I'm

M.

The Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore.

Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world.

I'm Amanda.

And I'm Julia.

And this episode 322, the Oedipus plays, baby. Julia, we did a version of these in high school,

and I think it was not appropriate. No, it super wasn't. It super wasn't. That's just my view. That's just

my thought. My like weird opinion that maybe high schoolers should not be enacting the story of Oedipus. But hey, you know what?

I wasn't in charge. I agree. Yeah. So we're doing the Oedipus plays this week. I don't remember a lot of the details of it very well. So I reread them fairly recently for this episode. And wow, it's a lot more

wild and heartbreaking than I remember it being. I feel like most people know

Oedipus, you know, from the Edipal complex and Freud and the whole, oh, you want to sleep with

your mom thing. But I really think it kind of misses the whole point of the place to begin with.

So I wanted to, I wanted to revisit that and talk about like what Sophocles and the story of Oedipus is actually trying to say and it's not, hey, men want to sleep with their moms.

Incredible. Let's do it. Amanda, what do you remember about these plays other than the fact that they were wildly inappropriate for high schoolers?

Well, we wore tunics that were just fully made out of like muslin cloth or or an off brand that I appreciated

because they were size inclusive and I was not relegated to the, you know, dresses in size 18 and up

back in the in the costume closet. No, but I mostly remember the beats of the Freudian application

of, you know, there is a prophecy.

Everything is completely avoidable, which is what I mostly think when I read Greek

tragedies of the tragedies that it was avoidable and that it's self-created to some extent.

And that there are a lot of anxieties around masculinity, about power, about legacy.

...