Beowulf w/ Maria Dahvana Headley
Spirits: Mythology, Legends, & Folklore
Multitude
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2020
⏱️ 56 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bro! Gather round the mead hall, because we’re gonna tell the story of Beowulf, talk the nuance of translation, and gush over warrior queens with author Maria Dahvana Headley.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of murder, violence, toxic masculinity, misogyny/sexism, rape/sexual assault, and xenophobia.
Guest
Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times-bestselling author of eight books, most recently BEOWULF: A NEW TRANSLATION (MCD x FSG). THE MERE WIFE (MCD x FSG), a contemporary adaptation of Beowulf, was named by the Washington Post as one of its Notable Works of Fiction in 2018. You can follow her on Twitter at @mariadahvana.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib (and listen to his interview on My 90s Playlist here). Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books
- Merch: Check out our new digital merch, including the Cool Cryptid Compendium, at spiritspodcast.com/merch!
- Multitude: Check out the other shows on Multitude!
Sponsors
- Skillshare is an online learning community where you can learn—and teach—just about anything. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com/spirits and the first 1,000 people to use our link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership. This week Julia recommends “Plants at Home: Uplift Your Spirit & Your Space” by Christopher Griffin.
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Find Us Online
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Transcripts are available at http://spiritspodcast.com/episodes. To buy merch, hear us on other podcasts, contact us, find our mailing address, or download our press kit, head on over to http://spiritspodcast.com.
About Us
Spirits was created by Julia Schifini, Amanda McLoughlin and Eric Schneider. We are founding members of Multitude, an independent podcast collective and production studio. Our music is "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. |
| 0:04.1 | Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. |
| 0:07.4 | I'm Amanda. And I'm Julia. And this is episode 208, Beowulf with Maria Devana Headley. |
| 0:13.5 | Amanda, you need to redo the intro because you need to say your full title. |
| 0:19.2 | Oh, Julia, don't embarrass me. First, I go on vacation for a week, |
| 0:22.9 | and then I swing back and I'm like, oh, hello, I am 30 into 30 media luminary man McLaughlin. |
| 0:28.5 | Yes, that's correct. And we should say it every time. I mean, shout out to Morgan Jerkins. |
| 0:33.7 | Shout out to Jarvis, our friend and sad boy. Shout out to Molly Oster Tag. Several of my friends and people I admire in Morgan's case, we're not friends, but I'd love to be, who are also on the Forbes list. It is fully meaningless, guys. I put money in my savings account for the first time in more than two years today. So it doesn't equate to rich and fame and all that stuff. But it is quite nice. |
| 0:59.3 | And I hope that everybody is, I don't know, as amazed as I am, that the word multitude is in Forbes. |
| 1:02.3 | I'm just going to put a shiny crown upon your head. |
| 1:04.2 | It doesn't mean anything, but it looks nice. Thank you. |
| 1:05.1 | Thank you so much. |
| 1:06.5 | I saw it on the internet about 10 minutes before I had to take a COVID test. |
| 1:10.0 | And now I'm here. So it's |
| 1:11.0 | been a whirlwind of a morning. Yes, it really has. But let's talk about our new episode. |
| 1:15.2 | That's right. I was, I'm also, this should be the highlight of the week. Because I saw screenshots |
| 1:19.9 | on Twitter, as I'm sure many of you did a few months ago, about a Beowulf translation that uses the word bro, which is incredibly fun and wonderful and actually beautiful and evocative |
| 1:29.4 | and tragic and lovely and smart. And so I shot my shot and emailed Maria's publicist and she got |
| 1:35.1 | back to me. So we got to talk with Maria all about her translation of Beowulf, about the work of |
| 1:40.8 | translation in general, what the heck this text is because I haven't actually read it before. And so I was like, wait, is this just about like peasants and stuff? And she's like, |
| 1:47.7 | no, it's like an ancient tale of kings. And it was wonderful. Yes, I'm very, very excited. We had |
| 1:51.9 | such a fun conversation with Maria. And I would have her on the show or have a drink with her any day. Absolutely. That's definitely the test we put to our guests is like, would we have a drink and have you back? |
... |
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