Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. Greek mythology was such a huge part of my upbringing.

I knew my Apollo for my Aphrodite. I could recount the voyages of Odysseus and Jason I could tell you about the labors of Heracles.

And the funny thing is, while so much has changed in the things that we tell children,

the way that we educate them and introduce them to the cultures of the world.

Greek myths have endured.

They are endlessly fascinating.

My kids are obsessed with Greek myths.

My daughter, H12, has a sweet little owl necklace which other people admire, but we know it's our little

secret between ourselves, which I probably shouldn't be telling everyone on this podcast,

which of course the owl is the symbol of Athena. And so she loves to wear the symbol of the goddess Athena, that wise all-knowing woman who's

deared the fate of so many heroes.

And I like our little secret.

The gods and goddess of Olympus have been written about for thousands of years and they still are being written about in best-selling books like the ones by Natalie Haynes who really the description does her no favors because she is a polymath of the highest order.

She is a comedian, she's very, very funny, actually very funny in real life.

She's a classicist, she's an author, she's a fabulous human being, she's been on the podcast before.

Many of her novels are inspired by the stories of the Greek world and her most recent book is

divine might, goddesses in Greek myth.

And I want to talk to her about myth, goddesses and why we're still

fascinated in them and I thought we'd pick out one particular subset of goddesses

from her book and that's the Furies. Who were the Furies? What was their role in the Greek world?

And why does Natalie think the Furies aren't such a bad idea today?

Maybe we should still have theories? Maybe we do.

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