Mythlet: "Don't Drop Your Shield!"

Live from Mount Olympus

Onassis Foundation

Kids & Family, Stories For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2021

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Perseus has his hands full when he enters the Gorgons’ cave – and Dr. Kate Birney says it’s remarkable that our hero was able to juggle Hermes’ sword and that magical bag while brandishing Athena’s shield at the same time. In Mythlet 2, we find out more about that magical shield, which Dr. Birney says was probably like the enormous shields that Greek warriors carried into real ancient battles.

Live from Mount Olympus is a production of the Onassis Foundation, and co-produced by The TEAM. The podcast is directed by Tony Award-winner Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown) and Zhailon Levingston (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical) and created by Peabody Award-winning producer Julie Burstein. Karen Brooks Hopkins is the executive producer.

Live from Mount Olympus is presented by TRAX from PRX with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Find out more at Onassis.link/Olympus

Our actors include Vinie Burrows, Jill Frutkin, Divine Garland, Amber Gray, Adrienne Hopkins, Natalie Hopkins, Modesto "Flako" Jimenez, Libby King, Ian Lassiter, Zhailon Levingston, Christina Liberus, Nehemiah Luckett, Jake Margolin, James Harrison Monaco, Kristen Sieh, Jillian Walker, Baby Perseus is played by Calvin Samuel Blanch and Whit Vega Margolin-Vaughan, and André De Shields is Hermes.

Our production team includes: sound designer David Schulman; production assistant Tessa Zitter; writer Nathan Yungerberg; music composed and performed by Magda Giannikou with Luca Bordonaro; and illustrations by Jason Adam Katzenstein.

Our guest today, Dr. Kate Birney, is Chair of the Archaeology Department at Wesleyan University. Our Mythlets are produced by Tessa Zitter and Julie Burstein and mastered by John Melillo.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Remember that tense
0:06.4	Tense moment when Perseus is about to enter the Gorgon-Medusa cave?
0:11.0	Cap of invisibility on. Shield in one hand,
0:15.4	at a minting sword in the other. Magical bag, over my shoulder and ready for
0:21.3	anything. Perseus may feel like he's ready for anything at that moment,
0:25.8	but he's got a lot of equipment to juggle
0:27.6	when he faces Medusa.
0:29.2	Maybe the gods should have given him an extra set of arms
0:32.1	along with all those magical gifts.
0:34.0	Yeah, how many hands, like can you get the bag open?
0:36.8	Can you get the head in the bag with only one hand?
0:39.4	And then what do you do with your sword?
0:41.2	If you're holding the shield in one hand?
0:43.0	Right?
0:44.0	Just try to imagine this.
0:45.0	Pick up a couple of objects at home and pretend that one's ahead and see how this works out for you.
0:50.0	Don't drop your shield.
0:52.0	Dr. Kate Bernie is back and today she's all about the other gifts that Hermes and
0:58.1	Athena gave to their little brother Perseus and why they set him apart. We've already heard her talk about the
1:04.5	atimantean sword. Remember I said that the atimantean from which his sword is
1:09.0	made takes us immediately back to the Greek creation myth.
1:13.0	The other gifts that he's given also show us
	...

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