See Jung-Blog live on his biggest tour to date as he arrives at Turingas across the UK in February 2023 in support of his self-titled album out now.

Harry Potter and the Sacred Text is a weekly podcast co-hosted by Vanessa Zoltan and Matt Potts, who met during their time together at Harvard Divinity School.

And before I say anything further, I just want to point out that this podcast does condemn the transphobia of J.K. Rowling and holds space for the people, the listeners who are affected by it. That is really important.

On this podcast, Matt and Vanessa ask, what if we read the books we love as if they were sacred texts? Each week, Matt and Vanessa relive the magic by exploring a chapter of the Harry Potter series through themes like commitment, revenge, forgiveness, and more.

Utilizing traditional forms of sacred reading to one our hidden lessons within even the most mundane sentences.

Many scholars of religion believe that what makes a text sacred is not the text itself, but rather the community of readers around it. Harry Potter and the Sacred Text applies a critical lens to both the text and its author, and holds space for readers and listeners who have been negatively impacted by the author's actions, but still care about the books.

It's the English class you didn't know you missed, and the meaningful conversations you didn't know you craved. New episodes release on Thursdays.

Oh, hi. Hello there. Welcome. This is, of course, as always, let's talk about myths, baby. And I am, of course, as always, your host and resident lover of reading things aloud live.

Here I am once again, loving reading things aloud. It is so much fun. It means that I can plant my life just a little bit easier by peppering these fun as fuck episodes in alongside my super duper research to take me literally forever to write narrative episodes and my conversations, which may not have a full script, but man, today still involve a lot of coordination and editorial work on my part.

Enter a love of reading Ovid's Heroities now and again. Just for fun. Just to give you all a sense of what one of my all-time favorite ancient authors was going on about.

Ovid, you troublemaker, you.

So yes, with that behind the scenes rambling out of the way, here I am with another episode of me reading Ovid's Heroities to you. We're actually slowly starting to run out of these. There are a handful left, but there are either ones I simply will not read to you.

Looking at you, letter from Bracee is to Achilles that absolutely presents her as a rose-burned-style Braceeus and not a woman enslaved by foreign invaders. Or Safo to fey on an absolutely mad piece of nonsense that is quite frankly just straight up slander against our girl Safo.

Other than those two, we're down to just characters that I haven't actually told you about on the podcast, which thankfully just give me ideas for more stories to tell you on the podcast.

Love that for Ovid.

Today, though, today we have two of our all-time favorite women favorite stories being told in these letters. And you've already seen the episode's title, so there's no spoiling it. Yes, that's right.

I am here today with letters from women surrounding the Trojan War mythos. Those far away from the war themselves, but still affected by its survivors.

The first letter is from none other than Penelope to my main man Odysseus, or rather Ulysses, as Ovid will call him.

And the second is the letter from Dido to Anies. Ugh, yeah. Dido to Anies. Few. That's sure to be really something.

What a combo, right? Two of the most interesting, intelligent, strong, and complex women of Greek and Roman myth.

Now, how will Ovid handle them? With him, you never really know.

And either way, be they strong and righteous or sad little agents of the patriarchy in Ovid's eyes. I am so here for it.

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