Today we're kicking off a new series called The Psychological Significance of the Classic Myths,

starting with the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus, taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

We're about to deep dive into the greatest stories ever told in human history.

We're going to extract their gold, extract the wisdom, and make the poetic practical.

Over the course of this series, we're going to look at the Greek-Roman myths of Narcissus and Echo,

Apollo and Daphne, Diana and Action, Pyramus and Thysbby, Perseus and Andromeda, and many more.

If you have a favourite story, favourite myth you'd like to discuss, please go to iTunes and leave a review for the show along with your request.

Hardcore literature is in its infancy, so I'm really grateful for reviews because they let me know you're enjoying the show and would like it to continue.

Now, onto the Daedalus and Icarus show, in which we'll discuss the dangers of creating your own reality, taking risks, hubris, arrogance, living a life of virtue, sin, the fall of Lucifer, the Dunning Kruger effect, poetry from W.H. Aldem and William Carlos Williams, paintings by Tishin

and Bruhl, and much more. See you after the intro.

Welcome back to Hardcore Literature, your favourite book club. Deep dives into the greatest

books ever written. Provocative poems, evocative epics, and life-changing literary analyses.

We don't just read the great books, we live them.

Together we'll suck the marrow out of Shakespeare, Homer, Tolstoy and many more.

We'll relish the most moving art ever committed to the page and stage from every age.

Join us and me, your host, Benjamin McAvoy, on the reading adventure

of a lifetime with hardcore literature. So what do you think of the intro? If you listen to the

first season of hardcore literature, you know that I just dived right in. And so, sorry, this isn't

too interesting, a bit of housekeeping and kind of being a bit meta about the creation of the podcast, but I kind of want people's, I want your input. And so I kind of like the idea of starting a podcast without any intro music, because I listen to a lot of podcasts myself and there's always a really like prolonged intro. It's the same with YouTube videos. And I kind of thought, oh, it's a bit self-indulgering. Oh, get to the point. You know, just could you not just make a brand out of something where you just dive right in? And people then, I thought, would actually, and the listening stats show that this is probably true, people are more engaged because immediately you're talking and immediately you're doing something called in Medius Res. It's a technique of starting in the middle of things. It's kind of like, oh, you've just been dropped into a conversation, no preamble, no introduction, and I really like that. But from another perspective, branding. And I thought it would be really cool and I didn't want to be too self-indulgence. I thought, okay 30 seconds we'll get a cool little jingle and people can skip it if they want but it's just probably good

from a branding perspective because I'm thinking with hardcore literature I want it to be sort of cool

you know I know that sounds a bit silly a bit bit nerdy oh I want it to be cool but it's like a lot

of critics if you look at all the greatest critics like Harold Bloom, they're quite, I know this on the nerds because I am a nerd, but they're quite overt.

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