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Oh, my back hurts so much.

It is not the sound of my back cracking in case you want to share. I'm not of The Newst Olympian. My name is Mike Schumer. I'm the titular Newst Olympian. I'm a 33-year-old man who never heard the Percy Jackson books as a kid. I read them as an adult because I was on a quest to determine if society had been sleeping on the series and I said yes. And now I'm seeing if society is currently sleeping on the ongoing Percy Jackson and the Olympians TV show.

I'm very excited to do more episodes about it. We did episodes about season one. Now we're doing

season two. If this is your first time listening to the newest Olympian, hello and welcome.

Most traditionally, the episodes of this podcast are me making my way through the book series.

I've read the first five Percy Jackson books. I'm currently on the House of Hades in the Heroes of Olympus series, but we are pausing our coverage. We just finished Mark of Athena. Now we're going to talk about this and then we'll do House of Hades afterwards. But we're going to be doing an episode for each episode of the TV show, kind of just going through it beat by beat, talking about the things we liked, things that we enjoyed trying to guess what happens next.

And then there will also be some bonus episodes spliced in in between, potentially with

interview footage from the junkets that I did, other press stuff, maybe an episode talking

about how I was fortunate enough to attend the premiere.

And speaking of that premiere, let's introduce our guest for this episode, someone who's been on the podcast a lot, and she was my date to the premiere. And speaking of that premiere, let's introduce our guest for this

episode, someone who's been on the podcast a lot. And she was my date to the world premiere of

Percy Jackson and the Olympian Season 2 in Los Angeles. It's Kelly Schubert, Kelly. How's it going?

Hello, it's going good. I'm so delighted to be here sitting so close to you sharing a single

microphone. The context here is that we were at the premiere in

LA. We today caught a flight to visit some family for the holidays. And we've got a little tiny

microphone set up in an office in an in-laws place. And there are some toddlers rambunctuously playing

...