Debbie Felton?

Well, I mean, as Michaela shouted into the chat, why don't I, we are both utterly consumed by the idea of ancient and or mythological. I'll confess, I don't know quite which you're, that you look at, but I would like to hear about any form of serial killer in the ancient world. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, we'll talk lots more too, but, but what, yeah, what, what about serial killers in that realm have you looked at?

Okay. Well, the easiest way to explain that might be how I ended up getting started with it, which is that I just, I read a story in Pausanias, an ancient sort of a geographer, travel writer. We love Pausanias. Yeah. And it, yeah.

It was a story. It was a very, very weird story that a lot of people have been trying to figure like, what, what even is this talking about? But what struck me was that it was about a series of killings in a small town over a period of time. And the person who was committing them was originally described as, you know, sort of a dissatisfied, you know, soldier attending towards alcohol and,

And ultimately, after sort of experimenting with a bunch of killing, regularly seemed to go after women. Now, that is a way reductionist view of this particular story, because it's a lot more complicated than that. The guy was one of Odysseus' crew members who was a bit, you know, they sailed off without him, which is something Odysseus apparently did on a fairly regular basis. And the townspeople actually stoned the guy to death because he had attacked a local woman. And then it was his like,

ghost or revenant that kept coming back killing people until they uh got advice from the delphic oracle which said oh build the thing a temple and and offer a woman to it every year so you know and then it gets weirder because you know the guy this whatever apparition revenant you know supposedly originated in the time of a disuse that mythological time but um

was actually disposed of by a historical figure named Euthymos, who was a boxer who we have, like, we have actual historical records for this guy because he participated in several Olympic contests and won. So the story is like hundreds of years after this, whatever it was started, you know, in mythological times, hundreds of years later, an actual person comes and fights the Euthymos

whatever, it's physical. It's a physical thing. And he drives it into the ocean. And that's that. And then the woman who was supposed to be offered to the thing marries him. So... That's... Yeah, amazing. So would that have been more classical? And then Pausanias is also writing about it another few hundred years later? Well, yes, that's the thing. Odysseus would be in mythological times, 13th century...

legend, if even. And then Euthymos was a boxer and I think it was the 5th century? I would have to check the exact date. And then Pausanias is writing about the 2nd century CE. And this is a local legend that he heard in a small town in southern Italy. So

you know, it's not that this like screamed serial killer, as opposed to ritual sacrifice or ritual offering of women into a sort of bridal priestess hood for a while or whatever the heck was going on in this town. Uh, but certain aspects of it jumped out at me, which made me wonder whether there was, uh, such a thing as a serial killer in antiquity. And, um,

Part of that is just because when you read about modern serial killers, and there have been quite a few, the tendency has been to describe serial killing as a modern phenomenon due to the decadence of Western society, as if it only happens in Western society, as it turns out it happens everywhere. The decadence of modern society or the release of mental patients when mental hospitals were closed down in the

was it 1960s or 70s, you know, in parts of the US or poor medical care or whatever. So people have talked about it for a very long time. It was talked about as a modern thing, modern phenomenon. But then you go look at something like Jack the Ripper, who was really the first widely publicized serial killer because he sort of

You know, his killings occurred at the same time as a rise in the sort of cheap, you know, newspaper. And then you look back in history and it's like, oh, well, wait a minute. There were people like Countess Bathory, you know, hundreds of years ago in Europe who killed young women so she could bathe in their blood. And then there were these guys in France and Germany who thought they were werewolves and went out and tore people to pieces.

So the farther back you look, the more examples you find. It's just, they're more well publicized, you know, since say the 1960s, 70s and 80s. And it was, you know, in the 80s that the phrase serial killer first came into common usage because before that it was like multiple murderer or various other terms, but it was sort of canonized, I guess, by the FBI in the 1980s. And, yeah,

partially because of that I think people were reluctant to say oh of course this has been going on as long as there have been humans and then there's the problem of well you know it's not like you can get crime scene evidence or psychological profiles of people from 2000 years ago but we definitely have uh once I started looking after reading that Posenius story there I found a lot of other stories that sound a lot more like serial killers than that one did yeah

So I'll pause there. That was the big background to all of this, but there are certainly a lot of other stories.

yeah that's so interesting i mean i just generally love pausanias for things like that these little like you know he feels so unique in this way where we get this little taste of what the people in a certain area at that time were saying and it's like you know whether or not we can get evidence out of it from you know and beyond pausanias is a whole other question but he's like

his work is just this really, really unique insight into things like that. So I'm thrilled to hear. And also like what a bizarre story of, yeah, there's like mythological crewmate of Odysseus meets revenant meets like it. Yeah. Ancient ghost stories broadly are such a fascination for me. Um, but the idea of ancient serial killers. So I would love any and all examples that you have. Yeah.

Well, probably the first thing I should say is, like, how are we going to identify them as serial killers or at least as serial killer types in the absence of the crime scene evidence and the psychological profiles? So a big disclaimer here, I have no background in psychology or criminal profiling. So this is more of a pop culture approach to serial killing. Although I did, you know, I did do some reading in terms of what the FBI and other, you know,

agencies think. So what I started looking for was the sort of typical things you might think of from TV shows or movies about serial killers and

Um, how many victims are there? The FBI, I think says it has to be more than two or three. Uh, some other agencies are fine with two because they figure, Oh, we caught him before he's going to do more, you know? And, uh, the thing is sometimes serial killers kill two people at once and then another two people later and one here and one there like the Zodiac killer did, uh, back in California. So two at once here and there, and that went on for a while. Anyway, so at least a couple of victims, um,

And it's not just to be like a nerd who also has like taken in a lot of true crime over the years. I know there's also like that differentiation between like a spree killer versus a serial. Like it has to happen over a period of time too. Yeah. And that was, yeah, that was the next thing I was going to say is that unlike say a spree killer, mass murderer, like somebody who shoots up a movie theater or a school, uh,

The serial killer is partially identified by having there be periods of time in between the killings. Although, I mean, that can be like just a matter of hours. And I mean, there's, there's still, you know, again, depending on what criminal, you know, agency you look at, that didn't come out right, criminal agency. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, some of them think, well, if it's all in one day, it is more of a spree killing as opposed to a serial killing. Certainly if it's a huge number of people at once at a concert or whatever, it's mass murder and that applies to genocide. I mean, it applies to a whole bunch of other things. So it can be hours, but more usually it would be days or weeks or months or even years in between killings. And it could go on for a very long time. And then another aspect besides the number of victims and, you know, time frame...

the time frame indicating among other things that this is someone who's fairly methodical and in control of themselves as opposed to getting out of control so there are those two things but there's also a lot of serial killers use like they'll kill by the same method not always you might have one who like strangles somebody poisons somebody else knifes somebody else

uh, I think the larger proportion of serial killers seem to use the same method most of the time, not always, but usually or often. And then, uh, so then my, that is, they'll have like a, a modus operandi. Mm.

Mm hmm. That's similar. And they might have a signature that characterizes their murders. So say somebody is like a serial strangler, maybe they also leave a playing card, you know, at the scene of the crime or something so that they they want people the law enforcement to that's the word I was looking for law enforcement agencies.

You don't have to edit out any of that. You can just go ahead. Anyway, this is how I speak too. So I'm really, it'll come to me later. It'll come to me later. You know, so there may be some sort of like what the, like what John Douglas of the FBI would call a signature that lets,

uh crime and law enforcement know that it was this killer who did that or you know possibly it's a copycat but basically there's some little thing some little token or indication uh that uh is unrelated to the method of killing but that says hi it's me uh zodiac is such a good just since you mentioned him earlier like that's such a good example of like that very explicit part of of that i mean it's

so hard, so interesting. And I'm like, it's terrible, but it's so interesting. Well, yeah. Writing, writing the letters, wanting to bring police attention to it.

And then another thing is a lot of the times, but again, not always, there's a specific victim type. So like Ted Bundy going after, you know, undergraduate women or the, you know, serial killers going after women who remind them of their mothers. Women, female serial killers are more rare, but, you know, they might all go after a type of man that reminds them of an abusive father, you know, or abusive husband or something. So,

So, you know, there are serial killers who go after children and there are serial killers who go after prostitutes or I mean the Atlanta child killing murders was a big one that did not get enough attention at the time because of the demographic that was targeted.

So they're just, again, a lot of the time, there's a similarity among the victims, but not always. Sometimes it's opportunity more than specifically seeking out a certain type of person or a certain person. So there are a bunch of these things that...

uh sort of can indicate that well i guess that are characteristic of serial killing in modern terms and so then the question is do we see that in antiquity at all given the relative dearth of information so to give an example from myth that finally in the last few years has become more

popular or obvious maybe is Procrustes and well in fact you know all six of the criminals that Theseus encounter so this is from this is from myth but there is a historical aspect to it great this is the first one I thought of but from a different angle that I'll bring up later so that I'm sure I would love oh okay yes

I'm in. Well, no, I get it. So I'll just, I'll just talk about Procrustes briefly and then, or, well, I'll talk about Procrustes in a little more detail and then maybe mention one or two of the other ones briefly. They're the best. Fascinating. So what we've got here with Theseus is, you know, he decides, you know, he's, he's found out that his heritage isn't what he thought it was. He's, he's got the sandal and the sword from under the stone that his mom told him about. He's going to go to Athens to find his real father or whatever. And, um,

Or, well, was his father Poseidon or the king of Athens? Whatever. Not the main point here. Not the main point. The part of the main point is that he wanted adventure and he wanted to prove himself. And that the Athenians, when they were creating the stories, wanted to have their own hero who was sort of modeled after Heracles, who in the myth is Theseus' cousin, older cousin. Anyway, so Theseus, because he wants to prove himself, instead of just taking a freaking boat across the Gulf, you know, for the Peloponnese,

he makes a big deal out of it he makes a huge deal out of it and he's you know and somehow he uh seems to know in advance uh he's warned uh according to i think plutarch he's warned by his grandfather or someone don't take the road there are all these criminals and uh these just like well i'll take care of that right so so he sets off and he meets these six uh

various sorts of highway robbers except in the myths not hardly anything at all is said about the fact that they rob people that that's like not even really mentioned right what's mentioned is the mutilation murders that they all do so i'll just take procrustes as one of the examples even though he was one of the last ones uh rather than the one of the earlier ones uh so these just is working his way around the gulf of corn there up the isthmus and one of the uh

he meets is Procrustes. And Procrustes was apparently in the habit of, you know, inviting weary travelers back to his house. And he'd say, yeah, sure, you know, you need a place to rest? Come to my house. And then he'd give them a bed. And the next thing they know, if they are too short for the bed, Procrustes takes a mallet and pounds their bones until they're jelly and he can just stretch out their limbs to fit the bed. Or if they're too tall for his bed, he saws

off their limbs to make them fit the freaking bed. So what we've got here with Procrustes is I suppose there's a victim type that we can point to, which is lone travelers, usually men, women aren't going to

to tend to travel by themselves anyway. So lone travelers who are weary, susceptible, he acts friendly, says, look, I've got a little hostel over here, brings them back and then kills them by a consistent method, you know, depending on if they're too short or too tall for the bed. He has a murder kit, right? So it's like,

I mean, you know, again, Ted Bundy had a murder kit. He had like handcuffs and duct tape and stockings and a ski mask or whatever. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, I'm referring back to a lot of famous ones from the 60s and 70s, basically. He had a kit that looked a lot like Procrustes. It had like a hacksaw and a bunch of hammers and knives. And, you know, if you think about TV's Dexter, like the

fictionalized serial killer. Cause we're actually in for a new series about Dexter, by the way. Yeah. I heard about that recently. That's wild. Well, it's going to start with his origins actually like, like his upbringing and how he got started in the police, you know, police and everything and his dad. So, um,

Anyway, so Dexter, you know, fictional, he had his murder kit of, you know, surgical instruments from, you know, working, you know, in sort of medical examiner related type field, their forensics anyway. So Procrustes basically had a murder kit because he had these different implements and he would take the ones he needed and then use them. And then, you know,

So we've got a consistent victim type. We've got what we would call a homebody serial killer in the sense of bringing people back to his house to murder them, but also finding them along the road. The roads are a huge place for serial murder in antiquity and in modern times. Like there was this whole...

FBI, very badly named, but Highway Serial Killer Initiative, which sounds like, let's get those serial killers out there on the highways. What it meant was they're going to try to track them down, the ones that are killing at highway rest stops and stuff. But anyway, the roads are a good anonymous place to get people, really. Anyway, so Procruste shares a lot of characteristics with what we would think of as serial killers these days. So it's not like

Yes, he was a serial killer, but the characterization of Procrustes and some of these other characters sounds like they knew about this type of pattern of killing, even if they didn't have the phrase serial killer to describe it.

And so Theseus, of course, comes along and kills Procrustes by his own methods, like kills Procrustes with his own axe or whatever. I always wonder whether he was too tall or too short for his bed. I don't know. I don't think we get the answer. Yeah. No, I don't think he got to the point of even being on the bed because he knew what he was getting into somehow. There was no police force in antiquity. This sort of vigilantism is, you know, neighborhood watch kind of thing was really the only way anything would like that would get done.

But These Juice runs into several other characters like this, like Sinus the Pine Bender. I love him. Sinus is my favorite. I mean, it's so creative. Yeah.

Oh my god. Which version do you like better? The one where he ties people in between two trees and then lets go so they're torn in half? Or the version where he ties them to one side and then just lets go so they're flung over? I like the two. I like the two because it seems like the least practical way of doing anything. I don't...

how he would get the trees down to the point where he could do it. And it's just so creative. It's truly, it's one of my favorite stories ever.

Well, and, you know, there are actually, you know, there are the ancient Greek vase paintings that illustrate some of this. And they just sort of show Sinus and Theseus reaching down for these branches somehow. But Theseus comes along and kills him by the same way also. And then he does that with Phaia and or her, the Chromium and Sal, who, by the way, always reminded me of Betty White in that movie, like plastic.

You know what I'm talking about? I fully do. I don't know the last time I've heard another person reference Lake Placid, a movie I've seen 50 times at least. Oh my God. So thank you. Wow. That's, yeah. No, that's so true. Well, that one's always thrown me because it's like either she's a woman or she's a cow and you're like, well, I think you're saying something there and I don't love it.

Oh, you mean in the ancient myth? Yeah. Oh, it's either she's an old woman or she's a giant pig of some sort. Or a cow sow. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And again, we have these ancient pictures of this old woman directing the giant sow to go and kill these sewers.

So it's either like a female serial killer or it's a Betty White and the giant, you know, crocodiles or alligator, whatever. I can't see that. It would have been an alligator. I think they filmed that movie on my Island. I just have to say where I used to live in Vancouver Island. And that's a real claim to fame for me personally. I totally get that. I think that movie, I think that movie like got a sort of bump after Betty White.

died. It showed up on streaming again and more people got to see it. But yeah, you're right. It must have been an alligator. Cradwells are much farther south, right? But anyway, yeah. So Theseus goes around and kills all these people. And then the question is, well, hang on a sec. Is he like Dexter? Is he like this vigilante serial killer? That was my argument in an episode years ago, which is why I'm thrilled to hear that.

So I guess the difference there is that Theseus, on the one hand, he does have intent. He's like, I'm going to go get these guys. So that's premeditation right there. On the other hand, as far as the ancient Greeks were concerned, he was making the roads safe for society the way that Heracles does. And the big difference for the Greeks is

is that at the end of this run of like killing the six people on his way to Athens, at the end of that, he has himself purified by a formal ritual. So he has himself purified of the bloodshed and the guilt and the miasma and all those things that the Greeks would have objected to. So that before he actually sets foot in Athens, he has been cleansed of all of this as far as the ancient Greeks are concerned. And everyone's very grateful for,

And then the other aspect to that whole Theseus and those, you know, killing all those people is that they all represented like rulers of local, you know, neighboring regions like Galausis that Athens was sort of rivals with and this and that. So there's this, you know, political propaganda aspect to it too. Like, oh, the Athenians are better than the Eleusians, you know, or whatever. Almost of Theseus' mythology. Right, yeah. Yeah.

So he's... I think that's one of the strongest mythological examples comes from the Theseus myth and Procrusteus is an especially neat example. Oh, the other thing I didn't mention with Procrusteus was just the bed being there. It kind of is like we've got in the background this potentially sexual subtext that's also present in a lot of modern serial killer stories.

issues in terms of, you know, is it their mothers who told them, you know, stay away from women, you know, whatever, women are bad or, you know, whatever like little issues they might have had. A lot of the times the sort of sexual repression or issues are in the background or subtext there, which might be the case with Procresti's and the bad. Yeah. We don't know. There's no way to know. There's, I mean, you know, could just be a freaking coincidence. Yeah. Well, the argument I made and this comes from the, there's a very long running,

sort of theme in my show, which is just that I think Theseus is the loserest of all of the heroes. I mean, for many reasons, primarily that he like is just Athenian propaganda, but also that like, I find it so funny that, that that whole story has the, the walk, you know, from treason to Athens and everyone that he kills along the way. Like,

I find that so interesting that that is so it's meant to mirror, you know, Heracles' labors. And the difference to me is so it's so poignant. It's like Heracles is said to have defeated all of these like, you know, these like supernatural kind of

uh, beasts and, and, and like forces like, and then Theseus is just like, he took out a bunch of guys along the road who like, we're just meant to, we're supposed to just like believe Theseus that that's what they were doing. And so my, my silly argument in my like sort of running joke of hating on Theseus is that like,

you know, well, I think that he went and just like told all these stories and really he was just killing guys all along the way. And like, or even if they were doing it, he still went and like killed them all with their own same methods. And I have to ask before we like go anywhere from this story, what is the name of the one other guy who's murdered

whose MO was to like kick people off the cliff and into like the gaping jaws of a tortoise or a turtle. I think that was Skyron. Oh yeah. That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. So it was either a giant turtle or I think in some of the versions, a giant crab. Oh, that's great too. But the turtle is the main one. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah, I think it's, personally, I think it's kind of a tie between Theseus and Jason. Oh no, a thousand percent. Yes. The thing is for me, my argument, and I've had this discussion and argument with a lot of people many times because it's a very valid debate between the two of them. But my argument is that Theseus' death count and like women he assaulted and did various other terrible things to along the way is considerably higher than Jason's. And so Jason to me is just like a

Like he's not a good guy, but he's just kind of like, he's like bad at being not a good guy. Whereas Theseus is like really talented at being not a good guy.

I've thought about this a handful of times if you can't tell. Yeah, clearly. Yeah. And I mean, you know, I think you're right. If you look at both of these guys, they had way more help from women, right? I mean, because Theseus had Ariadne, Jason had Medea. And it's, you know, they really didn't do as much on their own. Although I suppose you could argue that somebody like Odysseus had the help of Athena. Yeah, he also, he's in there too. Yeah. So I mean, like Ariadne is a mini cat. And his death count. Yeah. Like if we're talking...

yeah if we're talking mass murder we've definitely got that slaughter of the suitors there which by the way what's that new movie um the return yeah with ray fines it's not playing here yet oh i know i was just i was just looking at i actually got to read ads for it it was like the one of the first times in ages where i was excited to read an ad for the show i was like oh i get to talk about this movie great

Yeah, no, I'm excited for that one. Mostly because I'm curious how they'll handle the killing of the suitors, but more so the killing of the women of the palace. Yeah, that'll be very interesting. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'm thrilled that that's your first kind of go-to example because I absolutely have made such similar arguments in the past about the serial killer nature of those guys. Not least because they're just... Their M.O.s are hilariously... I mean, absurd in this way where you just... It's just so mythological, you know? Where it's like, none of that could have happened. Where is this... What total... What...

mixing the word turtle and tortoise. But what turtle? Like, Greece is mostly tortoises. So it really throws me that suddenly there's a sea turtle involved. But yeah, you know, what kind of... And what are we doing with your Gamera? Yeah, like, introduce me to the turtle that is going to be down at the bottom of this cliff ready to, like, devour a guy. Or, you know, somebody who can bend trees like that and let you spring back. But it is just so bizarre. But yeah, so, I mean...

are there, are there more beyond Theseus? Are we getting, is there any kind of evidence for, for historical serial killers? I think that there is. And before I segue to that, I just want to briefly mention Heracles since he came up before. So he's got those 12 labors, which are like these amazing monsters, you know, Hydra. For the most part. And one time he had to clean the stables. Who's to say what's going on there? Yeah.

diverting a river to do it yeah but um i just uh you know i feel like we ought to at least give a nod to his par erica his side adventures because those seem to be what these uses modeled more after because uh anteus for example so heracles has to wrestle anteus who is sort of his own serial killer in terms of wrestling everybody who comes into his kingdom and winning

And so these just has a similar one. I think it's a, it's Kierkegaard. Maybe I might have to double check, but, but so those side effects,

You know, and this is interesting to your point because it really does make these two seem a lot less of a hero when he's emulating these side adventures of Heracles instead of the 12 labors. And even with the Minotaur, you know, he has a lot of help. Yeah. He has to kill it himself. And that's like the only big feat of like a real, like a threatening, like actual supernatural kind of monster. Yeah.

You know, like, yeah, he defeats the Marathonian bull, but at that point it's just a bull who's, like, kind of already been handled, you know? Yeah. And, I mean, Jason's got those fire-breathing bronze-footed bulls, but he couldn't have done anything without Medea. No, yeah. Useless without her. Right, right. Kind of pathetic, yeah. And, I mean, you know, it depends on...

There are so many different ways to interpret these things. I don't want to, you know, digress too far, but before he got to Colchis, Jason, you know, he had all these companions and they all had their talents. So like when they, um,

I think the adventure with Phineas and the Harpies came before they got to Colchis, but it was a couple of the Argonauts that handled that, the ones that could fly. Oh, yeah. He does, like, nothing. No, he doesn't do anything. His ship is full of other people to help him. Including Heracles. Yes, including Heracles, and Orpheus sometimes, and Atalanta sometimes, and, like, this long list of people who've done more than him. No, Jason being a hero, like, one of the...

you know, typical, typically labeled as heroes. It's always been hilarious to me because you can't, you really like, sure. If, if heroism is, is like supposedly captaining a ship that seems to have been perfectly capable of running without you, then like, sure.

Right, exactly. Exactly. What did he even do, right? I'm trying to think which of the Greek heroes is really... I mean, is Perseus a better example? He gets some help from Athena and Hermes, but he rescues women. He has better relationships with women. His mother and... But the Medusa of it all! Well, that's highly problematic. Yes! The thing to me...

I mean I think Heracles just has to win for lots of reasons I mean he does a lot of really bad stuff too but like

I think, you know, he just at least has like a handful of things that are kind of objectively beneficial to humanity. Yeah. And, but yeah, Perseus is my, my entire pet obsession slash like life source is just the story of Medusa and it being that like, she literally was not a threat. Like he didn't defeat some monster that was going to hurt anybody. And so it's like, no, he just took a woman's head and then used it as a weapon. And so like, yeah, he saved Andromeda and his mother and that's lovely. Yeah.

But like, at what cost, Perseus? Right. And I mean, it's like, you know, she was, according to most versions, she's off on an island with her Gorgon sisters. It's sort of like intruding on Cersei. You get, you set foot on that island, you get what you deserve. They're literally off in the middle of nowhere where they can't hurt anybody. And he's like, I'm going to go get her because this guy told me to. Right. Yeah. Yes.

there's just like not enough critical thinking and questioning of authority going on in those bits I guess I do say Cadmus is one of the safer heroes but he also got so little chance to do anything that I don't think he gets to like win any kind of contest he just doesn't have a ton of problematic moments

Yeah, and these foundation myths are, you know, a little more positive in a lot of ways. I mean, depending on the point of view of the people who are conquered for the foundation. True, true. The local guardian serpents may not be too happy about it. Yeah. But I'm sorry, you asked about historical examples. No, no, I would love to talk about all of this. So you asked about historical examples. And I mentioned the sort of serial killers who have issues with their mothers. So I'm just going to go...

I'm going to talk about Nero for a little bit here. Right. So the thing is that it's not really fair to call somebody like Nero a serial killer because this is a much huger problem that we have with Nero. And, you know, he's a public figure. He's in a position of power. He's abusing that power. Nobody stops and whatever. But I think the helpful thing maybe to keep in mind in relation to Nero and serial killers is

is that people like Tacitus Suetonius, who are our main sources for pseudobiographies of Nero, they characterize Nero in terms that we would think of in relation to serial killers. So again, it's not to say, I'll give some details, but

I feel like I have to, you know, again, offer a disclaimer that it's not like I want to say, oh, of course, Nero was a serial killer. Nero, I was going to say, like, do the same thing you did with the title of the twist. Let's combine two words here. So I don't want to say that Nero was, of course, a serial killer or anything like that. It's more like...

Again, the characteristics of serial killing seem to have been recognized in antiquity, even if they weren't called that. And some of them are applied to Nero. Again, not intentionally to characterize him as a serial killer because that wouldn't have been recognized so much. But what things that sound familiar to us. So, for example, we hear a lot about Nero's upbringing in these historiographical or

you know, writings. So, you know, he was abandoned by his mother at a young age. She eventually came back when he was a young teenager, like 13 or something, 12 or 13, but she didn't show him any affection. And he hated his aunt who took her, had taken her place for a while or whatever it was. And even when he was little, he, you know, he set fires. He beat people up as a teenager. He started brawls. He cracked people's heads over the head with bar stools or whatever. And,

and the older he got, the worse it got, and there were no consequences for his actions because he was just part of this important family when he was acting out, but he would supposedly, again, according to Tacitus and Suetonius, he would rape women, he would attack men, so no consistent victim type, but then what we've got is that sort of disturbed background that is often attributed to serial killers or noticed in serial killer backgrounds like the

I mean, again, it's not like every abused child grows up to be a serial killer. It is still their fault, but yeah. Yeah. You know, so, but the, the starting fires, the, the torturing of people, the mutilating of, of people's the, when he got older, he took a mistress who looked like Agrippina. And then when he had more power, he sort of continued to torture and assault.

supposedly kill kill people in ways that uh you know it wasn't just straight out execution it was you know mutilation torture murder that kind of thing so some of the descriptions of uh what nero is allegedly did sound like what we sometimes see in modern serial killers and uh

There's also a bit later, like, I guess, fourth century, there's a rhetorical exercise, which is basically a practice law court speech called against a murderer. It's by Libanius, who was a rhetorician. And so this was a practice speech that he gave his students to, you know, practice prosecution against a murderer. But the descriptions of the murderer sound so much like murder.

a serial killer. So again, when, when he was younger, he got away with all sorts of crimes that allowed him to become, become more bold and audacious. So when he was young, he committed robberies. He, did he start fires? He raped women, this and that.

so that he has come down to us as the murderer that he is. And he's basically a highway robber. So he lays in wait outside the city, but instead of just robbing people, and here's where it sounds a lot like these stories, instead of just robbing people, this sort of fictional murder practice murderer in this speech, practice speech,

He attacks people, robs them, but then tortures and murders them and mutilates their bodies by chopping them up into pieces so the families can't even find them for proper burial and everybody's terrified in the city. And there's part of the speech that says...

You know, he has two different personalities. When he's among us, he seems calm and rational. And it's basically the, but he was such a good neighbor. I never thought he could possibly be a serial killer. Whereas outside the city walls, he's bold and he's murder. And he flouts the laws. You know, he makes up his own laws and doesn't consider himself bound by the rules of society. So this dichotomy that's drawn in this speech, which is basically,

basically a historical setting but fictionalized characters but so that the students of the rhetoric who are going to go into the law courts will know how to argue such a case implies that there were people like that that they needed to

you know, that, so the characteristics again are, are there of a serial emulation murderer. Uh, so that's, that's a bit more on the historical side. There are some people, uh, like if you look in encyclopedias of serial killers by like pop culture, encyclopedias of serial killers by people like Harold, Harold Schefter, whoever, um, they will sometimes include a character named LaCusta of Gaul. Oh yeah. Um, so,

So she was, she's put in there and characterized as a serial poisoner, except that she's basically an assassin for hire. So sure, she poisons a bunch of people or provides the poison for other people to do so. But,

but what's her motivation? Her motivation is money. And again, she doesn't always poison the people herself, but she might provide it. But it shows that, you know, even without definitive evidence from antiquity, people are looking into ancient history to try to find the closest possible thing. Assassins are kind of another story. I mean, maybe they get jobs as assassins because if they didn't, they would be, well,

when we consider serial killers. So like the Sicarii, for example, um,

who carried out, you know, political assassinations, that sort of thing. So that's, that's kind of a whole separate bit as well. And there were certainly mass murders in, in, in historical antiquity. You know, I'm not talking about Odysseus and the Scythians right now, which is a whole other thing in terms of blood feud also. But, you know, there are mass murders, mass poison, examples of mass poisoning, especially in ancient Rome that, you know,

when important people were killed, it would come to the attention. That's when the Roman government would give a crap is when important people were killed. So another familiar today at all. Yes. I was, you know, again, the Atlanta child murders come to mind, but I think one of the things to think about is that if there was say the ancient equivalent of Jack the Ripper, like in the slums of Rome,

We wouldn't know because no one's going to write about it the way they did with like the, you know, the East, what was it? The East side of London. I should know. Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm, I'm for some reason, I'm forgetting I'm in terms of Jack the Ripper, but if somebody were, were like murdering prostitutes in ancient Rome or, you know, poor people or homeless people or whatever. Michaela's is Whitechapel. Whitechapel. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Thank you. I did it again. Thank you. I can't believe I like blanked out on that because it's so famous.

But, you know, that sort of thing may well have been going on and we wouldn't know about it. So, you know, again, these sort of what is the saying, you know, absence of evidence is an evidence of absence. So it is something to think about when we do have these

Bits and pieces of evidence that seem to indicate awareness of this type of crime. There are serial killings described, we just don't necessarily have them attached to specific historical figures in the way that we might want them to be.

So that's another aspect to it. Yeah. Well, I think about that all the time about, you know, the people wouldn't have written it down for things like that, you know, if it was in, like you were saying, the slums of Rome or something equivalent. But at the same time, too, like even if someone had

probably wouldn't you know remain for us today too so it's like you you can only i mean i think about this a lot in terms of the treatment of women and and i mean i would think crimes against women would be a really similar thing where we can say with almost certainty like that that type of stuff was happening like humans are going to human and by that i mean

often men are going to men um but we don't just because we don't have evidence of it doesn't mean that you know that it wasn't happening but to see it sort of specifically with

serial killers and things like that to see it mirrored a little in things like mythology or what little we do have that kind of it suggests that people were still paying attention to an extent or at least noticing and kind of putting an event like that into kind of their own the way that is easiest for them to understand say with the myth of Theseus and his little travels and

you know, there's, they're seeing something and then that's ending up in a myth. And so it's interesting to, to think about what, what they could be seeing. And that just brought me back my little mind back to Pausanias too. And like, what was happening there? You know, that he wrote something like that, you know, there's just so many questions. Well, and there are a lot of little stories like that one. And there's one in Apuleius' Metamorphoses, which unfortunately,

Unlike Pausanias, it's not like a local legend necessarily. But in Apuleius' Metamorphoses, there's I think it's a later book, like book eight or something. I think Michaela's just been translating that in her Latin class. So I'm kind of like slowly waiting for her to jump in.

Well, I think it's in book eight, but it's a very small episode. And at this point, Lucius has been turned into the ass. And he's, I guess he's at this point, you're doing Cupid, and it's like, yeah, I'm going to be teaching that next fall. But so he's, I guess he's with a group of runaway slaves. Hmm.

And they've been chased out of one town and they're, you know, they stop somewhere to rest like just afternoon or around lunchtime, which is, you know, I don't know. I don't think the word is used specifically midday or anything like that. But it is it seems to be the time of day when creepy things tend to happen in myth a lot. And like in Ovid and other authors, midday is...

Dangerous time. There's no shadows or whatever. But anyway, so they're stopping to rest and they see a nearby shepherd hurrying by and they ask him a question and he's like, don't you know where you are? Don't stay here. And he just keeps going and they're trying to get food and drink and he's just like, no, I'm getting out of here. Hmm.

And the next thing they know, an old man who's like walking with a crutch comes up to them and says, my grandson fell into a ditch by the side of the road and I can't get him out. Can any of you help me? So one of the, you know, strapping young men.

goes with the old man to help and you know they're waiting and waiting he doesn't come back so a second guy goes after him and then rushes back like completely terrified you're not going to believe what i just saw the guy's dead and there's this giant snake eating him and then the rest of the group is like everyone's terrified they just like run to the next town okay and they're like oh that's what the guy was talking about the shepherd so um

So this has the appearance of, you know, a type of local legend where people know to avoid a certain area, there's a man who lures victims, like he separates somebody from the group. Him really being a giant serpent in disguise is a whole other problem. But...

But what was interesting about that particular episode, aside from the fact that this does seem to be a regular occurrence, which is why people avoid the area. So maybe mutilated bodies were found or whatever. The thing there to maybe call out is the twig that the creature uses. So an old man who is walking with a crutch. Well, this is something that Ted Bundy did. Like he would have his arm in a sling or he'd have a crutch and he'd get some pretty young, you know,

uh college student to help him carry his books or his briefcase to his car and if you think of um silence of the lands buffalo bill does the same thing it's in the book and the film you know he's got this cast on his arm and he's pretending to have trouble getting his chair into his van and the you know the girl comes out to help him and he whacks her over the head knocks her unconscious shoves her in the van takes her off throws her in a pit

she's one of the lucky ones who gets to get away after being tormented and terrified. But this...

This tactic of a killer pretending to be disabled and then luring a victim that way is, I think, one of the interesting things about the story. So again, it's not necessarily, I'm not saying this is, oh, this must have been a local serial killer that was then told in a form that people could deal with, which I think you had said something like that, that the stories come down to us in a form that people can deal with. But, you know, the tactic there is,

uh but just i guess just to sort of run with that idea of stories being told in a form that is more palatable this is where john douglas the fbi uh former fbi guy who wrote mind hunter which there has also been a tv show great show too bad it was i was so good after two seasons right i was like oh come on oh it had so much more

great cast too and they had a ton of material that they worked with but anyway so John Douglas actually in his book Mindhunter wrote a bit about how you know he was speculating well maybe some of those killings in early modern Europe that were attributed to werewolves and vampires maybe those were serial killers you know and it was just like people didn't want to believe that other human beings could do something so horrible like mutilation murder so maybe you know those were

stories that sort of became legends about types of monsters because otherwise people couldn't deal with it. I mean, obviously there are other possibilities there. I mean, the force of Europe did tend to have wolves in them, you know, actual wolves. And then we, there were those stories from Germany and France of men who did have these so-called werewolf delusions. And, yeah,

So whether there are rational explanations or not, the point is that this FBI guy actually said, well, maybe these stories about monsters, these creatures of folklore, creatures of lore, maybe those are originally based in serial killing stories. And from there, we can say that, you know, even something like the Theban Sphinx, you know, I mean, look, she's got a particular victim type. She's got a particular method of killing. I don't know.

I, this is not my own theory. There was actually like, um, I don't know if it was an article or a chapter in a book, but somebody wrote about, well, maybe the Theobald Sphinx was, you know, a story that grew up around, um, serial killing. And even in antiquity, there were rationalizing mythographers like Palifatus who would say, well, of course, a hybrid creature is ridiculous. It's just physiologically impossible to,

The Theban Sphinx was really a female robber with a band of robbers who would come down from her cave in the mountains and kill people and rob them. So they were rationalizing versions in antiquity as well. So they weren't that far from saying, oh, it's just killers. It's just human killers who were doing this sort of stuff. So even 2,000 years ago or more, they were speculating about where these stories about certain types of killers came from. Yeah. Yeah.

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Hi everyone, it's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from the today show we love this time of year, there's so much to celebrate that's right, nobody does the holidays quite like today all season long join us for special performances with the brightest stars less festive recipes to whip up the perfect holiday feast and great deals on the hottest toys and gifts for everyone on your list to join us every morning on NBC to make today your home for the

I'm so glad you brought that up because all of this leads me to also want to ask about your work with monsters in mythology more broadly. It's funny you mentioned Palifatis because I had not really heard of him before I recently wrote

a big piece on Medusa for, for a book that's come out recently. And I, that's where I first encountered him. Cause I went through and I dug into like any possible reference to Medusa and the Gorgons that I could find anywhere and finding these, these,

Yeah, these rationalizing stories. I'm going to... What's the book, by the way? Oh, it's called Medusa. And then what is the subtitle? It's just like ancient and modern Greek tales, I think. It's a book of short stories primarily, but the publisher asked me to write a big introductory piece on her. So I got to write like 27,000 words on Medusa and whatever I wanted. It was like the greatest thing I've ever gotten to do.

I'll look for it. No kidding. Thank you. Yeah. I'm very proud of my piece. I haven't read the short stories yet, but I'm sure they're really great as well. But I got to go into some of those rationalizing stories. And my favorite one, and this one's not Palifatus, if I recall, but it's Diodorus Siculus, who talks about...

You know, the Gorgons actually being like really similar to the Amazons and how like there was this whole race of warrior women. But then, you know, essentially like it comes down to Heracles just like couldn't allow that to happen because he was the leader of men and like he couldn't have women ruling. So he killed them all. And here we are. And, you know, and there's like there's so many...

kind of notions of this and this way of understanding monsters. And I mean, when it came to Medusa, for me, I sort of ended up getting down to a point of just like, okay, to me, I think it's pretty clear that she really just like

what is the word I want? Represented. Jesus. She really just represented male fear of women who could fight back against like an assault. And it's so interesting to me the way that that can kind of like

mold and change and grow and you know I mean ultimately the Gorgons I think represent a lot else but to me the story of Medusa's defeat so specifically is just like that and then the way that it turns on its head and someone like I Polly Fattis do you know offhand what his rationalization of Medusa was there was a few that I wrote about so I've forgotten but honestly I have the book right on my shelf I can literally just go yes great

Yeah, okay. So I've just picked up my Palifantus book right here. Oh, I love it. Well, feel free to share any as well because I'm fascinated by the idea of the rationalization of monsters more broadly. I only got to read Medusa for the book, but cool. Let me see. Well, what does he have to say about Scylla? Hmm.

Well, here's what he says, for example. What is said about Scylla is that she was a beast who lived in Tyrrhenia, a woman down to her navel from where dog's heads grew and the rest of her body was the snake's. But to imagine such a shape is really quite foolish. Here is the truth. The Tyrrhenians had ships which made piratical raids in the waters around Sicily and the Ionian Gulf. But particularly swift in those days was a trireme by the name of Scylla, which had a figure on its prow. It was this trireme which often seized the other boats and made a meal of them.

there was indeed much talk about it on one occasion on disuse escaped from the ship with the aid of a strong favourable wind later in corsaira he narrated to alcinous how he was pursued and how he escaped and what the boat looked like from this the myth was formed

I read that one because it's super short. Yeah, no, but it's so, it is such, it's a good example of the work he was doing. I don't know. Let's see. There's a Medea. There's one on Medea, but I'm still looking for Medusa in Palifatus. But there's a,

There's one about Pandora that's nice and short too. Yes, please. I would love it. Okay. This is even shorter than the other one I read. So the story about Pandora is intolerable that she was fashioned out of the earth and imparted her shape to others. That is women. It hardly seems likely to me.

No, Pandora was a wealthy Greek woman. Whenever she went out in public, she would dress up in her finest and rub her face with a cosmetic made of earth. It was she who first discovered how to apply such cosmetics to her skin. Nowadays, of course, many women do so, and none of them gains any special renown because the practice is so common. This is what happened, but the story was twisted in an impossible direction.

just it's so interesting and i love how certain the the text is it's like no this one is the truth oh here the daughter's a four kiss i've found that oh it's very this one's long so we won't try to go into it but it oh yes there's something about there these three women of the kingdom and they had uh they had an eye but he was just like they're you know he this guy who worked with them and so they they're pulling in the story of the uh

The gray eye and Perseus having to steal their eye. Oh, and it was...

yeah it's a it's a ship again right yeah exactly it's called the gorgon the ship is called the gorgon and then he he steals this this statue cuts it up names his ship that puts it on and then when he arrives back in in seraphos or he goes there they say he's a pirate actually and he goes there and demands money and then he leaves while they collect it and when he goes back the seraphians have have like put human-sized rock

in a place and he's like oh I guess they turned to stone yeah I mean let's see it ends like thereafter whenever any of the other island people would not pay their tribute Perseus would say be careful that you too do not suffer what the people of Seraphos did who saw the Gorgon sat and were turned to stone yeah

Yeah, that's why I didn't find it. It was listed under the Daughters of Forcus instead of under Medusa. But yeah, no, that's a great one. Yes, these rationalizing mythographers from 2,000 years ago are wonderful. Well, and particularly, you know, I'm fascinated by the volume of female monsters and, you know, what that meant. And so to then read...

these men writing this like you know equally absurd but in a more realistic way these rationalizations which of course never address any kind of gender dynamics that would have been at play you know and so it's interesting to see the way an ancient man would rationalize it and I'm just always curious like like how did the women see it I wonder um

Well, and I always thought it was interesting that some of them would, in fact, say there are these female bandits with groups of men following them. So that's sort of attributing an interesting kind of an agency to women that you wouldn't normally have thought of necessarily. Yeah. I mean, they're made out as villains, of course, but in terms of the sort of power dynamics in a group like that, it's pretty interesting. Well, yeah. I mean...

in the ancient world, I will take a villain woman if it means I get to, you know, look at a woman actually getting to do things that she wants, even if they're terrible. Medea being a great example. Well, yeah. And, oh, but speaking of Medusa, I thought one of the great, one of the great reinterpretations was that sculpture a few years back of Medusa with Perseus's head. It was really sort of,

you know, inverted the, or subverted the entire, the entire myth. I mean, that was great. That was an amazing statue, which I guess got a little bit of criticism for idealizing Medusa's body. But it was still just, I mean, it was, you know, it was just an inversion of, oh, whose sculpture? Canova.

Yeah. I can't remember. Yeah. In Florence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it is, it is so interesting. And I think the problem, I think that that statue is really interesting. It was done by a man, which makes me go like, I don't know how I, you know, it just, yeah.

makes me wonder but it is just Medusa to me is my endless obsession purely because of the way that she has been like reinterpreted in recent years in all of these different ways that you know I think a lot hold value and a lot are absurd and you know it's such an interesting she is just so unique in that way I think she's been kind of

manipulated by the modern world in a way that's particularly interesting. Yeah. If I'm remembering right, I think the sculptor had said that he was inspired by the Me Too movement, actually, because it was several years ago. I believe that if I recall correctly, the sculpture is considerably older than the Me Too movement, but then it came, it got renewed. Okay.

appreciation during that time I believe I know a friend of mine wrote a piece on it um a while back but uh yeah no it's it's it was an interesting thing I know it definitely was like very big around the me too movement um in an interesting way that that must have been what it was yeah yeah it was very striking yeah yeah

No, it's, yeah, I mean, I could talk about Medusa forever, but I will try not to. But I'm so interested in monsters broadly. You know, I was looking into your work and I see that you have a new, like, Oxford handbook of monsters that you've edited. Yeah. Is there anything, you know, well, I mean, I'm also happy to keep hearing about some serial killers as well, but I'm always down to hear about monsters or just...

Yeah, I don't... This is not forming into a question, so I apologize. Do you have a favorite monster, maybe? Well, I mean...

I actually thought of something in relation to the book that maybe would make a good topic for discussion. But yeah, I have it right here. It came out on Halloween. Oh, amazing. But it was actually delayed by something like seven months because of problems on the production end. So it was supposed to be out a lot sooner. But I think what I noticed when I was... There are like 40 essays in here, right? So one of the things I noticed was the...

Like I think the Cyclops Polyphemus is probably the best example of this, but what I noticed was that, you know, a lot of the essays would approach the same monster from these different perspectives. And Polyphemus really stood out in that respect because he got, you know, interpreted from a disability studies perspective and a colonialism perspective and a few others that were just so interesting in terms of, I mean,

he's he was you know obviously reinterpreted you know before this decade in terms of well wait a minute Odysseus was the one intruding on his home as was so often the case with Odysseus yeah that's gonna say story of Odysseus' life right so Odysseus was a crap leader let's just say you know truly but uh uh

So we had already seen some sympathy for Polyphemus from a modern point of view long before this volume came out, but there was a lot of it in there at once, just showing why these ancient myths or these ancient monsters in particular are very adaptable to the modern world. So, for example, Hannah Silverblank and Chella Ward wrote a chapter on disability that talked about the Cyclops.

at length, and how, you know, we really need to sort of consider the physical environment and how it was disadvantageous for our disuse. Because, you know, what was what worked for this very large cyclops was not going to work for our disuse. And so the perspective there of, oh, wait a minute, you know, this isn't built for everyone. And what happens when it isn't, I mean, our disuse is a huge disadvantage, he cannot move that

rock. Right. Um, and he even puts it in, in terms that, you know, are useful to him, like, oh, even if we had like a cart drawn by, I don't remember exactly what it was, but you know, this many horses or whatever, they still wouldn't be able to pull that rock away. So, uh, so the focus on the physical environment and, uh, you know, within the context of disability studies, I thought was really interesting. And, uh,

put the whole story in a kind of a different perspective for me. And then, you know, from colonialism studies, and this is maybe a good thing to bring up too, because Nikki Giovanni recently died, and poet

And, um, the, uh, Justine McConnell did a chapter on, uh, you know, colonialism and used, uh, there was a lot of focus on polyphemus, the cyclops in that one too, and how he's been reinterpreted from this, this point of view of not just a disuse as intruder, but a disuse as colony, uh, colonializer, colonizer, sorry, colonizer is the word I'm looking for, colonizer. And, um,

He just sort of waltzes in, decides what's best, is horrified by the savagery of the local. There's a side question there of is it cannibalism or anthropophagy because is the Cyclops really a different creature altogether or is he just a giant man because Odysseus in his narrative does refer to him as Aeneir more than once. I mean, maybe Aeneir Pelorius like a horrible man or a monstrous man, but still Aeneir.

So, you know, so if Odysseus thinks of him as just a larger type of man, then that makes the crunching on Odysseus' companions as a snack even more horrifying, I suppose, than if it were a, you know, somebody more monstrous or less humanoid or whatever. But the colonializing aspect of this is taken up by reception in reception studies. And so...

the point of view of native peoples as more childlike and savage and less sophisticated, it turns into something highly problematic in the case of Odysseus where what kind of behavior is he expecting from someone that he's called less sophisticated already, not Greek enough, whatever. So there are all sorts of judgments from Odysseus' point of view, of course, but the Nicci Giovanni, I mean,

I was going to say is, yeah, like Polyphemus and the poetry of Nikki Giovanni. I can't say she just died. Was it earlier this week or last week? Oh, I'm not familiar with her, I have to say, but that's okay. She's a, you know, she's, she's a poet and, and,

What Justine McConnell says is, it's okay, I'll just read a little bit here of it. But, you know, she talks about how Giovanni's Polyphemus is unmistakably a small child in the poem, crying out in pain for his father. Giovanni Cyclops doesn't understand the humanity of others or the irreversibility of his actions. So the part of the poem is, I didn't mean for the men to go. They were fun, but they broke and they cried.

And then later on, I mean, well, I'm sorry, I should say part of what that seems to say, you know, as, as,

Justine McCall points out is that Polyphemus is seeing Odysseus as men as toys. They're small, they're cute, they're something to play with. And children bite their toys all the time. So Polyphemus dehumanizes them as inanimate objects in a way that parallels Odysseus' dehumanizing of Polyphemus. And if the Cyclops is sort of viewed as a sort of toddler, his inability to understand what he's doing kind of changes the power balance. So later in the poem, Giovanni...

after Odysseus' take of the Cyclops' eye, Giovanni's poem says, why did no man take my eye? I only wanted to play with him. Is he broken too? Make him give it back, daddy. Make him give it back. So it's a really, you know, just, you know, touching take on, um,

the story in this different point of view. And I know this won't be visible to, you know, people, but there's a painting that Justine McConnell talks about also, which is Romare Bearden's painting or collage rather of the Cyclops, which also shows,

makes him rather childlike, sort of peeking out from his cave, maybe waving. There's a bird standing nearby who obviously isn't afraid of the Cyclops, and the ship is approaching, and the Cyclops isn't afraid. I'll just... I don't know if you've seen it, but I'll just show you. But it's maybe a little hard to see. But so...

So those two chapters alone, the one on disability studies by Hannah Silverblank and Jill Ward, and then Justine McConnell's, you know, on post-colonial takes on some of these monsters, has just been fascinating for me. I mean, this is one of the things I like about editing, you know, collections like this is I get to see a lot of different points of view on, you know, the same sorts of things. Yeah. Yeah.

And then, sorry, go ahead. Oh, just, it's interesting the way you phrased or the way you retold the disability studies aspect, because even as you were talking about it that way, my mind was going to colonialism even in that kind of form, that way that it's, you know, the space was not made for Odysseus because it was not for Odysseus. And the way that colonizing forces were

never know what to do with the land that they've colonized because it was not, they are not the stewards of that land. They are not experienced in its, in its care and stewardship and such. And so it's an interesting, you know, it, like it, it ties to disability studies in that accessible kind of way. And then similarly into the colonial as well, where it's just like, this is not for you. And that is why you don't,

fit in with it because it is another person's world that you're just coming in and saying that this is yours now and it's interesting the way that those can sort of overlap disability studies and colonialism overlap in many many many ways but

I can't remember if those two chapters were right next to each other in the book or not but they certainly were let me just check quickly no I guess there's they're separated slightly in terms of reception section versus theory section but

But, but yeah, no. And I think, I mean, Richard Buxton, you know, has pointed out, well, Odysseus isn't trying to colonize the island of the Cyclops necessarily, but the imagery is still there, right? I mean, you know, Odysseus' end goal is to get back to Ithaca. Well, yeah. But he's stopping every place on the way and interfering. It's

And that is still colonialism in its way. If you stop in a place, destroy it for its native inhabitants, and then leave, you have still done all of the damage of colonialism without even hanging on to it. So yeah, it's interesting. Well, especially when you consider the description that Odysseus himself gives of how

The Cyclops' land is almost like Golden Age imagery. If you look back at Ovid and Hesiod have these ages of man. It's this little Edenic state before they are

invaded basically by outsiders and so you know he's just criticizing their way of life when they were doing just fine before he got there right so this way you know so again this way I think one of the main points of a collection like this Oxford Handbook is to

uh show how adaptable these ancient monsters are to a lot of you know other modern modern contexts while still you know maybe retaining some of that um uh you know some of these views were also present in antiquity they just weren't prevalent you know of a disuse being sort of a wait why did he go to the land of the cyclops you know um

I mean, yeah. And, you know, especially when his men are like, why do we need to keep, you know, doing this sort of thing? Although I guess they got more, you know, more vocal about it a little later. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so many instances of him doing it. Oh, yeah. The Lystrigonians, the Kikones, you know, starting off with the Kikones, I think, and then just getting worse and worse as they go on until all his crew are gone. And, you know, and anyway, but.

Now I can't stop thinking about the colonialism in the Odyssey. So thank you. I'm like, you're giving me ideas for future. Yeah. And I'm sure there's more been written about it in general. And I mean, I think who was I reading that was talking about how I mean, might have been Justine McConnell's essay where she does mention previous, you know, takes on Odysseus as a colonizer, but

And, you know, there's also a chapter in there about Latin American monsters and how they, you know, some of them came over from Greece via Spain and all of that. So they're like the equivalent of sirens and...

And so forth. So that was a lot of fun also. And, and yeah, I mean, there's certainly chapters discussing, you know, why so many of these monsters are female, for example, and even, even a lot of the male ones were produced by females, like produced by Gaia or, you know, Hera or whatever. The women make the monsters. Yeah.

yeah and then with something like polyphemus well isn't it really audacious you made them into a monster i mean you know so yeah there's a lot of different ways of of looking at them which makes which is what makes it a lot of a lot of fun to continually you know to keep re uh reinventing them and to just keep reinterpreting them in new in new ways well and i mean it

it's why I think mythology is so lasting in, in so many different ways is that it is still that it is such a human thing for, for all that the stories have these fantastical elements, these, these absurd monsters and moments and, and all of this, you know, that, that seems so unrealistic, like ultimately it is so based in humanity that we can keep looking for relevance and re like reinterpreting it and, and finding new ways to understand this stuff because it is,

utterly timeless. This just reminded me that I recently had someone ask me about the use of AI in the field like that. And I just, I can't get over the idea of AI trying to understand mythology and how it would never and will never and should never try because these things are, they are so human that any attempt to

by ai to to interpret anything like we'll just it will never actually pan out to anything it'll never mean anything because you absolutely have to have that that human understanding in order in order to to appreciate anything from i mean mythology specifically but the ancient world broadly i'm not a fan of ai if that hasn't become clear but i mean i absolutely i uh

Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that because just the other day I had checked something on, I guess it was Google, because I teach a medical terms class and the student had come up with something strange for one of the roots. So I look up the thing on, you know, in Google and the AI says, like the combining form nom, N-O-M, is Latin for name. And that's where we get nomenclature. And I'm like, what?

No, it's Greek for law and nomen is what you're thinking of. And now I know why the student had a wrong answer because he just assumed that the AI was right despite all of our warnings on the syllabus and in class that if you use the internet and you get it wrong, you're

it's still you know the internet gets wrong sometimes yeah so yeah not not a huge fan um i you know i know there are more sophisticated ais out there like you know i mean if the student had a you know had a subscription to one of the more sophisticated ais it but you know but i don't i certainly don't encourage that i would rather have them think for themselves yeah well and

And this I need to say in every episode that I mention AI, but also aside from all of that being absolutely relevant, AI is one of the biggest producers of carbon today and is making climate change just so much worse than it already is from everything else. And thus, AI bad. But that is not the point of this conversation. Well, no, it's actually fair.

Well, no, I'm going to say it's interesting that you mentioned it because my husband actually researches AI and he's published about it. He published a book about the singularity, the technological singularity that's expected and this and that. So, yeah, so, you know, it's very much a topic of conversation in my household and has been for 20 years. I mean, he was talking about the singularity before it was more popular.

mainstream. Not that it's super mainstream now, but it's definitely more in public awareness than it was 20 years ago. And my son also was, he got a degree in computer science and he was very interested in AI. I don't know that he's going into that necessarily, but he was interested

You know, he certainly has done some work in that area also. And so we sort of are brainstorming about how is there a good way to use it in our classes? Or can we just tell our students to try to think for themselves? I mean, shouldn't they have to make their own outlines instead of using an AI to help them make an outline? Yeah.

Shouldn't they write their own cover letters? I get why they might want a little help, but I'm telling you, the people reading those cover letters are going to recognize the same patterns if they keep seeing them. I don't know. It's so interesting. When I was in university, which was still...

I mean, we didn't have the level of internet, but like we were just being told not to use Wikipedia ever. So the idea that the change now is from like don't trust Wikipedia to don't trust a robot. Like what a difference, you know, that it's taken in just like 15 years. Well, I mean, you know, at least Wikipedia was put together by people. Well, exactly. They didn't always check their fat.

Yeah, but they were human. Well, yeah. And, you know, the thing with the students is like, you know, you should check more than one source to make sure you're getting consistent information. You have to be careful about whether this source got it from the first one you looked at, like the Google definition of, you know, combining from nom or whatever. But, but yeah, it's, it's made teaching a bit tougher, a lot tougher actually in various ways. So, so I'm, you know, yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, and then of course, like you say, there's the whole environmental issue and the whole, I mean, you know, artists, I mean, the kind of art that's being produced by AI. I mean, some of it looks amazing. A lot of it looks like crap. Yeah, no, exactly. As a, as a creative, I think that's the, yeah, that's where I get the biggest threat out of it between art and writing. It's like, keep me away. Yeah.

Yeah, so that's a different kind of monster. We're going to make that one a male monster if we have to give it a gender. I'm just going to say that now. Sure, sure. It does not have feminine qualities. I mean, I think I even mentioned AI in one of the chapters in this Oxford Handbook of Monsters and Classical Myths. The last chapter is about...

well it's about ancient monsters and modern science and how I guess what I was talking about and the thing is I wrote this like two years ago it was just a load in production for such a long time but I actually have a section on computer science in there you know with computer scientists have proven adept at adopting classical mythology too so you know you've got the Trojan horse Malware you've got Malware you've got different softwares named after things like Python or Basilisk and

And then, you know, yeah, AI is in here with the...

uh roco's basilisk uh thought experiment i mean don't even worry about it but there's centaur ai there's yeah there's it's in there you know so it wasn't bad to bring up ai yeah again really it is like this monstrous creation that you know people is even being acknowledged with monstrous names a lot of the time too yeah although you know what i was wrong about python though because as i said in the chapter i think that particular computer language was named by someone who's a fan of monty python um

Oh my god, really? That's so funny. I think that's what it was. Again, it was like a while ago that I wrote this. But I think that that was the deal with that particular thing. That's funny. I like that. That makes it more entertaining. I know. I should just double check. Um...

Regarding the Python programming language itself, its creator, Guido van Rossum, took the name not from the giant serpent of Greek myth, but from Monty Python's Flying Circus, the 1970s British comedy sketch show of which he was a huge fan. Monty Python themselves also did not have Greek myth in mind. So even though Python's symbol is two snakes, it doesn't have anything to do with the name's origin. I don't like that.

It's a good reminder because I mean, I obviously, as someone in this realm, you know, I notice any kind of classical reception name that I've seen anywhere. And so it's, yeah, it's a good reminder. Like sometimes these things are coming from somewhere else entirely in a funny or more entertaining kind of way. Yeah.

Yeah, I was surprised to learn that myself, actually. Because when I saw the symbol for Python, which was the snakes, and then found out that, well, that wasn't the original intent behind the name at all, I was really surprised. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you just assume, because it seems like it must be that, like, you know, kind of, they always want to pull from Greek mythology in those ways, because it seems very, you know, very intellectual kind of thing. So it's fun to have it be like, no, it's Monty Python. Yeah.

It's like a certain status to it if it's been a Greek myth. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. It's a...

Yeah, that whole chapter just sort of, I mean, besides the computer science section, there's like bits from biology and just sort of other areas of science. Interesting. But I think it gets, you know, some of it gets out of date pretty quickly. I think half of the computer science stuff I mentioned, you know, when I wrote it two years ago, isn't super relevant anymore. That's the problem with like, yeah, all of that. That's right, yeah.

yeah just yeah to kind of close things out on something fun um to the listeners uh debbie mentioned this off mic but also it has been living in my head since you first talked about the revenant in pausanias so i'm thrilled uh you mentioned that you enjoy plinny's haunted house story which is a favorite as mine as well i've i've shared it on the show a couple of times so i

it came up in the context of like, do I have a favorite monster or maybe a favorite monster story from antiquity? And it's, it's kind of hard for me to choose. And I, I like Cerberus as, as a monster for various reasons. Um, but my probably all time favorite story from antiquity is, is Pliny's, uh, haunted house story from his, uh, letter to a friend named Sura. And in that letter, he tells a three ghost story. He actually starts off that letter by saying, uh,

do you believe in ghosts? I'm, I'm wondering if there is such a thing and I've heard some stories and tell me what you think of them. And so he tells, you know, a short story and then he tells this long story.

for antiquity long haunted house story which I said by long I mean like you know two or three paragraphs not long enough but it's better than nothing well what part of what I love about it is that it is so short but it's still so atmospheric and descriptive and um so I don't know how you know how much you're

audience would have heard about the story but basically there's this you know house in athens that it's big but it has a bad reputation and an unhealthy pestilential air and uh this is because there's a specter that shows up at night rattling chains and terrifying everybody who lives there and they they eventually die from lack of sleep

And fear. Anyway, I shouldn't laugh. It's a very serious, it's a surprisingly serious story, actually. And so the house sort of falls into disrepair like your typical haunted house.

And the owner sort of puts a to let sign on it in case anybody wants to rent or buy it, like anybody who hasn't heard the story. So apparently there are no disclosure laws in ancient. And so along comes this philosopher, Athenodorus, who is very skeptical. He sees the low price. He's like, wait a sec, what's wrong with the house? You're like, it doesn't have mold or whatever. That's not actually in the story, but that's what I would think. And, you know, and,

anyway, so he's told the whole story and that makes them all the more interested in staying in the place and checking it out as opposed to saying, Oh, forget it. I'm out of here. So he goes to the house. Um, he sends his, uh,

his servants to the back room and he stays, you know, he stays up writing, trying to make sure he's being rational and distracting himself with a task so that he's not starting to imagine things. And just like everybody else who was in the house, he starts hearing the clanking of chains moving closer and closer in the middle of the night.

And then he sees this phantom of this old man, you know, with chains on his wrists and ankles. And basically Athenodorus kind of looks at the guy, Spectre, like he holds up his hand, like talk to the hand, kind of thing. Like, hang on a sec, you know. Yeah. Right.

Right! He's like, yeah, sure, sure, you're a ghost, whatever. So he turns back to his writing, and then the ghost moves closer and rattles its chains right over Thenedors' head, at which point he's like, okay, I guess I'm not imagining this. This is a very modern paraphrase, by the way. This is not Pliny's tone of voice. He follows the apparition, and it goes at least into the courtyard of the house, like the open space, the aula, and it goes to a certain spot. It disappears!

So Asenador marks the spot with some grass, you know, leaves, plucked grass so that he'll know where the ghost disappeared. He goes to the town magistrates in the morning and says, you might want to dig up that spot because I think there's something happening there. And they do. They listen to him because he's a respected figure. They dig up the spot. They find a skeleton entwined with chains. And then when they give the body a proper burial, the house isn't haunted anymore. So, um, uh,

The things I like about it are, well, the writing itself, which is much better than my paraphrase and much less facetious than my paraphrase. It's very atmospheric. It's very descriptive. It uses a whole bunch of different words for the emotional effect that the story has on the inhabitants of Paus and Thenodorus. And it turns from having this terrifying specter to a sympathetic figure that was just trying to communicate something.

with the living so that, you know, somebody would finally pay attention and find the body and have it buried. So there's the whole like method and way the story is written, even for just two or three paragraphs. It's kind of an amazing piece of literature in the original Latin. And then there's the fact about how like basic it sounds in terms of everything

every haunted house story ever written if you take out just a couple of words like Athenodorus is the name of the character and the fact that he's writing with like a stylus you know and tablets instead of you know pen and ink or you know paper whatever if you just take out a couple of words you couldn't tell where it was taking place if it wasn't in Latin I guess yeah

I forgot to mention the big thing there. But, you know, you translate the story, you take out a couple of words and it could have been anywhere in the world, you know, and any time in the last, you know, several thousand years.

So it's kind of it has this timeless quality, I guess, too, in addition to being eerie and also still kind of mysterious because it doesn't tell us how this body came to be buried there, why it was in chains. The implication based on analogs from antiquity is that this is one of those stories where

a host had a guest and killed him for his money and then just got rid of the body. Like the Polydoros story, for example, or the story made up in Plautus' Mastularia on the Sperm of the Moment by Taranio. It's a comic setting, but the story is basically the same. I'm a guest from overseas. The owner of this house killed me for my money and just buried me here. So it's my house. Go away. You know,

So that's the one from the Mausoleum area. So in the background of Pliny's story, maybe a trope like that, you know, a host killed a guest, but we don't know and he doesn't say and it's not the main point of the story. But that sort of eeriness and like bit of mystery and the sympathy for the apparition at the end and Athenodorus' behavior just really all make it a really nice little story and just so amazingly well told for its very short length.

Yeah. I think that's why it's one of my favorites. Plus, I grew up really just interested in ghost stories. You're not alone. You're not alone. I...

I absolutely, yeah, it was absolutely the same. I mean, even just listening, well, ghost stories and everything kind of macabre, like listening to you talk about the serial killers too, I was just constantly reminded like, oh yeah, there is still so much of this that lives in my brain, despite I haven't looked into modern serial killers in a long time. But like everyone you talk to will go right now, you know a lot more than you think.

But like it's it when it comes to Pliny that story you're you're right it's so timeless it's like a quintessential ghost story in so many ways and I that's a good word for it. Yeah yeah it fits everything and that that's what really stood out to me too when I first read it a couple years ago.

Just that it does sound like it could be any other, even the, yeah, that end of like, oh, well the ghost is gone once he's been properly buried. Like that's, yeah, it's so, it is just so absolutely timeless. It's such a good story. Yeah, it's such a, you know, that particular type of apparition with the clanking chains, which became so popular late, you know, in later Victorian ghost story stories.

literature um you're like the canterville ghost or a christmas carol yeah yeah i was just gonna say yeah it's like straight out of scrooge yeah yeah um that that it was so uh well drawn you know 2000 years ago it's just it's just amazing and yeah well you can tell that that plenty had that scientific interest too right in that story of of that that sort of interest and sympathy um

Yeah. Yeah. Well, to close off on Cerberus real quick, like, because you said his name, and I also love him, particularly because, and I think that this is just not mentioned enough in references to Cerberus, but that

According to a great many sources, his mane was made of snakes. And I think that that's just been lost in a way that it shouldn't be. Do you have anything else you particularly love about Cerberus? Well, I was going to say about the snakes, you can actually see those in some of the Greek vase paintings. They have little snakes on him, you know, to represent his chthonic nature, that he's like an underworld creature. But, you know, some of the fun things about him is how many heads he's got.

over the centuries because I think Hesiod describes him as having 50 heads but that's kind of impossible to paint so you know he started being depicted with three or even two heads one of my favorite Greek vase paintings of Cerberus is Heracles' Last Labor where he's got the chain on him and he's basically petting one of the two heads and it's like

I want to put a caption on that. Like, nice doggy. Nice two-headed doggy. You know? And then there are just these sort of adorable modern adaptations. Like, what was that show recently with Jeff Goldblum, Chaos? Oh, yeah, yeah. Also not renewed. I can't believe they didn't renew that. But the Cerberuses or Cerberi or whatever, they had multiple ones as, like, you know, like...

like the equivalent of drug sniffing dogs at the entrance of Hades. Like, wait, let me sniff them and make sure they're really dead. You know, that kind of thing, making sure that no living people get into Hades. So it's not just the figure of Cerberus himself, which, you know, cause he is a little terrifying in antiquity, but he gets muted over the, the, the centuries. And like by the time Psyche gets down there and throws him some meat to put him to sleep or, or Fuse puts him to sleep, you know, with music, um,

Cerberus is just like you can sort of picture him as Hades' pet dog and then the incarnations the modern ones like Fluffy in Harry Potter or again my favorite recent one has got to be the one in Chaos with the multiple versions the CGI was so good instead of some giant body with three heads it was like a normal proportioned body with three heads it seemed physically possible which was incredible

Anyway, it's just a very fun sort of concept of a creature with three heads, probably because of wanting to be able to look in all directions, like a typical sort of guardian who was very bad at his job because how many living people got down there? I mean, yeah, there's a good collection. And not all of them even had to encounter him. Right. Yeah. Like, where's the dog? Exactly. Exactly.

So I just, you know, and I just happen to like, you know, dogs and cats. So do I, which is why I wanted to bring him up. Yeah. Excuse me. Yeah. So he just sort of really appeals to me as a sort of monster with them for whom there's, you know, I have a lot of sympathy as well. He's a good dog. He is absolutely a good dog. He's a good boy. Yeah. Good. I mean, good boys. Yeah.

I think we should address the three heads. What was the other iteration? Oh, the lightning thief. Oh, yeah. Where he's like throwing a ball and his service is chasing him. If I'm remembering right, it's been a while. I don't know. So I will agree with you completely. My listeners all know Percy Jackson and I don't. So they're probably screaming right now. Well, I haven't read it since my kid was five or whatever. Yeah.

See, and I was like 17 when it came out, so I didn't read it. And then now I just haven't. So here we are. It's a notice or running thing in the show, but I'm glad it exists and I don't know much about it. Yeah. I mean, the thing is it keeps getting updated, right? Like with chaos, which was, I'm still so upset that that, I mean, I'm not furious, but it's like very disappointing. It was such a great show. Well, and we, there are so few, like it,

iterations of like reception of greek myth that does actually really look at the myth in in detail and i mean like a level of accuracy yeah that it's yeah and just the way that show wove together so many of the characters in appropriate ways too admittedly i haven't seen it all i really need to because i keep hearing such great things so you've made me more keen i gotta go back yeah well don't get too attached to the cat that's

oh i see i do i knew enough i learned enough i actually looked it up ahead of time because you know i didn't want to get too attached so yeah like cats are yeah oh it's trouble um it's just there's i have a my kitten just because now we're talking about cats but my kitten got uh neutered the other day so i have a cat running around with a cone outside of this door he's been just the cone of

oh my gosh but he does not know how to calm down with it so he is like full of all of the energy in the world but knocking everything over yeah yeah in any case oh pets are great uh whether or not they have three heads and guard the entrance to the underworld or yeah or impenetrable skin because like the Nemean lion is one of the few I think that we can point to in

Yeah. One of the few felines. Yeah. Other than the attendance of Dionysus and the pampers or whatever. They love a big cat. Yeah. Well, that came up recently. I did a Q&A episode that came out just today, actually, where people asked me about cats in ancient Greece. And I had to say, like, well, they didn't...

Yeah.

Yeah, no, I actually wrote, I wrote a paper recently about that. And I sort of, so I had looked at some of the more recent studies about when did the cat make its way over there, you know, from Egypt or, you know, ran around and whatnot. And I think it was early, it was generally earlier than we, you know, I might have originally thought. But they were mainly like, you know, barn cats to kill rodents and things. And sometimes they would.

you know kill the chickens too which wasn't awesome but but yeah no they are they're definitely around and there's some early takes on them and there are some you know paintings of of uh girls playing with the small cats and things so oh that makes me happy my cat is from naxos i brought him back a couple months ago so i need to tell him these stories of greek cats that's awesome

Well, that's a joyful way to stop. And also I won't, I won't keep you any longer. This has been so much fun. Clearly. I love when a conversation can go so many different places and,

And yeah, it's, it's been lovely talking to you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I love, you know, I just, I love subjects like this and it's just, you know, this sort of stuff would have been considered fairly lowbrow, you know, 20, 30 years ago when I was starting to write about, you know, ghosts, they were like, oh, you can't be serious. It's not a serious subject. You know, it has to be the monsters of Heracles as opposed to the ghosts and serial killers. You know, it was a lot of skepticism, but I think it's more acceptable now or more,

you know, people are more interested in bringing this sort of material forward because, you know, it's a lot of... It's more accessible in a lot of ways than say like, oh, here's the skullion on this line and Virgil's fourth eclogue or whatever, you know, but oh, look, serial killers, you know. Yeah. Well, and now that it is so much...

easier to be able to share with a broader audience too. Like, yeah, this topic is so perfect for, for broader audiences who aren't necessarily as deep into the like academia side of it, but really want to learn about the ancient world. Like who doesn't want to hear about ghosts and serial killers from that long ago? Yeah.

Well, thank you for the opportunity to disseminate that information to a broader audience. It's absolutely my pleasure. Is there anything you want to share with my listeners about like where they might read more from you or anything you might want to promote?

Well, I mean, I do have books on these topics. I've got a book called Haunted Greece and Rome, which is about the ghosts, well, specifically about the haunted house stories, but ghosts in general. And I have a book on serial killers in the ancient world. It's called Monsters and Monarchs, Serial Killers and Classical Myths in History. And then this Oxford Handbook of Monsters and Classical Myths, which I edited, has 40 chapters on monsters.

I'm sure there's some monsters that we missed. This is what, you know, in terms of getting people to agree to write during the pandemic, this is basically what we do. But yeah, I mean, you know, they can always look me up at the University of Massachusetts on the faculty page for the classics department. And then there are links to all these other things. And I've also got a blog called the Ancient Monsters Blog.

which we just got that started this summer. And it's been a little erratic so far in terms of the amount of time I've had to devote to it, but we've actually got a good number of posts there starting last summer by a lot of the contributors to contributors to this handbook, but also other people like John Kachuba, who's a,

not a classicist, but has written about shapeshifters and ghosts and other monsters, contributed an essay on werewolves, for example. And yes, we've, you know, so it's, it is focused on ancient monsters, but also their modern reception. And it's not just a question of looking at it to read it, but we are accepting contributions. So if you or any of your listeners might be interested in writing something, you know, we'd be happy to have it. We do take work from students. I mean, it will be vetted and we'll, you know, try to help people

you know, flesh it out if it needs to be in that sort of thing. But we wanted to sort of be like a community dedicated to specifically monsters and antiquity. Cause I mean, obviously there are a lot of, you know, blogs, podcasts, this and that on monsters in general. You know, I hope we have a slightly different take or slightly different, more specific focus maybe than some. And anyway, so that's there and I can send you the links.

Oh yeah, I can find them all too. I'll link to everything in the episode's description. And that sounds wonderful. I'm definitely going to go. Also, I'm going to go put those, or Michaela, when you're listening to this to edit, go ahead and put those two books that Debbie mentioned on our list because I would like a book of haunted Greece and Rome and serial killers. I'm excited. Yeah, I don't know if you've seen it, but this is... No, that's... See, now I know this exists and I'm getting it, so...

I know that people can't see it, but I love how they sort of did the mugshot. Yes. And I think that... It's not Nero, but it's...

it looks like it could be but it's not i i the only reason i know that's not nero it's something i meant to bring up as a joke when you were talking about him but that the only way i can tell nero in statuary is that it's neck beard nero right and this is not no he does not have enough of the neck beard yeah yeah i mean there are portraits of him and this is clearly not him but i think that was the sort of intent was to evoke that kind of yeah seeing but i just i love the the

that's great just an ancient mugshot I love it yeah might as well put his height I love it well this has been so much fun thank you so much for doing this well thanks again for having me and I'm glad I happen to have the palafettis right here me too along with the other stuff

And, you know, thanks. Thanks again. And, you know, for all of your knowledge as well and the great questions and prompts to, you know, what to bring forward. So great. You know, obviously very good at getting people to talk about the subject matters. Thank you. I try.

Uh, nerds, thank you all for listening. As always, you can read more from Debbie at all the places that she mentioned and you can find them in the episodes description. You can also look forward to an episode I recorded shortly after this one again with Ryan Denson returning guest who has some overlap as he's included in that Oxford handbook on monsters, which Debbie edited. So there's a lot of fun there.

Okay.

Ah, it's a real thrill. Let's Talk About Myths, baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangawish is the Hermes to my Olympians, my producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. Listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a review on Apple for the chance to have it appear in a cat review, which I recognize I'm behind on. I will return to it. Or comment on Spotify because it's fun and I get to reply.

Such a thrill. Sign up for our new newsletter, which will happen sometime soon. Mythsbaby.com slash newsletter. I am Liv and I love this shit very much, very much.

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