Liv answers listener questions about Helen, the trouble with translations, pesky personification deities, and more. The episodes referenced were with guest Maciej Paprocki. Submit a question for a future Q&A here.
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
Hello, this is Let's talk about miss Baby, and I am your host live, who is trying to get back into the swing of this after Oh What a wild It turns out that moving your entire life seven days drive away just really disrupts kind of everything, particularly when you have ADHD.
But I am back and also a cold. I miss Friday's episode. I really wanted to continue reading more of these Q and a's last week. I mean, I'm back doing it this week, but I really wanted to do it last week. And I've had a cold that just will not go away. But it is marginally better now and I no longer sound like I am ridiculously stuffed up. So here we are. We are back. I am answering more of your very wonderful questions. I absolutely love these episodes. I love hearing what you guys want to know, and just like allowing my brain to wander into the realm of other people's questions. It results in so many interesting moments. There is almost certainly loads more that I could update about, but I'm drawing a blank on everything right now, so We're going to jump straight into your questions. The oh so disjointed life of Helen of Sparta and Hecate and the Hida Guay. Your questions my answers, Well, that title gave away the first two questions, but I couldn't resist. So the very first question that I am looking at today comes from Sonia, who says, love the show so much. I live on Hida Guay and b C. And the Hecate straight is right beside the island. I love knowing her history fits the windy straight well. Adding to your list of Greek mythological names in b C two, my question do you have any idea or thoughts on how Zeus is the king of the gods even though his powers are somewhat limited. Apollo is the god of so many important day to day things. It makes me wonder why Zeus does not control more. This is a great question, but first I have to say that I only found out that the strait between Hideguay and the mainland. I assume it's the mainland, but regardless, the strait by hid to Guay is named Hekata. I only learned that recently, and it was from a TikTok video of like the wildest fairy ride they'd ever seen in that strait, and I just thought oh my God's like, is that not absolutely perfect? I will tell you that historically it is named for a colonizing ship that was also named for Hecate. The same applies to Thetis. Has her given her name to a number of places on Vancouver Island, both a lake and an island, and again it was like named for a British navy ship whose name who was named for the Greek goddesses, So we can still appreciate them. But what I will also tell you, and I think I did this with Mikaela. Sometimes Mikaela and I chat and we try to be reasonable and professional and get through our work, or we end up with me telling her that the straight by Haidaguay is named Haketa, and then both of us going on to a map of our own province at the time and basically finding out that there are just so many mythological names in b C. I highly recommend you go look at like the mountains nearby, Like there are literally so many. I mean, there's a Sissifus mountain that I'm remembering, There's a Tantalus which I know about because it's got wine named for it. There are really so many, like really niche mythological names for the you know, many of the thousands of mountains in the province. But thank you, And that was a good like goodbye to b C for a little while too, because spoilers, I moved to Ontario as a province highly met compared to b C, but as the city, Toronto wins everything in my mind. Now to your actual question, So it's absolutely interesting that Zeus is the king of the gods, even though his powers are somewhat limited. And I have answers slash thoughts, but what you've really done is remind me of an episode or I think it was ended up being two conversation episodes that I recorded with and I'm hoping I'm still pronouncing his name correctly MATCHI proproski and we had so much fun, and I was fucking fascinated by all of the stuff he had to share with me. But he really looked at the gods as as like these lineages that kind of you know, one after the other, and how it kind of stops with Zeus in that way where you know, it starts with Uranos, then Kronos overthrows Uranos, and then Zeus overthrows Cronos. But Apollo never overthrows Zeus, even though, like you said, like objectively, you know, we would imagine that his powers are a little broad or a little more like wide ring jing than Zeus' is are. But I think it just I mean, there's a lot going on in terms of the development of these deities and their stories, but the god of the sky being the divine god, is wide ranging across the Mediterranean and beyond. It's a very common notion in ancient mythologies broadly, and I think that's just because of the nature of the sky itself. So while we might consider, you know, Apollo's divine powers to be you know, less limited, to be you know, bigger, to be more important to us today, but conceptually, the sky surrounds everything, and so as the god of the sky, he was always going to be the king of the gods. It's why Uranus was first and Kronos was next, and then Zeus. So I think that that's where that's coming in where Apollo definitely, you know, I think story wise and based on the sources, like, there's definitely this kind of tension that Apollo had the potential to be as big as Zeus, to maybe even be a sky god and that you know, it didn't happen in the quote unquote lifetime of the divinities as we have them. But I do still think it definitely comes down to the nature of what makes what is all encompassing in that realm would be this guy. There is nothing else, right, it's wrapped around the earth itself, and so he was kind of always going to be the biggest even if we today are like, oh, Apollo is the god of like all of these different things and they're so important on the day to day and blah blah blah, Like it just still comes down to the general nature of mythology, the time it was developed and the function that it served. But thank you for asking that. Just generally, I would recommend listening to those episodes I did back then. I will try to link to them in the episode's description, but either way, now you make me want to reach out to Matching again and hopefully you have another episode because it was really good and just like so deep in the mythology. Thank you, Sonia, and also I mean Hi and the Hi Toguay. Next, I have a question from Cole and they said, I'm thinking about writing a biography of sorts about Helen of Sparta slash Troy other than the Iliad? What are good sources for learning about the life of Helen birth to death? Does Helen die? I seem to recall that she's supposed to be immortal along with one of her brothers. Also, what translation of the Iliad do you most recommend? Okay, first, the easy question, It's been a long time since I read the Iliad. I desperately, desperately want to read Emily Wilson's translation because I just know that I will love it. So I will recommend Emily Wilson's newest translation of the Iliad even without having read it, because her translation of the Odyssey was so great and I know, I mean, I read so much about her mentality at the time I really need to finally just reach out and try to get her on the show. But I will happily recommend it even not having read it. As to your earlier questions, no, and by no, I just mean unfortunately what you want doesn't exist. But that is part of why Helen is so interesting, right, But it's also broadly part of why Greek mythology is so interesting. There are no sources for any character that gives them, you know, a story from birth to death that wasn't the function of mythology, and so it just simply doesn't exist. There are I don't know if there are really even much in the way of text sources that describe Helen's birth. I believe it mostly comes to us in the form of visual representations, and then people have developed, you know, a theoretical understanding of the story based on those visuals. But you know, the Iliad is what we have for Helen in terms of those earliest forms, and then from there you're really gonna have to look at, like, I mean, honestly comfortable zillion other sources. So I would recommend things like THEOI dot com or toppost text, both of which allow you to really peruse like a very very long list of the ancient sources. Because when it comes to any character like her, I mean any character broadly, but Helen so specifically is an example of you know, this, this character that was so important in so many ways and for so many hundreds of years that you're looking at mentions of her, you know, across the board, these little bits and pieces that might say something about her, her life. Betany Hughes has written a good nonfiction source on her if you're looking at you know, contemporary sources. But otherwise it's just the nature of mythology, right in terms of her death, Like, yes, you're right that she's immortal, but also she does die, and again that's because we're talking about so many sources over so many hundreds of years. So like she is immortal in terms of her divine parentage and like the general idea of her being this daughter of Zeus, but she also you know, eventually there there's not no real there's not really such a thing as immortality among characters like hers. It's really hard to explain even where that might be coming from, because she is not a god, and so she doesn't just you know, exist in the broad swath of mythology. There is a story of her marrying Achilles in the afterlife, but it's just like one little reference somewhere. I don't even know where it is offhand. And so like we have this idea that like, according to at least one person, you know, she did end up in the Elysian fields in that kind of more stylized like happier quote unquote, like you know, the sort of the heroic afterlife kind of region, she said to Mary Achilles. But of course that contradicts all of this other stuff. You know that we know of both Helen and of Achilles and all of these things. So that's all to say. I mean, I think it's a very worthwhile endeavor. You're gonna have to look at a bazillion different sources, and I wish you all of the luck in the world. But it's a tough one with any kind of ancient character, any kind of mythological figure, because there is no concept of an entire lifetime. There is no concept even of like a set version of her as a person, as a character, like there is no you know, canon, there is no confirmed anything, and so you're just really looking at like a thousand years worth of people who all had different ideas and envisioned her in different ways and for different reasons and with different results. It's not a very helpful answer, but it was honest, all right. This next one comes from Crystal, who says, I was curious if you know anything about the goddess acts. She is only mentioned in a few epic poems. One was he Siad Shield of Heracles, and I haven't been able to find too much information on her. Outside of that and a few sources online that I'll lead back to each other. Professor of Greek mythology at Boston didn't have any additional information either. In the library in my area did not have anything either. I'm curious to hear what you know, and if you've done an episode on her Andrew Portraits of Aclis, and I'm quite honestly obsessed with the few things I've discovered, feel free to check it out. My ig is slug lord dot art for any listeners who want to check that out. So thank you, Crystal. No, So, here's the thing you have stumbled upon. You know a question that I get variations of with every Q and A episode, And I'm always happy to respond to questions like this because I know that so many people encounter this, and I encountered it myself very you know, like a decade ago, oh gosh, longer than that, fifteen years ago, when I was trying to write my friend first novel of Greek mythology. You know this this idea that like, you fall for this character that you read about once and then you're like, I need to know everything, but it just turns out there is no everything I will say, like, I don't I don't know aclus offhand. I went to my go to source for for questions like this and characters like this, which is Theoi dot com. I'm sure you've gone there because I imagine it's showing me the two epic poems that you've heard of. So you know, according to to Theoi, which is is a pretty pretty accurate place to look, she was this personification spirit of the quote death missed the clouding of the eyes preceding death, and so yes, she is exactly what I imagined she would be, and that she is a personification deity. Like again, the hundreds of others that exist that are seems so interesting because they're this goddess of this very specific thing and you think, oh God, like the death missed, the cloud of the eyes preceding death, Like that's so interesting. I want to know everything about her. But the thing about these deities is that that is everything about her. And that's the point, right, Like she is she is the death mist the clouding of the eyes preceding death, like that is what she is. And so she, you know, isn't going to be in stories as this like physical being, because she is just the death missed, right, she is just this concept, and so you know that that really applies to just so many you know, Nike, the Goddess of Victory, Nicks, the Goddess of Night. You know, all of these like I there, they come up in every single Q and A episode I do because they are there are literally hundreds, and it doesn't make them any less interesting. It just means that, like they serve this very specific purpose. And what you need to remember too is that like these these characters are personifications, like they are characters, but they are not characters like we know them. And simultaneously while being characters, you have to remember that actually that's just the word, right, So it's simply the word. You know. According to THEOI, it says that achlis means misted eyes. So it's it's a character, but it is also just a word. It is the word they had to describe this concept, and that was personified because basically all concepts like this were personified. Like it is. It's coming from this early means of understanding the world, right, It's coming from this need they had to understand life and death and everything in between. And so they you know, they personified these things. It helps to to to understand, it helps to like fully realize reality and humanity. It's just giving these concepts personifications, just this idea that they are also this divine thing, Like there is a divine thing for a divine name, divine character for like everything sleep, dreams, really specific access aspects of sleep and dreams, like each of the winds, the seasons, the hours, the like everything right there, there are personifications for everything, and that's purely coming from the very nature of mythology. What it means is you're never going to find a source that actually tells you about aclss as a as a physical character who can really you know, interact in a story or if you do, you're coming from from a different place. And so I'm looking at this Theoe and the only two that it lists, and again it's pretty accurate. But at the same time, like especially with a personification deity like this, where like the word is also just the word. You know, you're probably gonna be able to find the word elsewhere, but that's because it's the word. But yeah, so that list he seed the shield of Heracles, which I'll say, like it's speculated and it probably not. You know, a shield of Heracles is not as attributed to he see it as some of the other works. It's very fragmentary. You know, there's there's not a lot going on. It doesn't really have a story. It's literally just the description of the shield of Heracles. So there's not a lot happening there in terms of like fleshing out a character. And then the other reference it has here is known as his Dianasia Ca, which also doesn't really seem to give Acclus much of a character. It just literally is like a person that did like it says, I believe it's referred to hera she procured from thesalian Achlis treacherous flowers of the field. Like, you know, it's this concept again she got this from the death Mist and so like it still doesn't provide this anything extra. But also one of the things you have to keep in mind if you're looking at a source like known as as Dynysia Cu, like very specifically this one, because it comes up a lot, because it has it references a lot of characters that people are often really interested in, and it gives them more of a story than most other sources. But What you have to remember about this is this is known as as dynasia c cannot be really fully described as mythology. It is referencing mythology. It is a reception of mythology. It is interpreting mythology. But it is not reasonably a mythological source. And that's because it's from the fifth century CE. It's well into the Christian period. It is like, it is very late. Nonas is writing nine hundred or so years after Euripities. Let alone he see it, you know, if he Seid was real. But like, regardless of the time period, Noonas is well over one thousand years after the works of he Sid and the Homeric texts a thousand years. So it is like, you know, a word being introduced by Shakespeare and then got it. Well, it hasn't even been a thousand years since shaspeare so like it's not even a good example. That's how much time had passed, right, So Nonus is not giving us a mythology that we can fully understand to have been ancient Greek. What Nonas is doing, which also it's like the longest surviving Greek epic, it is so fucking long. But what he's doing is re writing the life and tales of Dionysus into this big epic. And so while it is valid, it's an interesting source and it could tell us lots of interesting things, it can't reasonably be defined as mythology because it's about it's over a thousand years after the mythology was being developed as as a concept as like this core creation of the Greek world. Like by the time that Nonas was writing, you know, the Greeks had already been conquered by the Romans, you know, and then the and then became the Christian Empire. All of these different things have happened that really affects Like him writing in the Christian period means that like he is intentionally writing about like basically almost theoretical stuff like this, these gods that are so pagan and like a threat kind of and so he is you know, I don't know enough about him as a person as a writer, but like him as a source, like you're not it's not really it's not really ancient in the same way, very late antiquity. Just lots going on there. That doesn't make him not an interesting source. It just means that you have to like contextualize what you're getting. And all of that is a ridiculously long way of saying that Aclus seems like a very incredible and interesting concept, But there is I I don't believe that there is any source that you're going to find that actually tells you about her as a character with any kind of characteristics or personality. I don't think that that exists. I can't say for sure, but if it exists, I just I don't think it does. But it doesn't make her any less interesting. It's again like this thing that people find to be incredibly frustrating about the ancient Greek world, and I don't blame them, but it's one of those things that I love most. I think it's so interesting to look at these not as characters with personality, but as these concepts and what they as concepts and personifications. Like said about the ancient world, I could go on forever. This one comes from Liam, who asks how much can the different translations change the myths within them? As someone who has not yet read multiple translations of the same text, I would be very interested to know whether there are actually noticeable differences between them. If there are any, do they tend to be more in the form of personal biases, peaking through different interpretations, or simply finding more accurate ways to portray what was written in a different language. PS. I love the show. I've been listening since late twenty eighteen, and I'm hoping to become a patron again when it's feasible. Thank you, Thank you for making the show that entertained my brain through at all the boredom of high school, and we'll certainly do so throughout the rest of my life. Thank you, Liam So Yes, so, translations can change a story immensely, immensely. That's not to say that they always do, but they can. So it's difficult to find a way of explaining this in any kind of succinct way. But like, the thing you have to keep in mind is that, I mean, not only are languages different in terms of the way they sound and look and all of those things that we think about when we think of a language that we either do or do not know, but they also like conceptualize things different because humans will always conceptualize things based on their environment and their just existence as a human right, and so like translations will always have inherent biases. And it's funny I was actually just talking with someone for their dissertation about this and then jump directly into this question which I didn't know is there. But that's all to say, like the it's so it's so difficult. So transfers will always insert their bias into the text, not necessarily intentionally, And I don't mean to suggest it as if like that makes it bad or problematic or anyway. It's just the nature of humanity. Like the text themselves had the biases of the authors that wrote them, let alone anyone that might have copied it and made a change. Like also one thing to keep in mind and which I don't even know enough about, but like, there are not there's not just one version of even the Iliad or the Odyssey. There is there are like little variations and things that have been found or you know, might have changed over the years. And like there is you know, we now have what we consider to be one version of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but there's not. It's not like just one version came to us from the ancient world. There there was a lot of scholarly work that went into kind of deciding on what is reasonably the most quote unquote accurate you know version of that story, and that's just the nature of the ancient world. But then when you get into language itself, like words don't just automatically translate into other words in another language. There is so much going on, there is intention there are you know, the fact that the ancient world is inherently going to have different ways of conceptualizing things. You know, this goes right back to the question about Aklis. The ancient world conceptualized this death mist as a goddess named Aklis, whereas like, I mean, I've never thought about a death mist clouding the eyes before because I, as a you know, lucky Western, lucky Canadian in a colonized world, like, would never have to conceptualize that because I live in this perfect little bubble of the West where we only protect ourselves and kill brown people just for the sake of not being Judeo Christian. Anyway, I will never conceptualize that. And aren't I lucky? You know? And so if I were to translate something, it is going to be incredibly different from the way that a Palestinian in Gaza is going to translate something because they have lived it so many times that you know, it means something completely different to them. That is a really tragic and you know, depressing example, but I think it's a really good example about how like every single thing about a human's life defines how they interpret a story, how they interpret a word. I think about this a lot because I know very basic. You know, I existed in Canada, Slash was born in Quebec, so I should know more. But like I have like this base level knowledge of French, and if I have, you know, if I'm watching something with that it's in French and with subtitles, sometimes I will I will notice a difference where I think, like, oh, well, you know, the French really, like a literal translation of the French word would be something different than the translation that they gave us in the English subtitles. A lot of the time, that's because like there is a literally the same word, you know, in French and in English, but that doesn't mean that the word always means the same thing or has the same intention in both languages, because language represents personhood and humanity and like a bazillion different things. I've said bazillion a lot of times in this episode, I can't stop. And so like that's all to say that translations are always going to be different. Sometimes it's really noticeable, sometimes it's not. And that's not even including the fact that we've been You know, if you are looking up a translation, you could be finding one from anywhere in the last two hundred, three hundred years even, And so imagine that what's happened in that time, and how they conceptualize things differently, and how somebody writing three hundred years ago would imagine, you know, the meaning behind a Greek word versus somebody now, right, Like, it's always going to be so different. It's always going to have these And so I personally, when I'm looking for a translation, I want something ideally, I want it recent, I want it by I look for translations that aren't by old white men, because I'm most interested in the way that people who aren't old white men take in these stories and the way they would interpret them to give you just a little, just the slightest taste of what I mean without dragging this on too long. So okay, this is I believe the oldest translation of the Odyssey that I have. It's by Alexander Pope, and it's so old that it doesn't obviously have even like a copyright line. The first lines of the Odyssey from this version, which is I believe from like at least one hundred and fifty years ago, are the man for Wisdom's various arts, renowned long exercised in woes, Oh muse resound. And the next we have the Samuel Butler translation, which which is one of the other oldest. This is the one I read in when I did the full readings. I believe it's also about one hundred and fifty years old or so. And the first lines of the Samuel Butler translation of the Odyssey are tell me, oh muse of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Right, that's completely different, completely different. Then we'll move on to another pretty darn old one, at least as old as nineteen forty four by E. V.
Re You.
This is a really old Penguin Classics edition and this as I read it, I don't even think it's reasonably a translation. Oh interesting, Oh wow, this is me reading at hand. This is a very odd version, but it still claims to be just the Odyssey. A new translation by ev Reu, and it begins the hero of the tale which I beg the muse to help me tell is that resourceful man who roamed the why world after he had sacked the Holy Citadel of Troy. Again completely different. These are all proposing to be the Odyssey, the first line or two of the Odyssey, and I'm not saying they are not. What they are are different interpretations by different people at different time periods, who have different biases that are just inherent to their being. I'm not done either. This next one is a the Lobe Classical Library version. It's by translation by at Murray. Tell me Muse of the Man of Many Devices, driven far astray after he had sacked the Sacred Citadel of Troy. This one you can see like we're both getting, you know, the Citadel of Troy kind of thing. We're getting some similarities between this and the last one, but still very different. This Man of Many Devices and the next I'm going to read the Latimore translation, which is one of the most common ones you can find, generally acknowledged to be a pretty good and very worthwhile translation to read if you really want, you know, an actual understanding of the Odyssey. This one begins, tell me Muse of the Man of many ways, who has driven far journeys after he had sacked Troy's Sacred Citadel. Again, as we get closer in years, they're getting to be more similar, but they're still different. The words that we people talk about this a lot when it comes to these first lines of the Odyssey, the way to describe Odysseus. Right, so we have the man of many devices, the man of many ways. There's these different ways to describe him. And now I'm going to read the last one, Emily Wilson's translation. It's only a few years old, and I'm really interested in what she did. We're going to look at it. This is how Emily Wilson, you'll know, the first woman that I've read. While often she has claimed or not she she has not claimed it, but often people claim that she was the first woman to translate the Odyssey. That's not true. If she's just the first woman to have translated it in I don't know a great number of years, and certainly you know it got the most wide read reaction, which is wonderful. This is Emily Wilson's first lines of the Odyssey. Tell me about a complicated man, muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy. So that too, right, It is objectively the same words that are the same purpose, the same point. It is the same you know first lines as at least the last two that I read the ones before are you know again, they're so much older that they don't even really resemble this, and yet they are all working off the original, the same original Greek text. And even as I say this, I realize it's possible that the butler and Alexander Pope are not. They might be working off of a Latin translation that came first. That was also quite common. There is also a time when Latin was like the ancient language that people read in ancient Greek hadn't been read as much, and so people were translating based off of an already Latin translation of the Odyssey. It's there's so much going on, and so it's just another good example. But the way Emily Wilson translates it is so she had a lot of flack for saying, tell me about a complicated man, for saying for using the word complicated to describe Odysseus, whereas say, you know, it was Latimore who said man of many ways, and the other one said, what was it? Man of many turns? That's another way. It means complicated. What they're saying is that, like, you know, there's lots going on with him, there's a lot to break down. A man of many ways, a man of many turns, a complicated man. But because Emily Wilson is a woman, and because the word complicated is has like a slightly different connotation as something more. I mean, a man of many ways doesn't mean that much in English, but it's a more literal translation of the Greek. So the Greek is Yeah, that a quite literal translation. As far as I've spoken to a lot of a lot of scholars about this, a most little translation would be a man of many turns? But what does that mean in English? Very little? You have to really think about, like what could that mean in English? Whereas Emily Wilson puts it as complicated, that means lots in English, that makes perfect sense. It doesn't make it different from the Greek. It's just a different way of understanding it. It is a way of putting it into phrasing and terminology that is more accessible to us today. The men get angry because they think that it means that she's shitting on Odysseus, even though hey, spoiler, being complicated is just being human. And so you know, there really is, there's so much that goes into a translation. And yes, naturally I spent like what ten to fifteen minutes answering that question, but I I mean, I really like, I'll take any excuse to read you these opening lines of the Odyssey with a purpose like that, with this question being asked, because I think it's really easy to imagine that translating a work is just like you read the words in one language and then you put them into the words of the other language. But that is simply not how language works. And that's because languages themselves are developed in this very personal way, in this very specific way to the culture and what they encounter and what they care about. This Man of Many turns means everything in ancient Greek, and it means very little in English. Complicated, though, means something, and so it really I think it's just so interesting to look at the ways that these translations can affect how we see the stories. I'm not even being critical, it's just a nature of what translation you read will fully affect how you think about a story. It's unavoidable. It's not good and it's not bad. It's just the nature of translation and language, let alone the fact that you know, there's almost three thousand years in between the development of this story and us today, Like there's just so much going on. So that is all very long winded way of saying that translations mean everything, and and it I really do recommend if you if you really want to understand this stuff into if you're interested in this nature of translation, like read a couple others, or even just find a few, like either online or even in a library. Go in and do what I just did. Find what you can you know are going to be the same lines, and look at the ways that that different people interpret those lines. It's always going to be affected by who they are, where they grew up, what languages they speak, what language they know, how they came to ancient Greek, how they understand the ancient Greek world, Like everything is defined by people. It's why it's funny I'm going to make this connection to my last Q and A episode or I talked about AI, and it's why I think that AI is not only useless, but dangerous, because in order for us to appreciate art and literature and history, we have to understand that all of those things are inherently tied to humanity, and they absolutely cannot be removed from humanity without removing what makes them tick. What makes art special, what makes literature special, is inextricably tied to the humans who are reading it, interpreting it, translating it, understanding it, taking it in in whatever physical way, whatever intellectual way, Like everything is so defined by human beings that that's what it means to have all these different translations. And that's why AI is terrible. And that's even ignoring the fact that again it produces more carbon than like fucking everything else we've ever done. Like it's also why NFTs are equally terrible and bitcoin is equally terrible, because in order to create that stuff, it produces more carbon than like every car on the goddamn road. It's really bad. And so I've found a way to make this into a fuck AI rant, which I got a couple of comments really of people who really loved that I did that, comments on Spotify, and so thank you, I really it was nice to hear that that my point got across, because I'm not trying to shit on people who enjoy AI or are are having fun with it. I just want to point out what else is going on there, and why it may not be as exciting or new age as people think, and why it is is dangerous in a whole mariat of ways. That was. It was not many questions that I answered, and yet we're already at forty five minutes. So this has been so much fun. I love you all so much for asking these questions. I'm going to do another one on Friday because I don't think I have anything otherwise set up, and there are so many more and I'm really enjoying this. So if you didn't get your question answered today, I will probably do it again in a handful of days, provided this cold does not come back, because that's what keeps happening. But it won't this time. It won't. Thank you all so much. Let's talk about myths. Baby is written and produced by me Live Albert Mikayla Panga Wish is the Harmonies to my Olympians, the Incredible producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the my podcast network. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Uh. Sign up for our new newsletter at mythsbaby dot com slash newsletter. No, I didn't send one out in November, and yes, I hopefully will send one out in December. I had all of these like wild, incredible ideas of like all this new stuff I could be doing, and I was so full of it and I'm so excited still, but then I was like, ah, you came up with all of these ideas and then literally had to spend basically a month moving because it took seven days to drive here. I'm just gonna ramble a tiny bit if you want to listen, enjoy it took seven days to drive here. We had two cats because, as I recently announced on the Instagram, I did adopt a cat from Greece and he is flip and adorable but also a kitten. And then I have another kitten, or rather cat, who is a rescue who's terrified of literally every human on this planet. And we moved them across the country in a U haul truck and it was wild. And then I still had to go back to Victoria to do a speaking engagement and also to like wrap up my old apartment. And on the first night that I did that, I was staying with my mom and the department building three doors down from hers, it was unfinished and so uninhabited. Thank god, I went up in a full inferno, full inferno. We got evacuated at like one am and just watch this five story building turn to dust before our eyes. And then didn't have power for two days, and then I had to fly back, and then I immediately got an absolutely terrible cold that's hung on for two weeks. And anyway, that's all to say, there will be a newsletter soon. I'm really excited about it. I promise. I've got so much going on. I think January is gonna really be it. We're gonna launch a ton of new stuff, even more exciting things happening for me and the show. I'm really trying to find all the ways possible to get the ads out of the show as much as possible, to really get them back to a more reasonable amount, hopefully with me reading some so they're less annoying. I promise I'm working on it, and I'm working on AD Free, and I'm working on this whole big big, big, big big Patreon rebrand. I think I mentioned I wasn't going to still use Patreon, but FYI spoilers, I'm going to. It's gonna be really great. We're going to offer so much more, and it's still going to be fully available free with ads. No matter what. That's all to say, I'm really excited. My ADHD is not in check right now. I'll be back on Friday with more answers to your questions. I am live and I really love this shit, particularly translations. Thank you all for asking those questions. What a joy