This week on Myths and Legends, we're starting the Odyssey, the story of Odysseus' journey home

from the Trojan War, or we'll learn how to make a week-long road trip last several years,

and how that all you can eat goat cheese buffet might not be all it's cracked up to be.

The creature this week is the personification of ignorance and chaos, who eats clouds.

This is Myths and Legends, Episode 205A, Man of Constant Sorrow.

This is a podcast where I tell stories from mythology and folklore. Some are incredibly

popular stories you might think you know, but with surprising origins, and others are stories

that might be new to you, but are definitely worth listening. You don't need to have heard the

previous episodes in the Trojan War to listen today. You can just jump right in. As a refresher

and a bit of a backstory, Odysseus, the King of Ithica, was one of the Greek kings who fought in

the Trojan War, and very long story short, they won. They burned in Sac Troy, made all their sacrifices

and set off toward home, and immediately got separated. We're going to jump right into a situation

that might just be Odysseus's absolute worst day on his trip home, though there's fierce

competition for that, and then we'll backtrack a bit and see how he got there.

Odysseus heard the stones strike the flint. So the first light since the door choked out the last

of it the previous night. There was an eye, an eye seeking, and then diminishing darkness.

Some hid, some preyed. More than a few of his bravest, men who had survived the horrors of Troy

wept all through the night. Odysseus didn't. He set up, doing what he did best, thinking.

The hands found them before the eye did. There's a scuffling. They tried to run.

Odysseus just sat there and accepted his fate. But as he heard the screaming, scuffling, and slamming

of two of his men being turned into ragdolls, he allowed himself a sigh of relief. As the light from

the fire grew, the mangled, grotesque edges of his men took form. Then the one eye giant

...