The Subtle Art of Women's Work, Arachne the Weaver

Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Liv Albert

History, Comedy, Arts

4.8 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Arachne wasn't just a talented weaver and artist, she was a woman who dared to become more than her feminine station allowed. Breaking down the 'womanly arts', weaving as a form of independence and the threat that posed to the patriarchal order. Submit your question for the next Q&A via email or a voice note. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby. Sign up for the newsletter to keep up to date with everything, including the official launch of Mnemosyne: the Memory Collective.

CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.

Sources: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Stephanie McCarter. Read with permission of the publisher.

Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The Hello, this is let's talk about myths, baby, And I am your host, Liv.
0:39.1	And I am here today with another one of these episodes where I don't script myself, but I promise I have a plan.
0:48.4	Today, I want to talk to you about Arakne.
0:52.7	She's a character you would have heard before, I certainly hope,
0:56.6	and she is one half of one of my most successful early episodes of the podcast, the other being
1:04.3	Medusa. But she's also a character who is really so much more interesting than I totally understood back then,
1:13.0	and whose story means a lot more.
1:15.7	And because it is officially Women's History Month and everything's looking pretty dark,
1:24.9	I thought I would revisit this story because it says a lot, I think, about not only
1:31.2	the story of Arakne, but women's history, women in mythology, kind of just way more than you
1:39.6	think it's going to be.
1:41.3	But first, I have something to tell you.
1:44.1	It's still a little unofficial because everything
1:47.2	is kind of moving very quickly now due to some last minute decisions. But, well, I'm starting a thing.
1:56.8	That's the most cliche way of phrasing it. I am starting a collective.
2:03.0	Michaela and I have been working on this for months now, but we were sort of pushed into rushing
2:09.9	it by making some changes.
2:12.5	I'm getting ahead of myself.
2:14.4	Michaela and I are launching what we are calling nemoony or the memory collective.
2:20.8	It's called nemoony for the Titan goddess of memory, but it's also called the memory collective
2:25.8	because I don't want to make people understand how to pronounce or spell the word,
	...

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