Show Notes
ODYSSEY: THE PODCAST - my 14 episode, 24 hour sequel to Trojan War: The Podcast - is now recorded and waiting for you. Subscribe through your usual podcast provider, or go to odysseythepodcast.com! THE STORY: (40 minutes) Zeus, King of the Gods, hosts a wedding. An uninvited guest crashes, bringing an unwelcome gift. In mere moments, all Hades breaks loose. And the wheels of Western culture’s most awesome epic - the Trojan War - are set in motion.
THE COMMENTARY: DID THE TROJAN WAR REALLY "HAPPEN"? (9 minutes; begins at 40:00) In this episode of post-story commentary I spend some time talking about how the Trojan War epic, though over three thousand years old, remains deeply embedded in contemporary culture. I note how we are all familiar with the names (Achilles, Helen of Troy, Hector), the images (The Trojan Horse), and the concepts (“the face that launched a thousand ships”; “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”; “his Achilles’ Heel”) that originate in this epic. Then I review the “history” of the story: from a war that may or may not have happened circa 1250 BCE, through five hundred years of post-war “oral tradition”, up to Homer’s written account – The Iliad - in 700 BCE, and on to the contributions of further storytellers, including the Roman poet Virgil in 19 BCE. I confess to how wonderfully liberating it is for a storyteller like me to be free to sort through the myriad sources, stories and texts (many of which contradict each other), and then “glue them together” into one big, cohesive, entertaining plot. I conclude the post-story commentary by definitively answering the burning question of whether the Trojan War ever really happened.
Hope you have fun.
Jeff RELATED IMAGES
More from TROJAN WAR: THE PODCAST
Odyssey: The Podcast picks up right where Trojan War: The Podcast leaves off: with the city of Troy a smoldering ruin, and Odysseus staring out across the wine-dark sea, readying to guide his surviving 600 soldiers back home to Ithaka. The fourteen episodes of Odyssey: The Podcast follow the identical format of Trojan War: The Podcast--an entertaining story (this time grounded in Homer's Odyssey) followed by Post Chapter Commentaries. Your storyteller and traveling companion, Jeff Wright, remains the same!
THE STORY: (54 minutes) A queen is visited by a terrifying nightmare. Priests discern what the nightmare means. And a king is faced with a soul-wrenching dilemma: “do I kill my child, or allow my city to burn?” And the king’s decision …? Well, you’ll have to listen in to see how that turns out.
THE STORY: (38 minutes) A miraculous child survives not only the homicidal raging of an angry demi-god, but also an icy immersion in a magic river and the venomous bite of a deadly snake. Then the child turns two, and his real adventures begin.
THE STORY: (30 minutes) Hermes, the messenger god, locates a “highly qualified” judge for a beauty contest between three powerful, vain and vindictive goddesses. One of the goddesses is cruising to what appears to be certain victory, until her competitors propose a “twist” on the contest rules. And our judge – a boy you already know – is suddenly confronted with a choice: political power, military glory, or some smokin' hot … But you'll have to tune in, if you want to find out exactly what happens.
THE STORY: (30 minutes) The transition from shepherd to Crown Prince of Troy isn’t easy, but with some help from Aphrodite (and from the royal harem), Paris manages to settle in to Troy quite nicely. A road trip to the the Greek kingdom of Sparta follows, during which Paris discovers that Aphrodite keeps all of her promises.