Mythlet: "The God of Middle Children"

Live from Mount Olympus

Onassis Foundation

Kids & Family, Stories For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2022

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We know Hermes is the god of liars, travelers, and thieves. But what other powers does he hold? Turns out, he’s one of Dr. Kate Birney’s favorite gods – and in our Mythlet she tells us why she connects with our favorite trickster (hint – Dr. B is a middle child…).

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 written and produced by Tessa Zitter and mastered by John Melillo.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back, dear listener. Have you been wondering when we would finally have a
0:07.6	mythlet about our favorite trickster? Let me introduce myself.
0:11.3	Hermes, messenger to the gods, so I hear all the juiest gossip.
0:18.0	Hermes is also the god of liars, thieves, shepherds, travelers, and transitional spaces.
0:27.0	Just to name a few of his responsibilities.
0:29.4	Dr. Kate Bernie says Hermes also plays a familiar role among his divine siblings.
0:35.0	I like to think of Hermes as the god of little brothers, or the god of middle children, if you will.
0:41.4	I grew up as a middle child myself, and I remember exactly what that felt like, where you're sort of between being a kid and an adult, and you're smart enough, but you're not old enough.
0:53.0	So you're looking at your older siblings
0:55.0	and you're not as strong and you're not as big.
0:58.0	You don't get to go do the grown-up events that they get to do.
1:01.0	So that means that your weapon is resourcefulness.
1:05.0	You have to use your own skill set to get what you need.
1:09.0	If you're a messenger you're in the middle you have to be persuasive. You have to adapt. If you're telling
1:15.3	someone a message and you can see on their face they don't like what you're
1:18.5	saying, you have to try to say it in a different way. That's Hermes doing what he needs to do, even if that means not
1:25.7	telling the whole truth all the time. You'll notice Father commanded me not to lie, which
1:31.3	is not the same as telling the whole truth.
1:34.0	Delivering Zeus' messages is not always easy.
1:40.0	Sometimes Hermes has to convey a message that might ruffle some feathers.
1:44.0	And an angry God is a dangerous God.
1:48.0	So Hermes has magical tools to protect him.
	...

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