Oh, hi.

Hello there.

This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby!

And I am your host, that woman, who just… well, love Smithology.

I am live.

You all know how much I love my conversation episodes.

It's so much fun to get to speak with people who have such specialized and fascinating

knowledge, and today's episode is yet another instance of that.

I spoke with Helen Loveitt, who quite literally wrote the book on the Argonautica.

Helen is a professor of classics at Nottingham University in the UK, and joined me to talk

all things Argo.

I have covered that story for all of you before, even read you all the Argonautica itself,

but one thing I haven't been able to dive into until this conversation is just how

old and how widespread the myth of Jason and the Argonauts really is.

It was known as Far Back as the Homeric Epics, where it's referenced to having already

happened, and it's spanned all the way into the Roman period and far, far beyond.

Jason may be one of the most boring, if not one of the most malicious heroes, but fortunately,

there is so, so, so much more to the story of the Argonautica than just Jason.

This was such a fun conversation.

We talked about so many different bits and pieces of the Argonautica story from its origins

all the way into some of the modern representations of it.

We talked about Medea, obviously, myth, broadly, sourcing, because I always want to talk

...