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#053_ The True Wisdom Most People Missed · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ryan, you are an expert on stoicism and Greek philosophy.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: This is your moment. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: The Odyssey.
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: The Odyssey.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Possibly the most anticipated movie of the year.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Already breaking ticket sales records. The story's endured for 3,000 years.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: It's resonated with every generation. Each generation. reads the Odyssey
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: differently than the generation before. The more you know about it,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: the more it operates on all these other levels. The
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: whole point is that the Odyssey is complicated and it's
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: hard to know who the good guy is. Odysseus in
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: his Odyssey is a reflection of the human undergoing any
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: kind of ordeal. He's both like the best and the worst.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: We contain that in ourselves too. That is the point
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: of the Odyssey. Are we cool with spoilers in this?
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: The cat should be out of the bag by now, 3,000
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: years later.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I'm super excited to talk to you, Ryan. You are
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: well-known worldwide for being an expert on Stoicism and Greek
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: philosophy generally. we're having a monoculture moment that you must
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: be relishing where everybody is celebrating this old poem by
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: dint of Christopher Nolan's. I'll say it right now. Masterpiece.
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  Speaker 1: I love the movie. Saw it a second time last night.
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  Speaker 1: And you have been posting lots of videos and this
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  Speaker 1: YouTube video with your thoughts on what we should understand
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: from the Odyssey, what's important to understand. And so I
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: thought it was an opportune moment to just get you
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: on here and, uh, have you share your reflections on
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Homer's Odyssey, Nolan's Odyssey, and how you're, uh, kind of
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: synthesizing this and interpreting it, uh, for us. So first
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: of all, I guess, like, how did you know, how
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: did you like the movie?
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I should, I should stipulate here that I know
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: it not as a classicist. I don't speak Greek or Latin.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I know it as a, a regular person who, uh,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: has been fascinated with it, who studied it with its
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: connection to sort of Stoic and other sort of forms
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: of philosophy. And then my nine-year-old son got very excited
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: about it. And so I've sort of hit it from
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: a bunch of different angles, but all of these angles
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  Speaker 2: much closer to a lay person than say like a translator's, right?
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  Speaker 2: So I do feel like I was able to enjoy
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: the movie on a couple of different levels and I
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: really did enjoy the movie more I thought it was spectacular.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: I have some quibbles here or there. But I think
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: what we have to understand is the Odyssey, like all
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  Speaker 2: of the other Greek myths, was both a form of art.
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  Speaker 2: It's beautiful language. It's evocative. It's entertaining. It's all this.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: But then it was there in a way that we
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  Speaker 2: don't always understand art and entertainment to be today, which
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: was a means of communicating ancient wisdom and timeless moral truths. So,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: you know, like if you watch a Greek play, you know,
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  Speaker 2: like Shakespeare, all the actors are men, but they're not really,
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  Speaker 2: like they wear these masks. The acting is not the
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  Speaker 2: key in a Greek play or in a Greek tragedy.
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  Speaker 2: It's the language, it's the lessons, it's the lines. And
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  Speaker 2: so I think the problem is we don't always understand
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  Speaker 2: art as being that. Like, you know, most fiction today
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  Speaker 2: is almost like I want to say it's almost amoral
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  Speaker 2: in that it's like designed not to teach moral truths,
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  Speaker 2: but to question moral truths. And so if we understand
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: the Odyssey as being this sort of story that was
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: told and retold and retold for thousands of years, each
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  Speaker 2: generation sort of thinking about the same truths, but bringing
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: their own interpretation and understanding of them, their understanding of Odysseus,
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  Speaker 2: for instance, the understanding of Odysseus' dilemmas throughout the play,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: it then you should actually appreciate both what Nolan did
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: in telling it his own way, and you should appreciate
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: the arguments over it, right? Like that is the point
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  Speaker 2: is that each generation reads the Odyssey differently than the
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  Speaker 2: generation before. And then each new medium that we're able
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  Speaker 2: to tell it in, including going from an oral tradition
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  Speaker 2: to a written tradition, is going to fundamentally change. The
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  Speaker 2: medium is the message. So each generation in telling and
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  Speaker 2: retelling it and how it captures it, whether it's with
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  Speaker 2: film or radio or a television miniseries versus a blockbuster,
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  Speaker 2: all of this is changing the story and allowing us
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  Speaker 2: to see it in a different way, which is the
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  Speaker 2: whole point.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, the assignment is the interpretation. There is no one
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  Speaker 1: singular odyssey. There is this, you know, original text, I suppose.
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  Speaker 1: We're not even sure that Homer was one person. Every
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  Speaker 1: interpretation or translation is different, and it kind of evokes
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the lens of the translator. And right now, we have
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  Speaker 1: Emily Wilson. Her translation is apparently a primary influence on
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  Speaker 1: Nolan's version, his interpretation in this movie. It's been interesting
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  Speaker 1: to see the discourse around her kind of like review
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: of the movie, like her celebrating the fact that this
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: is a monoculture moment and it's kind of exciting in
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  Speaker 1: that regard while also her taking issue with how he
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: has interpreted it. But I think that that, that is,
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  Speaker 1: you know, part of what is exciting about this. It
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: is the clashing of these interpretations and how different people
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: see it differently. Like who is this character, uh, Odysseus and,
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  Speaker 1: What is it about him and this story that is
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  Speaker 1: so indelible that has made it the architecture for all
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  Speaker 1: stories and a tale that has withstood eons of time
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  Speaker 1: and is still relevant today?
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  Speaker 2: That's the debate that we should celebrate. And that's what
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  Speaker 2: the conversation is about. And I think that's very different than,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: hey- should Helen be black or not? Is it okay
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: to have a trans person in her? Which is one
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  Speaker 2: of the points that I want to make. And I
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  Speaker 2: think Emily Wilson would appreciate given that she wrote a
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: famous biography of Seneca earlier in her academic career. But
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Seneca 2,000 years ago in one of his letters is
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  Speaker 2: lamenting just people totally missing the point of the Odyssey.
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  Speaker 2: And I think it's fascinating to think that 2,000 years ago,
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  Speaker 2: people were having these debates about where was Troy? And
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: where were the different islands? And did it actually happen
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  Speaker 2: or not? Just like today, we're like, is Homer really
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: one person? Was he blind or not? And he was
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  Speaker 2: saying that this is not what it's about. We're not
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: supposed to be debating the trivia of the art, but
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  Speaker 2: we should be going to the essential questions of the art.
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  Speaker 2: And that ultimately, we should understand that Odysseus in his
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  Speaker 2: Odyssey is a reflection of the human undergoing any kind
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  Speaker 2: of ordeal, battling their sort of higher self and lower self,
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  Speaker 2: you know, the perils of hubris, the impossibility of ever
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: returning home, you know, that he's saying, like, if you
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  Speaker 2: don't see the, if what you're debating about the Odyssey
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  Speaker 2: is not the philosophical questions, then you're just, you know,
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  Speaker 2: you're you're just engaging in culture war nonsense. Obviously he
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have used that term. And I think it's sad
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: that it's devolved into sort of culture war nonsense. But if,
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  Speaker 2: if that's what you're fighting about, then you're part of
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  Speaker 2: the problem, right? Like, I think there's like a lot
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  Speaker 2: of things to argue about in the Odyssey. And I,
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  Speaker 2: there's a bunch of issues I take with, I would
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: argue over interpretations and arguments that, that, Nolan's Odysseus and
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Odyssey are making and and how they not like because, oh,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: you have to be true to the text. But but
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: this choice versus that choice, you know, fundamentally changes the
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: arc of the story. I'll give you a really good example.
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  Speaker 2: So like the whole the whole and I. Are we
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  Speaker 2: cool with spoilers in this?
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: The cat should be out of the bag by now, 3,000
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  Speaker 2: years later. But I think the premise in Nolan's Odyssey
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  Speaker 2: is that this sort of law of hospitality, how we
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  Speaker 2: treat strangers, how we treat others, and we violate this
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  Speaker 2: at our peril. And so the tale of Polyphemus, the
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  Speaker 2: interaction with the Cyclops is so fascinating because in.
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  Speaker 2: Again, my children love this story. Odysseus, in the poem,
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  Speaker 2: he introduces himself as that his name is no man.
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  Speaker 2: He tells Polyphemus that his name is no man. So
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  Speaker 2: then when they blind Polyphemus and he's screaming to the
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  Speaker 2: other Cyclopses, which also don't exist in the movie, he's saying,
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  Speaker 2: they say, who hurt you? And he says, no one
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  Speaker 2: has hurt me or no man has hurt me. And
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  Speaker 2: they say, okay, well, if no one has hurt you,
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  Speaker 2: shut up. This isn't a problem. And then he goes away.
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  Speaker 2: And then Odysseus, having escaped, shouts out at him, hey, actually,
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  Speaker 2: it wasn't no one that hurt you. It was me, Odysseus,
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  Speaker 2: sacker of cities that did it. And you'll know my fame.
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  Speaker 2: And so it's this moment of hubris and ego where
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  Speaker 2: Odysseus needs credit for what he inflicted on Polyphemus that
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  Speaker 2: sets in motion the central conflict of the book, which
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  Speaker 2: is he's cursed by the gods. So that's missing. And
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  Speaker 2: I think people will recognize that. But to me, the
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  Speaker 2: critical choice that Nolan makes is that they walk into
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  Speaker 2: the cave. They start to sense something is amiss. And
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  Speaker 2: then the Cyclops walks in and then begins eating them. Right? So,
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  Speaker 2: so the Cyclops is, is indisputably the monstrous villain of
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  Speaker 2: the encounter, but in the, the poem and in the
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: most retellings, Odysseus and the men walk into the cave,
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  Speaker 2: see that it's full of sheep, slaughter the sheep and
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  Speaker 2: eat them. And then Polyphemus comes in and is enraged
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  Speaker 2: that someone has killed his sheep. And so it's actually
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  Speaker 2: Odysseus first who violates the law or oversteps. And Polyphemus is,
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  Speaker 2: although monstrous and eats humans, somewhat righteous in his anger.
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  Speaker 2: And then Odysseus is cunning in his craftiness for getting
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: out and then egotistical in claiming credit. and then bringing
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: the wrath of gods upon him. So, so it's, it's like,
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  Speaker 2: obviously you have to simplify it in the movie, but
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  Speaker 2: I do think this is an essential simplification because first off,
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  Speaker 2: it makes it simple. And the whole point is that
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  Speaker 2: the Odyssey is complicated and you, it's hard to know
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  Speaker 2: who the good guy is, but, but also the idea
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  Speaker 2: that Odysseus just shoots Polyphemus with an arrow when he escapes.
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  Speaker 2: And this is what makes the gods angry is, is
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  Speaker 2: really not what, is the driving force of the Odyssey
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  Speaker 2: going forward.
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  Speaker 1: It strikes me as a glaring omission if you're trying
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  Speaker 1: to underscore the hubris of Odysseus. But the way that
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  Speaker 1: I make sense of that begins with the chyron at
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  Speaker 1: the very beginning of the movie where it says this
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  Speaker 1: is a time of apparent magic. And I think the
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: word apparent is important. I think what it's telegraphing is
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: that this is a story of unreliable narrators. And the
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: way that Nolan plays with time and narrative is through
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: the– the whole movie is anchored in a recounting of
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  Speaker 1: what happened through the perspective of a couple different people.
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  Speaker 1: It's Odysseus telling the story to Calypso when he's on
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: the island with her. And it's Menelaus– sharing what he
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: remembers from the Trojan War to Telemachus. And so, we
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: have to question whether these recollections or the way that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: these stories are being told are actually what happened or
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  Speaker 1: a version of what happened that suits the internal narrative
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: of the narrator. And I think when you think of
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  Speaker 1: the way that Odysseus is recollecting what happened and his
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: version of what went down with the Cyclops, maybe he
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: conveniently decided to omit that part because it confronts him
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: with his own guilt. And his guilt and his trauma
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and this PTSD that he's suffering seems to be what
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  Speaker 1: Nolan is most interested in. And he's interested in it
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  Speaker 1: because this is his portal into wedding this ancient story
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  Speaker 1: with what with his perspective on what's happening right now
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  Speaker 1: in modern society. And for me, that's what makes this version,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: his interpretation so resonant because it seems so current with
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: what we're seeing around us at the moment. And this
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  Speaker 1: is something that you talk about a lot through the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: lens of Stoic philosophy, this degradation of kind of our
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: moral center at the moment, where if you look at
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: what's happening in the house of Ithaca, You know, there's
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: sycophants and people behaving badly, acting on their own self-interest
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: in a very craven way. And is this not simply
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: a metaphor for the White House at the moment?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: It's like a hostile takeover.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems to be like where Nolan's interest is
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: and why, you know, he felt urgently about telling this
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  Speaker 1: story now.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's about a collapse of the old ways. And
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: I think he does a really good job, maybe a
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: better job than I would have anticipated or even considered
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  Speaker 2: of showing the collapse of the old ways all the
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: way around back to even interpreting the Trojan horse as
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  Speaker 2: some sort of violation of the laws of war and trickery.
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  Speaker 2: Although it even goes back even further, there's a sort
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  Speaker 2: of predecessor story of, of the, to the Odyssey of,
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  Speaker 2: of why they get sucked in to this law of war.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: There's this, you know, sort of party of the gods
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  Speaker 2: and they all make this pact about who's the most
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  Speaker 2: beautiful one. And it's a, it's a long story, but
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: basically like Odysseus doesn't want to go fight in the
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Trojan war. That that's not something you see in this
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: movie or in the Odyssey exactly, but Odysseus doesn't want
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: to fight in the Trojan war. He tries to get
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: out of it. And he actually claims that he's crazy
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: at first. And he claims that he's crazy and only
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: by the test that they prove that he's not crazy.
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  Speaker 2: He's like plowing his field and they lay Telemachus down
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: in front of him plowing his field. And when he
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: stops to not run over his own son, that's how
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: they realize that he's not actually crazy. And so the
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: whole idea of this being this sort of insane war
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: that shouldn't have happened in the first place that he's
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: sort of sucked into and fights in reluctantly because of
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: this kind of pact that he'd made many years before.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: I think what's so lovely about Greek mythology and about
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: philosophy is that kind of the more you know about it,
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: the more it operates on all these other levels of
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: This would be a modern analogy, but it's like you
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: can't watch Arrested Development one time. You've got to watch
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: it like 30 times. And then you understand that it's
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: operating on all these different levels and there are these callbacks.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: And so not only is the Odyssey something you should
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: read and watch. and read and watch again, but you
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: should read multiple translations and then you have to read
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: the other myths and then you have to read the
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: poetry about it and the stories about it and the
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: interpretations of it. What you start to get each time
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: is just a slightly different understanding of it. And from that,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: you're able to consider these questions from all these different angles.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Each author has a different take on Odysseus. uh, has
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: a different take on Helen, has a different take on, um, Polyphemus,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: as we were talking about, has a different take on Telemachus.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Has it, uh, you know, is Odysseus a hero or
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: is he a villain? Is he both? Um, you know, is,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: is Agamemnon a hero or a villain? Is Helen a
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: hero or a villain? Um, Was she kidnapped or did
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: she fall in love? Or there's another version of it
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: where she's transported to Egypt. There's all these different versions
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: of it. And so if we understand it more as
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: source material that people are riffing on over and over
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: and over again, almost like a song sample, I think
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: we understand a little bit more of what they're trying
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: to do. And then the idea is each one of
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: these reeds helps correspond to something ultimately in your own life.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: This isn't just like debating what style of painting is best,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: but this is like, okay, but what kind of person
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: should I be? And what you find is that ultimately
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: all these things come down to some of the most
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: fundamental questions in philosophy and in life. Like the trolley
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: problem is really interesting in philosophy, right? This idea of, okay,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: do you have a trolley run over one person? If
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: you do nothing, the trolley runs over one person. Or
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: is it five people? But if you pull this lever,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: it runs over one person, right? That's the trolley problem.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: But this is actually the choice that Odysseus has to
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: make between Scylla and Charybdis. Although I always thought it
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: was Charbitis because I never heard it out loud.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure it's Charybdis. It is.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: And he doesn't fully weigh it that much in the movie,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: but between a rock and a hard place, or sometimes
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: you'll hear people say Scylla and Charybdis as just meaning like,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: a dilemma, like just a hard choice, but it's so
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: much more than that. It's Odysseus has to choose between
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: letting six of his men be destroyed for sure. Or
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: do they all go down in, in the whirlpool? And,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: and it's actually really interesting because in the, in the movie,
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Nolan kind of has him trick the men into choosing
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: for him. Like he kind of abdicates the moral choice of,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: But as the band Rush would say, even if you
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: This is still– he's still the moral choice. So anyways,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I just think it's so fascinating that you have this
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: poem from 3,000 years ago accidentally chancing upon– or not accidentally,
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: but chancing on this moral question that philosophers are still
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: debating to this day.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: On top of that, there's the question of transparency with leadership. Like,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: should he have told his soldiers what this dilemma was
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: and let them choose of their own free will or
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: to just make the choice for them with them knowing
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: what the consequences are? And that same dilemma plays out
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: with the Elliot Page character. What's his character's name again? Sinan. Sinan.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Where in Hades, you know, Sinon is sort of taking
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Odysseus to task for not trusting him with the truth
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: that there were soldiers inside the Trojan horse. And this
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: becomes like a, you know, kind of a central recurring theme,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: like what is Odysseus' relationship with the truth? And with
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: being truthful with the people that he's responsible for? But
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I think this idea, you mentioned Zeus' law a moment ago,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: which is a reductive take on Xenia, like this idea
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: that there is right and wrong, like there is natural
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: law that exists independent of men. In the same way,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: that what resonates about this story has nothing to do
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: with interpretation or authorship. It's just in the ether. It
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: is a story that speaks to us. It is an
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: architecture that is almost embedded into our DNA. And I
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: think that that is one of the reasons why it
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: continues to live and be relevant. But with this idea
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: of there being a morality at play and what are
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the consequences of violating that, We have Odysseus, who in
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: his hubris thinks that he can defy the gods and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: get away with it, that he is beyond consequences in
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: this regard. But what's interesting is the denial that he
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: has to harbor in order to continue to kind of function.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Like when it comes to hunting animals with his bow,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: like he always pulls the bow because this is the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: just and fair thing to do.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: What he does with the Trojan horse is exactly the
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: opposite of that. Like it is the antithesis of that
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: and it's in the aftermath of that that he recognizes
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: that he's basically broken the world and this will end
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the Bronze Age and usher in this time of darkness
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: where the only stories that will be told of what
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: happened are in song because nobody will be able to
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: read or write again, which kind of conveys this idea
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: of interpretation. Like however this story is going to be
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: told in song– it can't possibly be as truthful as
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: it could be because there's no one educated enough around
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: to like be a, you know, kind of a responsible
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: steward of this story. And so it dooms the future
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: to repeat the mistakes of the past. You really get
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• 26:11
  Speaker 2: I'll give you one little quibble, and I'm not normally
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: like a cinematographer. Like, I don't usually harp on these
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: sort of little choices, but I do think it was illustrative.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: If the point is, Golden age leads to dark age
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: because of choice of Odysseus. I think it was odd
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: that he presents the Greeks in such sort of darkness.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: And I don't want to say ruins, but like one
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: of the interesting things that we miss, and it's just,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: it's always interesting how we interpret things. Our understanding of
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Greece is like that it was bronze statues and sort
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: of like white marble, when actually it was an incredibly
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: bright and shiny world. The buildings were painted. The statues
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: were painted. The armor was bright and had things painted
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: on it, right? It's only because after 3,000 years, most
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: of that is scraped away or ruined that we tend
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: to think of that world as being like... It's like...
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: You grow up now, you think the Statue of Liberty
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: is green, but that's not what it was like when
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: they put it up, right? And so I thought it
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: was interesting that his castle's kind of old and dark.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think he did an amazing
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: job of showing the actual brightness of the Bronze Age,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: just like what antiquity was like. And there've been people
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: who have quibbled that sort of like how realistic the
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: armor was like, I care less like whether Agamemnon's helmet
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: was realistic or not. And more like, why was everything
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: so somber and dark when that's not really what that,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: if that's the apotheosis of the moment, it's not fully
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: representing it. So I did take a slight quibble with that.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: But I think, To me, what's so interesting about the
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: contradictions of Odysseus is that is the point of the Odyssey.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: He's both the best and the worst. He's this trickster character, right?
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And he's both better than everyone and capable of worse things.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Things than everyone. And that to me is supposed to
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: illustrate that we contain that in ourselves too. And which
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: side of that are we going to let out?
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This is the mindset of every alcoholic and addict.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Like I'm smarter than everyone else and I'm actually the
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: worst person in the world. And it is a megalomania.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Like that speaks to his hubris. Like he believes that
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: he's so powerful that he could break the world or
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: make the world. And that's absurd, right? Like this is,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: you know, it's death by a thousand cuts or the
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: contributions of millions of people.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: He's taking the full moral weight of the Trojan War
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: that he was, by the way, as drafted into as
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: everyone else and as at the mercy of Agamemnon as
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: everyone else. And I think that's a great point. There
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: is a grandiosity about– He makes himself the main character.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: And I mean, he is in a way the main character,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: but he has this kind of main character syndrome. And
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: you see it in the movie. It's like these other
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: men are raping and pillaging Troy. And yes, it was
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: his idea. but he's not doing it, but he's looking
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: around and going, what have I done? Because I think
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: that's the point. He has the capacity to feel the
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: responsibility and the guilt that if he didn't, if he
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: was more a product of his time, I think he
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: would get away with, like, we don't get the sense
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: that Agamemnon was carrying the same guilt for sacrificing his
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: daughter as, say, Odysseus was, even for just being away
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: for 20 years.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's important to understand that your actions have consequences.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: But it's also important to have the humility to understand
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: that you're actually not as important as you might believe
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: yourself to be. He's on both extremes of this spectrum.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I'm curious also around your thoughts around the ending. We
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: see them sort of sail off into the sunset in
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: a way that is not really authentic to the text.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: I love this. This is a guy who can't sit
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: still for a minute. They do address this getting back
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: to denial after he hears the song of the sirens. He's,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: he's disabused of his denial that he actually doesn't want
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: to go home. Like it's all about like, we just
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: want to go home. And actually maybe one of the
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: reasons he doesn't follow Agamemnon is because he doesn't want
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: to go home and he's trying to find the long
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: way so that he can stay away. He can't say
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: that out loud and maybe he can't admit that to himself,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: but you know, he is, you know, to kind of
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: quote Arthur Brooks, like he is a, he is a
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: striver facing the strivers dilemma. And, He just cannot sit
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: still for a moment with himself. And the minute he
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: gets home, he has to leave again and go off
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: on another campaign. And Nolan chooses to end the movie differently.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: What are your thoughts around that? Why do you think
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: he made that decision? And what is it that the
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Odysseus that you know did and why?
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: So I think there's two reads here that I want
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: to get into. The first is, yes, Odysseus, the striver.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: Odysseus the Restless, Odysseus actually the tragic, tortured hero who
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: not only can't go home as he hears from the sirens.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: I think it's worth pointing out, you know, the sirens
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: don't just sing a beautiful song. The sirens tell you
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: exactly what you want to hear or the deepest message.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: most painful slash beautiful truth you can imagine. So, so
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: in the movie, they tell him, you know, basically you
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: don't actually want to go home. And I think on
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: a simple level, the Odyssey is about a guy fighting
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: to get home. But when you, when you look at
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: the full arc of the character, you go for a
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: guy who claims he wants to go home. He sure
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: makes a lot of choices that prevent him from getting home.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: As you said in the movie from not following Agamemnon,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: but like, you know, he, He spends seven years with Cersei,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: not like she does drug him a little bit, but
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: he basically has a seven-year affair on his wife and
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: he lives in paradise, right?
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: And he also had like a one-year affair with Cersei,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: didn't he?
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes. He has a lot of affairs. Penelope is
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: supposed to be true and loyal to him. And Odysseus
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: is under no such compunction, right? And so, you know,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: you imagine it's like that's his son from 13 to
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: 20 or something. Like he misses like a good chunk
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: of his son's life because he's really enjoying himself on
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: an island paradise. And if we can understand Odysseus as
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: not just a character who doesn't want to go home,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: but as people in the ancient world would have understood Odysseus,
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: putting aside Nolan's ending for a second, he leaves after
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: he gets home in some of the other retellings. He
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: has to go replenish his coffers. Actually, one of the
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: post stories has Odysseus leaving Penelope at the end and
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: marrying somebody else. And then it goes on and on.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: He is the addict- you know, the typical addict, the striver,
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: the person for whom there's never enough, who, you know,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: has the midlife crisis and starts a second family and
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: a third family. Like he can't, he can't help himself.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: And so even I think when you read Tennyson's poem, uh, you,
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: you get the sense, depending on what age you are
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: reading it, that actually it isn't admirable and impressive that
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: this guy, what, what is, what is the wording? Let
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: You know, he can't stop. He can't slow down. There's
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: never enough. He's not capable of being still. And if
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: we understand Odysseus as this tortured hero in that way,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: it's like, you know, and a lot of people have
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: made the PTSD comparisons, but if you've seen the Hurt Locker, right,
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: he gets home. Or if you've seen American Sniper, They're
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: similar character arcs. They get home and then they're just like,
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: this is nothing compared to what my life was out there.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: And in that way, they are tragic, flawed, broken men
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: that we should pity rather than celebrate and want to
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: be like.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Back to the sirens. What's great about that is you
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: can draw this parallel on this notion that they're singing
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: this song of everything you always wanted to hear. And
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: there's a beautiful monologue that is one of my favorite
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: parts in the movie where Odysseus says, you know, I
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: can't recount it exactly, but it's basically like everything you
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: always wanted to hear about, you know, everything you always
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: wanted to have and can't have but already had. And,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: you know, like some kind of thing like that. And
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: it's just like it perfectly encapsulates this idea. But there
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: is this parallel with. confirmation bias in social media it's
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: like it's telling you what you want to hear and
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: that is a you know hypnotic um thing you know
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: it's very difficult for us to immunize ourselves from he
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: has to they have to put wax in their ears
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: to prevent them we have all these devices that we
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: have to put on our phone to kind of like
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: protect our attention there is something going on with this
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: it's like it's like these tech and you've talked about
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: this like you know the tech barons and all the
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: like they are the sirens on some level.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Well, and the reason we have to be familiar with
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: the Odyssey is just the sheer amount. It's like you
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: have to watch The Godfather or you'll miss like 40%
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: of pop culture references, right? Or you need to know
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: your sports history or you're going to miss out on
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: a lot of metaphors and references. You have to know
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: the Odyssey because so many of the things that we
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: use to explain the present come from literature of the past.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, Chris Hayes last year wrote a really good
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: book called The Siren Song that's all about comparing social
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: media and the attention economy to the sirens. And he
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: makes this point about how the sirens aren't just this beautiful,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: seductive thing, but there's some element of The confirmation bias
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: at work that you said and how we are complicit
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: in our own manipulation. And he does a good job
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: in the movie of the guy who rips the beeswax
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: out of his ears and throws himself over the boat.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: It's like the sirens aren't plucking him from the boat
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: the way that the monster is, right? They're saying like, hey,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: come over here. It's nice. And people are willingly killing
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: themselves to get it, which I think is the sort
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: of ultimate metaphor of the thing. And then, yeah, the
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: commitment device of Odysseus saying, I want to hear it,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: but I don't trust myself. So I want you to
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: tie me to the mast is what I thought was
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: interesting is, okay, so Odysseus knowing that if he goes
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: to the sirens, he will surely die. So he doesn't
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: just say, hey, guys, don't let me go over there.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: He says, I need you to tie me to the mast.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: And under no circumstances can you undo it. And I'm
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: going to block your ears. So flash forward like an
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: hour or so in the movie, they are landing at
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: the island where the sun god keeps his cattle. And
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: because they learned this from the dead in Hades, if
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: they eat the sun god's cattle, they will all die.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Not Odysseus, but everyone else will die. And at first,
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: he doesn't tell them this. And then they ask him
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: and he does. He discloses. He says, if you eat
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: the sun god's cattle, you will die. And they go, OK,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: we still want to land on the island. We just
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: won't do it. And he says, no, no, no. The
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: best thing is to not go anywhere near the island.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: The commitment device again, like if you don't want to eat,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: if you don't want to drink, don't have alcohol in
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: your house.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: And they go, no, no, no, we're fine. We promise
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: we won't eat the sun god's cattle. And then what happens,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: they get there and their willpower lasts for a while,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: but it's not invincible. And eventually they do eat the
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: sun god's cattle and they die. I thought that was
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: an interesting contrast between the two commitment devices. Like a
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: promise is not enough. A commitment is not enough that
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: you have to be able to prevent yourself from doing
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: the thing that you know you don't want to do.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: And Odysseus is rolling the dice and in defiance of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the gods by not putting the wax in his ears
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: and sort of wanting to be the one person who
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: can survive this to distinguish himself and make himself feel special.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: So to go back to the ending real fast, because
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: this is something I haven't seen enough people talk about.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: So there is a giant plot hole in the Odyssey.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: There's two, but I'll go back to one. But the
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: big plot hole in the Odyssey is Penelope is weaving
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: the burial shroud, right? So Ithaca is without a king
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: and Telemachus is too young to rule, right? Odysseus is gone.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: And Penelope is stalling by weaving the burial shroud. But
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: who is she weaving the burial shroud for, right? Laertes,
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Odysseus' father. So our modern understanding of kings, it's like,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: why doesn't he– if he was previously the king of
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Ithaca– Why doesn't Laertes just come back temporarily until Telemachus
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: is old enough, right? I don't really know. There's not
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: a great answer to this question. But I think their
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: argument was like, if you're not strong enough, if you're
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: not fit to be the king, you have to voluntarily
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: cede power. And then once you voluntarily cede power, it's
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: not yours anymore, right? So there is something interesting about
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Laertes waiting on, he's like, my time has passed. I'm
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: no longer fit to be king. Yes, that leaves a
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: power vacuum, which is a bit weird. But Nolan kind
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: of solves for this by when Odysseus comes home, he
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: doesn't rule Ithaca for very long before he leaves and
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: cedes it to his son. So there's an interesting statement
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: here I think particularly in this aging democracy of ours, where,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: what do they call it, a gerontocracy, where old people
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: are not stepping away. There is something about the peaceful
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: transition of power here that's really interesting, that Odysseus, in
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: going into voluntary exile, now that his son has proven himself,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: is demonstrating in a way that I think is interesting.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: It's not the main point of the Odyssey, but the
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: going into exile to me was less about, in one reading,
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: it's less about Odysseus's restlessness and even the debt he
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: has to pay to his old soldiers and more about
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: solving for the question of who's the next generation. And
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: I think also the less... implicated generation, right? If Odysseus'
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: generation has failed and corrupted itself and stained it in
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: blood with the murder of the suitors, for instance, then
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: what Telemachus portends is potentially a fresh start, clean hands.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: And this is why Odysseus is so insistent that he
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: not participate in that final massacre. Odysseus is the sea
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: people who's been raiding and murdering and doing all this
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: bad stuff. And Telemachus represents potentially a new and brighter future.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: That's an interesting perspective. It's a little bit more optimistic
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: than mine in that there is this peaceful transition of power.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: There is succession. And we're meant to feel like things
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: are stable while at the same time understanding that the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Bronze Age is over and we're going to now be
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: entering into this age of darkness. Clearly, Odysseus does not
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: want Telemachus involved in killing all these suitors. And Telemachus,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: we're pretty clear that he's no great warrior. He has
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: his one moment upstairs in the weapons locker where he
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: finally gets the best of that one guy. But that aside,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: we're in no position to believe that he has matured
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: to the point where he can successfully, you know, kind
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: of take charge of Ithaca and, you know, kind of
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: acquit leadership responsibly. And it's unclear whether Odysseus has considered this.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: He's just like, I'm out of here now and we're
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: going to go over here and I feel good about
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: my son taking over. But we as the audience are
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: left to question whether that is actually a good idea.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I know in other interpretations of the Odyssey, Odysseus grappling
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: with his striving and his restlessness says at some point,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: and I think you've talked about this to Telemachus, like
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: you're a better man than me and you're more fit
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: to rule than I am because I can't just sit
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: here on a chair in this throne, in this house.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Like I have to go out and conquer and, you know,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: like achieve, uh, to use kind of a modern version
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: of that. And he basically conveys to his son, he's
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: passing the torch in kind of a beautiful way that
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: we don't see in the movie.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Yes. Obviously in the poem, both Odysseus and Telemachus are
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: blessed by Athena and guided by her, right? Mentor is.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: Is Athena in the poem. And I think the sun
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: is setting on one and the sun is rising on
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: the other, we could say. And so, yes, Telemachus, especially
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: at the beginning of the play, and Emily Wilson has
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: talked about this in her translation, just like how modern
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: some of the whiny, insolent insecure just like how teenager-y
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: uh telemachus comes off in the early pages of the
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: odyssey and then his journey to see menelaus and then
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: uh nestor and then coming back and then you know
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: that this is the there's also this coming of age
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: story at the beginning of the odyssey and i'm and
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: throughout it. And we're supposed to see Telemachus as a
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: kind of a rising hero who, yeah, who's young and
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: inexperienced and desperately needing of help, but comes out of
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: the other side of this, I think, ready and stronger.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: One of the things my nine-year-old pointed out, or I
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: guess he would have been seven or eight when he
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: pointed this out, but I thought it was interesting because
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: it goes to the polyphemus thing we were talking about,
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: He was like, I don't understand if Polyphemus is Poseidon's son,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: why did Poseidon need Odysseus to take credit for blinding
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: him to know that he did it? Isn't he a god?
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I went to read about it and I asked ChatGBT
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: about it. I was trying to figure this out because
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: I hadn't thought of that either. And then what I
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: came to understand is that was my son projecting the
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Christian omniscient God onto Poseidon, that the Greek gods knew
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: everything that was happening everywhere in the world, that they
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: were minutely monitoring human affairs. Which is not the Greek understanding.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: Like the Greek understanding is the gods are over here
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: on Mount Olympus doing weird stuff, you know, raping people
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: and taking them prisoner and starting storms and feuding and
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: fighting with each other and then occasionally coming down to
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: earth and invading. interfering and getting involved. And so it
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: is interesting to think that the Greek understanding of Odysseus
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: is that had Odysseus just kept his mouth shut, he
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: would have gotten away with his crime. But it was
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: the bragging about it and needing attention for it that
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: actually sows his fate. It just shows the different understanding
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: of of the gods. There's this famous quote I like
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: from Flaubert. He said, when the gods had ceased to be,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: but Christ had not yet come, he says, between the
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: time of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, so now we're going
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: from the Greeks to the Romans here, he says, man
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: stood alone in the universe. That there was this brief
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: moment of of philosophy when the old system was falling apart,
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: the Greek understanding of the gods, which the Romans inherited,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: and then before the Christian understanding of an all-powerful, all-seeing
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: God who gives us the golden rule that Nolan is
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: sort of projecting back on the Greeks, there was this
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: kind of brief moment where humans are just doing their
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: own thing. And then this is where we get stoic
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: philosophy and Epicurean philosophy and And all these other sort
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: of other ways of thinking. I just thought about that
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: quote because, you know, at the beginning of the movie,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: he says, in a time of apparent magic, he's kind
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: of saying the same thing. Like, there are gods, but
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: they're not as involved. They're not everywhere. They could, you know,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: the concept in the movie is that, like, you have
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: to treat the stranger differently. Well, not because God wants
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: you to, but because that stranger might be a god.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: They're probably not, but they might be. And so it
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: is interesting, this kind of like maybe, maybe not-ness of
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: the magic in the movie is interesting.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: The first time I saw an R2 in person, I
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: got it immediately. This is the Rivian that a lot
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: of people are going to be able to enjoy. Driving
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: it with RJ only confirmed that. All right, so first
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: impressions in my first experience in the R2.
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: Nice.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: All right, now I'm getting the feel.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: It feels really tight.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: It feels nice, right?
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Interestingly, like from a first impression point of view, when
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: you see it from a distance, proportionally, it looks very similar.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: to the R1. You know, like the way that it
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: is designed, it looks kind of integral with the original.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: It's quite a bit smaller.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: And so when you look at them separately, sometimes people
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: be like, is that an R1 or an R2? And
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: they have a lot of similarities. But I actually think
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: R2 ended up with a better set of proportions. And
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: it's that kind of thinking that just exists across everything
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: to try to deliver an experience that still feels really Rivian-like,
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: but at a fraction of the cost of R1.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: First impressions aside, there's a lot more to the R2
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: than what you see at first glance. To learn all
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: about the R2, watch the rest of our conversation and
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: book a demo drive at stories.rivian.com. This episode is brought
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: to you by Whoop. the wearable health and fitness coach
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: that for five and a half uninterrupted years has delivered
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: me tremendously valuable, highly personalized insights into how my habits
• 50:18
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• 50:22
  Speaker 1: I can up-level those habits and make more informed decisions
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: about the strain I impose upon myself. It keeps me
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: on an optimal growth trajectory and sets me up to
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: show up as my best self more consistently, which is
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  Speaker 1: even more urgent for me these days as I rebuild
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  Speaker 1: my body in the aftermath of spinal fusion surgery. And
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: one of the key lessons WHOOP has helped me learn
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: is that pushing harder isn't the answer. It's knowing when
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  Speaker 1: instinct is to hit it like I always used to
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  Speaker 1: when I was 23 or even 43. All of which
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  Speaker 1: is a long way of saying that WHOOP saves me
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  Speaker 1: from myself by decoding my body's reactions to my decisions.
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  Speaker 1: when the right call is rest. By doing that, I've
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  Speaker 1: actually accelerated my recovery because I'm not breaking down and
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• 51:27
  Speaker 1: slash roll. I thought that Nolan was implying, indirectly and
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: overtly at times, a degree of omniscience with the gods.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Because unlike other versions that have rendered on screen and
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: in the text, like the gods are not around all
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: the time. We see Athena pop in and out, but
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: the gods aren't coming down and interacting with humans in
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: the way that other versions of this describe. And Odysseus
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: doesn't have to say, I'm Odysseus to the Cyclops. It's
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: just understood that this communication is going to get conveyed
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: to Poseidon or he's overlooking this and then hell is
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: going to break loose on the open seas. Similarly with
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: the sun gods and the cattle, like He even says
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: Odysseus overtly at one point, like, did you think like
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: the sun gods weren't going to notice?
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: This is the best part of the movie.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Nolan is saying like there is an omniscience here and
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: he's sort of layering over a more Judeo-Christian notion of
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: God is all seeing.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right. Yeah, he says, did you think if
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: you ate very quietly, the gods wouldn't know you ate
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: their cattle?
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: Kind of in this hole, you know, like they dig
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: this hole. So, like, as if that is going to
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: protect them, you know, in some way.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: But then they say, we didn't think we would fool
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: the gods. We were just trying to fool you.
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And what does that get them?
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't change the prophecy, you know.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: I want to turn to.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: Some of the lessons for life that we can extract
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: from this story. In your video, maybe we can start
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: with this. You talk about the difference between perseverance and persistence.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: And I'd never really heard those parsed in that way.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: And I thought that was super interesting.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: And look, I might be making a semantic difference, but
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: I do think there is something... There's something about... hey,
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do this hard thing for a while.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, I got to do this the
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: rest of my life, right? Like the day-to-dayness of endurance
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: is to me the more impressive thing. Like, how do
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: you deal with this forever? And you could say like,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: you know, the 10 years of war in Troy, the
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: 10 years on the journey home, in one aspect, that's
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: the odyssey for Odysseus. But the deeper one might actually
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: be once he gets home, the guilt and the pain
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: and the re-entry is actually the harder and longer battle.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: In The Obstacle is the Way, I used Odysseus to
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: make that distinction between perseverance and persistence, that perseverance is
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: just sort of persistence on steroids. And that You know,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: wanting something really bad and being willing to sacrifice for
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: it is one thing. But, you know, life asks so
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: much more of that than you. And I do, I mean, look,
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: when you do endurance sports, it's like you think you've
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: hit your limit and then there's this whole other reservoir
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: that you have. Yes.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think what's interesting in this
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: context is We see Odysseus, he is this avatar of perseverance,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: of persistence, of being unrelenting in this quest to win
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: the war and get home and all these sorts of things.
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: And it speaks to like the human will and our
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: capacity to weather obstacles and overcome them, et cetera. If
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: we just stay in it and remain focused and just
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: never give up and all of that. But ultimately- the
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: only way that he gets home when he departs Calypso
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: is through surrender. Like, he has to relinquish his grip
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: on control and recognize that not only can he no
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: longer defy the gods, that he has to completely surrender
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: and let go of any attempt to even try to
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: get home and put it completely in their hands. And
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: there's something beautiful about that in a Zen-Cohen kind of way. Like,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: You have to strive. You have to be, you know,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: perseverant and persistent and courageous and unrelenting if you want
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: to achieve things and accomplish your goals, etc. And yet, ultimately,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: you will be capped in your potential to the extent
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: that you are refusing to relinquish your grip. At some point,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: you have to recognize that your self-will is the obstacle
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: in your way and that The kind of next level,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: whether it's climbing Maslow's hierarchy of needs or just growing
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: and evolving as a human being, demands surrender, like this
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: recognition that there are higher forces at play and that
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: you are not the center of the universe, that you're
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: not the puppeteer pulling the strings.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: And ultimately, that requires more willpower and discipline, that surrender,
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: that submission It seems like weakness, but it's not.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: It's much harder for him to lay down on that
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: raft and let the waves take him where they will
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: than to stay on that beach for 10 years and
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: figure out how he's finally going to breach the walls
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: of Troy.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And look, the great American named after Odysseus is
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Ulysses S. Grant, right? That's how the name is rendered, Ulysses.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: You know, one of the great military victories in American
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: history is Grant's victory at Vicksburg, right? Where, you know,
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: he basically lays siege to this citadel, not unlike Troy
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: for months and months and months. He has to try
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: to reroute the Mississippi River at one point. He ends
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: up having to cross the river, you know, miles, miles south.
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: He has to run these gun batteries. It's one of
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: the great military campaigns in human history, right? With actually
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: an equal amount of cleverness to Odysseus, he basically goes
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: around Vicksburg and then he attacks it from the other side.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: And then they're suddenly trapped in this fortress as opposed
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: to being, you know, safely ensconced inside it. So Grant's
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: sort of success in the Civil War is you're sort of,
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: standard persistence right like he's like look i don't go
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: backwards i don't quit i they said he's like a
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: bulldog he grabs on and he doesn't let go that's
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: grant's sort of military strategy um and he ends up
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: you know succeeding and he probably thinks that's the most
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: difficult thing i'm gonna have to do in my life
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: that's that's his sort of persistence well after grant is
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: is president um all of his money is stolen from him.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: He gets swindled by this, uh, like sort of Bernie
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: Madoff figure. He loses all his money. He has to
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: hawk his civil war, uh, mementos and uniform to, to,
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: to JP Morgan just to pay off his debts. And
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: so he's basically looking at, you know, complete poverty, humiliation.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: And then, then he finds out he's dying of throat cancer.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: He's smoked like 20 cigars a day. And so Grant
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: is now facing what they call his final battle. Under
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: debilitating pain, he writes and dictates his memoirs over the
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: next several months. Mark Twain agrees to publish them. He
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: ends up publishing them. He dies like three days after
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: he finishes his memoirs. He becomes the bestselling book in
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: American history. It's his final battle. But I think at
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: some level, it's a different kind of persistence, right? It's
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: perseverance because it's operating here now at this kind of
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: soul level. It's one thing to fight really hard for
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: what you want. And I think it's another thing to
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: sort of stare down death or to conquer your own body.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: And so when we're talking about the distinction between persistence
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: and perseverance. I think, yeah, fighting at Troy is persistence,
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: but the Odyssey home and the ultimate surrender, as you said,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: and then as he says in the movie, just like
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: taking your punishment, basically, that is a perseverance at a
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: different level. And then the making of amends and having
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: to face the people that he's wrong. That's just a
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: whole other kind of journey that's different than being cold
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: and tired and wet. And lonely. And I think ultimately
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: that's the message of the Odyssey, that sort of perseverance,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: not persistence.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: The acceptance of certain things that are unmutable. Like there's
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: the idea of we're going to breach the walls of Troy.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: It's unacceptable that we can't and we're not leaving until
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: we do. A refusal to accept a certain reality because
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: on some level there is a sense of mutability to that.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: But cancer, you know, like having your money swindled or whatever,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: to persevere, you have to first accept this as reality
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: and then figure out how to survive and navigate your
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: way through it.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to accept your humiliation and your failure and your mortality.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: These are all, I think, you know, much more soul
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: level battles as opposed to, you know, most of the
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: Odyssey is Odysseus fighting with his cunning. We're told over
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: and over again, in the poem that he's the craftiest,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: most cunning, you know, smartest man in the world. And that,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: that only gets him so far. And ultimately it gets
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: him into.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: Trouble, right?
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: Like, right.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: He's a, he's a galaxy brain.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: Yes. And, and it's, it's that the sort of, um,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: having to conquer the other, the other things at the
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: deeper level, which I think the movie does a much
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: better job. There's less catharsis in the poem, um, There's
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: less resolution because the Greeks didn't have the same struggle
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: with guilt and responsibility. Odysseus is not as tortured of
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: a figure in the poem. He's like, yeah, I'm going
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: to murder all these people and I'm also going to
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: murder all the female slaves for cavorting with them, even
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: though I think we would say now that they were
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: not consenting participants in– In these exchanges. But yeah, at
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: the end, he just murders all these– the catharsis is
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: the murder. The catharsis in the movie is the– what
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: am I– is dealing with his own culpability and his
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: own responsibility and then ultimately trying to make amends by
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: heading west and honoring the dead.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: If you were going to, like, what stood out for
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: you as intolerable in the movie that you would change? Like,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: if you were doing your version, like, what was missing
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: or what do you think is relevant for us to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: know that was lacking in the film?
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: So I don't think Christopher Nolan does a good job
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: showing how crafty and clever Odysseus was, which is his
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: predominant character trait in the poem. And so I think
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: skipping the opportunity to trick Polyphemus the no man joke,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: which is, it's just amazing that like, you know, watching
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: my kids just like fall over in laughter at a
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: 3000 year old joke from an ancient epic, just, it.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Just does show you how powerful. It's who's on third, basically.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: Totally, totally. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. And so he
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: misses a handful of opportunities to show Odysseus as being
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: clever and how that cleverness you know, is both his
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: secret strength and the source of his undoing. I thought
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: that was a flaw of the movie. The only casting
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: choice that I think people are allowed to be upset
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: about is the casting choice of Agamemnon. Um, I think, uh,
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: Black Helen, totally fine with, uh, uh, Elliot Page, totally
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: fine with, fine with everything. I just don't understand how
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: the Bane character could be, uh, one of the Safdie brothers,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: like how, how he's supposed to be the more intimidating
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: brother of Menelaus who, who, uh, Jon, what, Bernthal?
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Jon Bernthal, yeah.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: Incredibly. And you can get both the pain and the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: kind of menace. Like, I think he captures, like, I mean,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: that's why he's a special forces operator in, like, every movie.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: And he's the Punisher. He is perfectly cast and captures
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: it perfectly well. Peeking behind the mask on Menelaus, I'm like,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: I don't buy it. I don't like it at all.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: I would have loved to see... Agamemnon, you mean.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, Agamemnon.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: Sorry, sorry. I would have... I think Cillian Murphy could
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: have done it. I think Christian Bale could have done it.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: I think so many other people could have done it.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: I just did not buy him. That's my... I'm violating
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: my own rule by questioning about this, but that's my
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: piddly concern with the movie, and I hated it.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: But he's... frame-mogging everybody in every scene that he is.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, when the gates of Troy open, he's 10
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: feet tall and he's just dominating. And you don't see
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: his face. You know, someone like Cillian Murphy or Bale,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: they're not going to say yes to a small part
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: That's why I think it would have been so good.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: But to me, it doesn't really matter because you never
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: really see his face. He doesn't take his mask off
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: until the end. And when he does... It's this moment
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: of vulnerability and realizing that he is gravely, you know,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: made this grave mistake that ends up, you know, with
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: him being killed. And again, it goes to the unreliable
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: narrator aspect of it in that this is, we're seeing
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: Agamemnon through the eyes of Odysseus telling the story to Calypso.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: And so whether or not Agamemnon was as tall and
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: as imposing in real life doesn't matter. It's, It's Odysseus'
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: interpretation of Agamemnon through his memory of Agamemnon being this
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: imposing figure dressed in all black. It's so interesting that
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: we have Agamemnon in black and we have the black
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: helmets of the Ithaca army, the warriors, and everybody in
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: Troy is dressed in white. This is like– it's pretty
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: binary in that regard. Interpret from that as you will.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: But he's inverting these expectations slowly.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: If I could give another recommendation to people, Aeschylus' trilogy, Orestia,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: is a side plot of the Iliad and the Odyssey
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: that you briefly see in the Odyssey because they do
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: focus on Agamemnon a little more than people would think.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: So for people who don't know, the brief story is–
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: To get favorable winds to Troy, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: which obviously his wife is not happy with. So, what, Clemenestra? Again,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: I'm bad with the pronunciations. But his wife takes a
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: lover while he's gone. And then when Agamemnon comes home,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: he and she kill Agamemnon. And then they don't bury him.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: And then... the, the, the rest of the, the trilogy
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: is in, and this is also where we get the
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: story of Cassandra because he brings, uh, Agamemnon brings Cassandra
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: home from, uh, from Troy and she is gifted with, uh, the,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: the power of prophecy, but cursed that no one will
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: listen to her. And so she predicts all this is
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: going to happen and, uh, nobody listens, right? He ends
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: up dying. Um, but then, um, His son avenges his death,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: kills his mother and her lover. That's the second one.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: And then the third play is really interesting because you
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: get where all these myths come to explain to us
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: where our modern system, where our civilization comes from. So anyways,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: after he kills his mother, he brings on the furies, right?
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: The gods are angry at him for killing his own mother.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: And so they're chasing him and torturing him. And he
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: flees to the temple of Apollo. And what is proposed
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: as a way of solving this conflict is that he
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: plead his case to a jury of 12 peers and
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: explain why he did it and what happened. And then
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: they'll render a verdict and he will abide by that verdict.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: And so from this play, this fictional event, we have
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: the Greeks explaining and trying to deal with the cycle
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: of vengeance, right? Like somebody does a crime, someone avenges
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: that crime, and then someone has to avenge that crime.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: So the Greeks were wrestling with this question of how
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: do we stop the cycle of violence? How does the
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: state step in and resolve the cycle of violence? And
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: they settle on the legal system, right? The impartial legal
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: system and the jury of our peers. And so it's
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: just incredible. You're just reading this play that's, you know,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: basically 2,500 years old. And then you're like, you're recognizing,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: you're like, oh, wait, this is where that comes from.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: And so again, these stories are not just weird stories
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: with names that are difficult to pronounce from a time
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: long ago. They are the origin stories for the institutions
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: that that we take for granted today. And they are
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: also wrestling with the same like fundamental problems that groups
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: of humans, which we call society, have wrestled with for
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: all time.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: Everyone can kind of quibble around the margins. Oh, it
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: should have been like this. Why didn't they do that?
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: I don't understand this. It doesn't make sense. If I
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: was doing it, I would do this. Everybody's free to
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: go off and make their version of the Odyssey and
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: render it to film. My thing is we should just
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: be celebrating what is just an absolutely fantastic achievement on
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: behalf of Nolan and everybody who contributed to this extraordinary
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: work of art. Like the attention to detail, the scale.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Like I've watched all these documentaries on how they, you know,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: how they did what they did, the behind the scenes stuff.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: The sets that they constructed, the far corners of the earth.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, they go to Iceland for one sequence to
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: shoot the Hades thing, you know, and they're schlepping just
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: an unbelievable amount of gear and the 70 millimeter camera
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: that they had to construct a housing for so that
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: it wasn't so loud that they couldn't record dialogue between
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: two characters standing in front of it. The house of Ithaca, like,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: you know, everyone had to get into costume and hike
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: up there. Like the commitment. to render this story on
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: film in the most visceral and authentic way possible is
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: something to really appreciate in Marvel. And I think the
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: fact that leading into it, there's sort of this culture
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: war going on, at least on X, which sidebar, like
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: everyone on X is arguing about casting.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: These are the sirens.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: What's that? Yeah, these are the sirens. The influencers are
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: the sirens. They're having this ridiculous debate that makes it
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: seem like there's a controversy when I actually don't really
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: think that there was. And Nolan recognizes this, like he's
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: not paying any attention to this. But all of that
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: quickly gets replaced as soon as Emily Wilson– writes a
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: somewhat negative review of the film. And then all of
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: the discourse on X becomes like kind of piling on her.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: Like suddenly they're on Nolan's side. Like anyway, that's all
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: weird and very funny actually. But we're all talking about
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: this story.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: And we're all wrestling with the themes and what it
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: means and how it applies to our lives. And I
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: think that that is just, you know, just an incredible thing.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: Like the conversation that I had with my 19-year-old daughter
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: on the way home from seeing the movie last night
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: was just precious and I'll never forget it. And I
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: think that that is super cool. And I think that
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Nolan is his own superhero for figuring out a way
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: to make us interested in this thing. And we should
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: be doing nothing but celebrating this achievement.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: It's really powerful to think that that conversation you had
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: on the way home is the conversation that parents have
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: been having with children for for almost 3,000 years, right?
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: Like people coming home from hearing a bard sing it
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: to them, people coming home from seeing it performed, people
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: seeing art, seeing it in museums and in statues and
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: in private homes. Like they just found a mummy that
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: was wrapped in papyrus because that's what they would use
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: to wrap the mummies. They found a mummy in Egypt
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: that was like 1900 years old And one of the
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: pieces of papyrus has lines from the Odyssey. Like somebody
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: had a copy of the Odyssey, threw it away, and
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: they used the scraps to wrap a body that's almost 2,000
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: years old. I was just in Italy and on this
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: island of Ithaca, they discovered a cup. They call it
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: Nestor's Cup, and it's just like a cup with a
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: line from the Odyssey that's like, again, 2,000 years old.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: And so just people have been quoting lines, talking about
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: these ideas, debating them. wrestling with the moral questions of them,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: saying things like, you know, I'm between Scylla and Charybdis here,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: or you're distracting me like the sirens on the rocks.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm on an odyssey here. Like they've been
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: making these references and allusions for basically as long as
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: there has been such a thing as Western civilization. And like,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: were a part of that tradition. So Nolan should be
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: celebrated not just for bringing it back, but I think
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: also for managing impressively to add a new take on it.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: I think his take is fresh and new and different.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: And there's parts that I would disagree with. There's parts
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: of it that I think I prefer the older part.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: But I think he has... he has presented an interesting
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: take on Odysseus that lands especially hard now. And as
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: you said, it's hard not to see the suitors overrunning
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: the house and just sort of looting it and destroying
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: the institutions and then go, yeah, we have a similar
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: hostile takeover of our political system here in the United States.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: This is the subtext through which we are interpreting this
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: this art. And hopefully a thousand years from now, if
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: we haven't, you know, destroyed ourselves, we'll be looking at
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: different takes of different kinds of odysseys because we'll have
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: a thousand years of history, you know, repeating the fundamentally
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: human themes from the art.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, beautifully put. I mean, there's no reason in spending
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: years trying to render a version of this story to
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: the screen unless you have an interpretation, you know, and
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: it's about like this is we're kind of like coming
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: full circle to end this with the point that we
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: raised at the beginning, which is the point is interpreting
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: it and sharing that interpretation and the discourse around that
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: interpretation and other people's versions of that story and their interpretations.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: In that synthesis, we find some indelible truths about what
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: it means to be human, what it means to live
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: a meaningful, good life, and what's important. And I think
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: that the conversations that are happening all over the world
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: right now around this, we're getting like a B-12 shot
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: right now. And I think it's really fucking cool.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'd much prefer we're debating this about Homer
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: and the Odyssey and Odysseus than superheroes. No offense to
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: the Batman movies, which I also thought were good. And
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: he imbued with real substance and symbolism. But these are
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: the myths that people used to understand. We would teach
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: kids at a young age about hubris, about loyalty, about
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: angering the gods, about moral injury. And by by sort
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: of going like, oh, that's a bunch of old dead
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: white guys, you know, or, oh, those are old stories
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: or those are racist or violent or all the different,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: you know, both the right and the left have undermined
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: our collective stories. And then our education system has underplayed them.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: They're like, oh, let's read the Hunger Games. You know,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: I think anything that brings these ancient stories to a
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: modern audience is doing something really important because we All
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: those norms that Odysseus is lamenting are being violated, are
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: being violated today, but we just don't have the shared
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: language and story and myth that helps people appreciate where
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: those norms came from and what they mean and what
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: the costs of violating them are. That, to me, is
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: one of the root causes of the political and cultural
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: nightmare we're in.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: Agreed, my friend. Well, this was super fun. I could
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: talk to you about this for a million hours. I
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: appreciate your perspective on this. Hopefully more conversations like this
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: to come. And I loved it, man.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: Anything else? Was there anything unsaid that any point that
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: you wanted to make before we ended here?
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: You know, I actually, I was curious for you, how
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: did the Calypso scene work? resonate with you as a
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: person in recovery because in the poem, he's a much
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: more active participant and conscious participant in his sort of
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: indolence and escapism. She presents him more as a person
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: who is injured physically and spiritually and is just in
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: a kind of a self-induced stupor because he can't handle
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: the pain. And it takes him time to sort of
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: claw his way out of the bottle, so to speak.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: I was curious how that scene landed with you.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was fascinating. Here you have this
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: guy who's, in a modern day context, he's a workaholic.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: He's a striver. He can't sit still. It's always about
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: the next conquest. What's he going to achieve? And the
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: thing that he's trying to achieve in the moment is
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: to get home, whether he's in denial or not, like
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: he's on this quest. But he doesn't really want to
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: go home and he can't tolerate the internal dissonance that
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: he's experiencing. On the one hand, he's being celebrated as
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: this great leader and he has this egoic attachment to
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: his identity as this great leader. And yet he also
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: knows that he is a complete piece of shit who
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: has just broken the world. And how do you reconcile
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: that internally? And that dissonance is eating away at him.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: He's already established himself as an addict, addicted to striving
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: and work, et cetera. And that blinds him from being
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: able to be the better leader that he could be.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: And so when he lands on this island and Calypso
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: gives him the lotus flower, and he takes a taste
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: of it and suddenly he can't remember and he doesn't
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: feel so bad, he's all in. Like this is like
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: the person who's tried heroin for the first time and
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh my God, like finally I can breathe.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: And all I wanna do is do this. And even
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: Calypso says to him at one point, like, wow, you
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: really like that. Like even she, you know, I know
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: she's a manipulative figure and she's got her own agenda
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: and all of that, but she's the codependent in this relationship.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: And she's more than happy to hold him captive and
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: feed him the Lotus flower because her emotional needs are,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: are being met on some level by him remaining there.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: So she's participating in this and contributing to it. And
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: the only thing that brings him out of it, the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: only way that he's able to emerge out of it
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: is because deep down, he has this knowing that, uh, that, um,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: he could be better. Like he, in order to save himself,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: he's going to have to get off of this island.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: And drugs.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like he doesn't have, there isn't like a, a,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: a well-defined like rock bottom for him, but he recognizes
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: that if he doesn't get off this island and stop eating,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: you know, these, these Lotus leaves that, you know, he's
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: never going to leave and he's going to, he's going
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: to perish on this island. And that is more painful than,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: than the pain of him having to reckon and reconcile
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: his guilt and his guilt over what happened in the
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: Trojan War and his guilt for having left his son
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: and his wife for so long. And that's ultimately what
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: wakes him up. But in this very kind of like
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: 12-step way, the only solution, the only way he's going
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: to solve this problem is isn't through like white knuckling
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: it or like trying to just will his way out
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: of it. He has to surrender. And this is beautifully
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: illustrated on screen. Like he has to let go. And like,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: I can't, like the alcoholic is like, I can't control
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: my drinking. My life is unmanageable. I have to turn
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: it over to a higher power. And Odysseus has to
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: turn it over to the gods and When he lays
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: flat on that raft and says just, you know, you
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: take me, like it's your problem now whether I get
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: home or whether I end up drowning in the sea.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: And I think that there is this really poetic and
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: beautiful parallel with the addiction recovery story in that.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: I thought the same thing. It's like there's surrender, there's
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: accepting a higher power, there's the fearless moral inventory, there's
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: the making amends. He basically goes through most of the
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: 12 steps except for.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: The part where he murders everyone. He has to remember
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: he's doing this inventory. Yeah. And he's doing a fifth
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: step with her. Like she's on the receiving end of
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: him like, explaining all of his moral failures and character defects.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: And she takes that and says, okay, now you have
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: to really surrender and take these contrary actions.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: Well, and his speech to Penelope is a similar one.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: He's making amends to the men when he goes and leaves.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: But when he lays out everything and she sees it,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: she goes, oh, you were the sea people. This is her...
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: wrestling for the first time with who her husband was
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: and what he did. And, you know, she accepts him anyway,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: which is a beautiful sort of gesture and that the
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: screen between them eventually comes down. But yeah, if, if
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: you told me Christopher Nolan was, was in recovery and
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: that was the subtext for the whole movie, it, I
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: would buy it, you know? It seems like it's there.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty well illustrated. Yeah, and
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: the final amends is him going to the West to
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: pay tribute to the dead. It's a living, they call
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: it a living amends because he can't actually make amends
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: to these people. They're already dead.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: I'll probably see it a couple more times in the theater.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: The first time I saw it in Washington, D.C. in
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: a Dolby, with Dolby Sound, but not an IMAX. I
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: saw it last night in the Chinese theater in IMAX
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: 70 millimeter, which was its own insane experience. If you
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: have made it all the way through to the end
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: of this podcast and have not seen the movie, I
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: don't know why you would still be watching or listening.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: But please make a point of going to see it,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: preferably in IMAX.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: Nine years old is too young, right? I can't take
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: my nine-year-old to.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: See it, right? I think it's too young. Yeah, I
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: think it's too young for that. But there is– this thing,
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: like I'm sitting in the Chinese theater, it's being projected in,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: there's a difference between IMAX and 70 millimeter IMAX. Like
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: there aren't very many theaters that can do this. And
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: I just thought like, this is, you know, I'm so
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: glad I'm doing this because soon this will not be
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: in the theaters and maybe five years from now they'll
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: screen it again. But, um, there was this specialness to
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: the idea that, um, we have this opportunity to have
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: this story be told to us in this way. hopefully
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: more stories like this will be rendered to the screen
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: in the wake of this massive success. All right, dude,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: I'll let you go. Thank you so much. Super fun.