Ha ha ha ha ha!

Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy diamond to mythology, legends, and

folklore, every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda

and I'm Julia and today we are joined by our new friend, but a good friend. Lexi, let's see

we'll go to the show. Hi, thank you guys. Now Lexi, can you tell the listeners a little bit about

yourself and what you might be talking about here on the podcast if they didn't, you know,

scope out the episode title before they start listening? Sure, sure. So my name is Lexi Henning.

I am a podcaster, but I will say that I work at UCLA for something called the Portavude Center

for the study of the Iranian world. It's a research center centering on ancient Persia, although

that's not what I'm talking about today, but essentially the background for what we are talking

about today is that I picked up my bachelors in classical studies. So the study of ancient Greece

and Rome, although I always liked Greece more as you showed as you showed. Exactly. And I've always

just loved ancient history and mythology. And so that's what I spend a lot of my life on. Yeah.

And I think what we're going to be talking about something very exciting today, something that we've

talked a lot about on the show, peripherally, I suppose, like we've touched on stories, but never

the overarching story of what that is. It's been a rest stop, Julia, a service station. We've been

like, well, we're here. Let's just dip into the Arby's real quick and then get back on the road.

But we've never like made it a destination. Yes. But now the destination is here, folks. We're

talking about it. We are talking about the Iliad and the Odyssey. And I'm so excited to be talking

about those things because man, they really inform a lot about Greek mythology, huh? I mean,

it really sets the basis for every epic ever. Yeah. And one thing that we can definitely get into

later is that, you know, this is the best. It's the original. I am what I consider a Homer purist,

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