Conversations: Life At the Far Edges of a Crumbling Empire... w/ Owen Rees

Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Liv Albert

History, Comedy, Arts

4.8 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2025

⏱️ 113 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Liv speaks with returning guest Owen Rees about his new book looking at the fringes of ancient empire... From Egypt to Greece to Rome and China. Learn more about Owen's book, Bad Ancient, and Substack. Submit your question for the next Q&A via email or a voice note. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby

CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events.

Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, hi there. Live here, speaking from the future. If you are keen to support this podcast,
0:05.6	if you are enjoying the episodes as you find them and you want to listen ad-free, check out
0:11.4	the Oracle edition on Patreon. It didn't exist way back when these early episodes were recorded,
0:17.5	but I'm telling you about it now. You can get all 700 and counting episodes of Let's Talk About Myths Baby,
0:24.6	ad free, along with so much more at patreon.com slash mythsbaby or via the link in the podcast description.
0:34.1	Thanks and happy listening.
1:15.9	Music description. Thanks and happy listening. Hello, this is let's talk about myths, baby, and I am your host, Live. Here with another conversation episode, this one is with returning guest Owen Reese. So Owen was on the show a few
1:23.3	years ago now, which is so wild. Time is a flat circle. Owen was on this show when we talked about
1:28.9	Sparta because not only is he a classicist, but specifically he runs this website called Bad Ancient,
1:36.8	which is all about, it's kind of like a Snopes, but for the ancient world. So clarifying these, like, I want to use the word myths,
1:47.4	but obviously not in the way I always use it, but just these ideas about the ancient world
1:51.3	that have been perpetuated and they go through and they kind of answer whether or not it was real.
1:57.0	Anyway, that's all to say. Owen was a great guest on Sparta. We had so much fun, but we also had a
2:02.1	terrible internet connection. So I am so thrilled that we got to talk again with a better
2:08.3	internet connection this time. There was no point where we had this crazy lag where I didn't
2:14.0	know whether or not I was going to talk over him. This time, we had such an incredible
2:18.7	conversation because Owen has a new book out called The Far Edges of the Known World. Okay,
2:26.2	so interesting. Generally, it's just all about these places at the edge of empires. And I won't spoil everything we talked to, but here is just a
2:38.8	talked about, rather, but here is just a taste to get you excited because what an incredible
2:43.5	concept. Like all of these different empires over like this grand swath of ancient history.
2:51.4	Like what is it like when you're living in a town at the farthest edges of that empire?
2:58.2	Anyway, long story short, turns out there were Greeks in Ukraine.
	...

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