Myths and folklore retold; only the Greek episodes are indexed
58 episodes indexed · 39 hours
Presented by Carissa Weiser, Jason Weiser
Periods · The Bronze Age, Archaic Greece, The Persian Wars, Classical Greece, Philip and Alexander, The Hellenistic world, Greece under Rome
Themes · Religion War
Jason Weiser and Carissa Weiser retell stories from myths, legends and folklore for modern ears; only the Greek episodes are here, 58 of 540, 2 eras, 39 hours.
Where to start. The earliest indexed episode is '10A-Hercules: Going into Labor' (2015); 58 episodes of this show are in the section.
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Minoans and Mycenaeans c. 3000 - 1100 BC · 17
The Greeks finally find their way into Troy, taking plenty of ridiculous side quests along the way, including a cameo from one of Greek myth's most famous heroes.
Achilles is back, and it becomes god against god, Greek against Trojan, Achilles against Hector, in the most epic battle yet of the Trojan War.
This episode finishes this leg of the Odyssey's journey, packed with a witch, pig-men, more giants, Scylla, Charybdis, Hades, Tiresias, and Hercules.
This is the culmination of many earlier stories, bringing together Achilles, Helen, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Hector and Odysseus in the opening telling of the Trojan War.
Menelaus sparks the biggest battle of the war so far, and it only grows bigger from there, as the Trojan War, still without Achilles, takes its darkest turn yet.
Odysseus confronts the suitors who have taken over his house, bringing this long journey through the story of the Odyssey to its very end.
This episode of the Odyssey follows Menelaus coming home, Telemachus leaving his, and Odysseus still stuck in the same place after seven long years.
With monsters, witches, sirens and cyclopes, this episode opens Odysseus's long journey home from a war he never wanted to join in the first place.
This follows Achilles toward the Trojan War, from when his father interrupted the ritual to make him immortal, through his time at a Greek daycare run by Chiron, as his mother tries to keep him from the war.
This tells of Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Clytemnestra and Penelope in the years before the event that would make them all famous: the Trojan War.
Odysseus has finally landed on Ithaca, only to find 120 angry armed men in his house who want both his wife and his life as he tries to survive coming home.
Agamemnon is coming home from the Trojan War, with absolutely no idea what is waiting for him back home.
Three men grapple with the legacy or curse of their fathers: Menelaus loses everything before rebuilding a life, Telemachus lives in his absent father's shadow, and Orestes knows what he must do to avenge his father.
This is the episode where Helen of Sparta becomes Helen of Troy, the event that launches 1000 ships toward the city in the east and starts it all.
Agamemnon faces a problem on the way to the Trojan War: his warriors have nothing to do but wait for the winds, and the winds will not pick up until he does what needs to be done.
Greek Life, Thought and the Wider World across the centuries · 41
Athens, one of the most famous cities of the ancient world, had a royal family plagued with strangeness, from dragon kings to bird people, where even the wind or the dawn might be out to get you.
Poseidon takes his turn on the podcast, said to not mind at all that his little brother Zeus rules the gods, though he does everything Zeus says anyway.
Hades takes the long way home after dropping Persephone off among the humans, walking back down to his palace and touring the creatures of the Greek underworld.
Apollo, god of healing, tends to cause the opposite, born to a mother fleeing a giant snake, with a life that only grows more chaotic and destructive.
Hephaestus, the smith god of Olympus, gets his day, exploring why he is married to Aphrodite and why he cannot catch a break on his journey of self discovery.
Demeter finds her place in a world run by her difficult siblings, certain she can weather anything as long as her daughter Persephone stays safely by her side.
The quest for the golden fleece begins as the Argo sails for Colchis, pausing along the way to feast and meet princess Medea and Cupid, while Theseus remembers something very important.
Hercules is as terrible as he is awesome, facing sea monsters, centaurs and Hydra poison, making ridiculous choices, and even dying, since apparently he can do that too.
Athena, the Olympian in charge of warfare, wisdom and crafts, is not everyone's favorite, especially those she led to grisly fates or turned into monsters.
This episode covers Artemis, the Olympian associated with chastity and violence, whose story involves a distinct lack of private baths and no shortage of problems.
Aphrodite looks for love in the wrong places, from her own origin story through her doomed marriage to Hephaestus to the love of her life, a tree baby.
Dionysus, the god of wine and the last Olympian to earn a place on Mount Olympus, is born from Zeus's thigh, and his story only gets stranger from there, with dangerously intense fans among the humans.
Two stories from Greek mythology appear here: Sisyphus, who deserved his punishment for how horrible he was, and his grandson Bellerophon, constantly having the football pulled out from under him.
This week the reign of the Greek gods comes to an ignoble end, with Olympus falling to an enemy that had been lurking in the shadows the whole time.
Theseus has lived a long and storied life, but now faces his greatest challenge yet: once his name is set to live on for generations, what comes next?
The story of Oedipus is fun until it suddenly isn't, offering a commentary on fate, willing blindness to uncomfortable truths, and why one should never talk to prophets.
It is finally time to fight the dragon, survive the journey home, and face a showdown with Pelias, in an episode with three twist murders, a wedding, and a king with a great name.
The story of Jason and the Argonauts opens with Zeus kidnapping a woman, before familiar names like Hercules, Theseus, Laertes, Autolycus, Peleus and Augeus join Jason's quest for the golden fleece.
This tells the story of Prometheus, the Titan cursed by Zeus to have his liver pecked out daily for defying him and bringing fire to earth, and covers the Titanomachy, the clash of Titans at the start of Greek mythology.
Two love stories from Greek mythology appear here: Narcissus and Echo, doomed almost from the start, and Orpheus and Eurydice, where Orpheus tries to retire from heroics only to be pulled back in.
This is the story of Atalanta, a woman who could not be stopped though the world had a serious problem with that, featuring giant monster fights, meddling gods and several well-known heroes.
This ends the story of Jason, Medea and the Argonauts, after Medea secured Iolcus for his father through the death of Pelias, and cheating on her now brings hard times catching up with Jason.
Someone from the family's own past, unhappy that Zeus and Hera sit on Olympus, arrives with an army capable of finally ending the rule of the Olympians.
This finishes the twelve labors as Hercules fights a giant boar, a giant bull, vicious birds, man-eating horses and the three-headed hound Cerberus, all as penance for his crime.
This is the story of how Hermes became an Olympian, a tale that somehow involves killing a turtle and eating barbecue along the way.
The Oedipus family already learned they were more closely related than anyone ever thought possible, and life is about to get even worse from here.
Last week Hera hid that she was pregnant; this week reveals who the father is not, and shows the births of two more important figures from Greek mythology.
This is the final chapter in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, revealing what the Delphic Oracle's prophecy meant and how a spool of thread can help kill a giant monster.
The story of Hercules mixes gritty tragedy with over-the-top monster fights, tracing his origin as a demigod before it goes off the rails, with Zeus playing the Don Draper of the Greek pantheon, minus the introspection.
The origin stories of the Olympians of Greek mythology, under the episode title Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal.
A monster called Typhon, father of monsters, with a donkey head scraping the stars and a hundred snake heads for hands, was born to destroy the Olympians, before the story turns to Theseus, the Amazons, and Hercules.
Two stories of terrible fathers appear from Greek mythology: one briefly helps bring about two giants who could end his reign, and the other admits a mistake and tries, disastrously, to make it right.
This wraps up the story of Perseus, including his fated confrontation with Medusa and how he falls in love with someone he finds imprisoned beneath him.
Midas, the king of unforced errors, is a well-known mythological figure mainly for his horrible decision-making, though he turned one bad choice into everlasting notoriety through the touch that carries his name.
The story of Daedalus and Icarus is more than Icarus flying too close to the sun; Daedalus the inventor, responsible for the labyrinth and the Minotaur, is driven to build magnificent creations that bring death and tragedy.
The Amazons arrive at the gates wanting back the queen's sister, kidnapped by Theseus, leaving Antiope caught between staying and returning while an outmatched Theseus tries to decide what to do.
Medusa is described as one of mythology's most misunderstood villains, known mainly as a monster and the target of a hero's quest, though this covers her background and the fate that led to their clash.
This dark story grows darker still as Antigone battles an authoritarian state embodied by her own uncle, Creon.
The familiar story of Theseus fighting the half-bull, half-man Minotaur actually starts years earlier, with tensions between two kingdoms, a deadly poetry contest, and a run of dumb bandits.