Principles of Recovery In The Odyssey w/ Ryan Holiday

Ryan, you are an expert on stoicism and Greek philosophy. This is your moment. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The Odyssey. >> The [music] Odyssey. Possibly the most anticipated movie of the year. >> Already breaking ticket sales records. >> The story's endured for 3,000 years. It's resonated with every generation. >> Each generation reads The Odyssey differently than the generation before. [music] The more you know about it, the more it operates on all these other levels. The whole point is that the Odyssey [music] is complicated and you it's hard to know who the good guy is. Odysius in his odyssey is a reflection of the human undergoing any kind of ordeal. He's both like the best and the worst. We contain that in ourselves, too. That is the point of the Odyssey. Are we cool with spoilers uh in this thing? >> I think so. [laughter] Yeah. >> Okay. The cat should be out of the bag by now, 3,000 years later. I'm super excited to talk to you, Ryan. You are well known worldwide for being uh uh an expert on stoicism and Greek philosophy generally. We're having a monoculture moment that you must be relishing where everybody is celebrating this old poem by Dent of Christopher Nolan's I'll say it right now, masterpiece. I love the movie. Saw it a second time last night. and you have been posting lots of videos and this YouTube video with your thoughts on what we should understand from the Odyssey, what's important to understand. And so I thought it was an opportune moment to just get you on here and uh have you share your reflections on Homer's Odyssey, Nolan's Odyssey, and how you're uh kind of synthesizing this and interpreting it uh for us for so first of all, I guess like how did you know how did you like the movie? [gasps] >> Well, I should I should stipulate here that I know it not as a classicist. I I don't speak Greek or Latin. I know it as a a regular person who uh has been fascinated with it, who under who studied it with its connection to to sort of stoic and other sort of forms of philosophy. And then uh my my nine-year-old son got very excited about it. And so I' I've sort of hit it from a bunch of different angles, but all of these angles much closer to a lay person than say like a translators, right? So, I do feel like I I was able to enjoy the movie on a couple of different levels, and I really did enjoy the movie. I thought it was spectacular. I I have some some quibbles here or there, but I think what we have to understand is the Odyssey, like all of the other Greek myths, was both a form of art. It's beautiful language. It's evocative. It's entertaining. It's all this. But then it it was there in a way that we don't always understand art and entertainment to be today, which was a means of communicating ancient wisdom and timeless moral truths. So, you know, like if you watch a a Greek play, um you know, like Shakespeare, all the actors are men, but they're not really like they they wear these masks. it. The acting is not the key in a Greek play or in a Greek tragedy. It's the language. It's the It's the lessons. It's the lines. And so I think the problem is we don't always understand art as being that. Like you know, most fiction today is almost like I want to say it's almost amoral and that it's like designed not to teach moral truths but to question moral truths. And so if we understand the Odyssey as being this sort of story that was told and retold and retold for thousands of years, each generation sort of thinking about the same truths but bringing their own interpretation and understanding of them, their understanding of Odysius, for instance, the understanding of Odysius's dilemmas throughout the play. it then then you should actually um appreciate both what Nolan did in telling it his own way and you should appreciate the arguments over it, right? Like that is the point is that each generation reads the Odyssey differently than the generation before. And then each new medium that we're able to tell it in, including going from an oral tradition to a written tradition is going to fundamentally change. The medium is the message. So, so each generation intelling and retelling it and how it captures it, whether it's with film or radio or a television miniseries versus a a blockbuster, all of this is changing the story and allowing us to see it in a different way, which is the whole point. >> Yeah. The the assignment is the interpretation. There is no one singular odyssey. There is this, you know, original text. I suppose we're not even sure that Homer was one person. every interpretation or translation is different and it it kind of evokes the lens of the translator. And right now we have Emily Wilson, her translation is apparently a primary influence on Nolan's version, his interpretation in this movie. It's been interesting to see the discourse around her kind of like review of the movie, like her celebrating the fact that this is a monoculture moment and it's kind of exciting in that regard. while also her taking issue with how he has interpreted it. But I think that that that is, you know, part of what is exciting about this. It is the clashing of these interpretations and how different people see it differently. like who is this character uh Odysius and what you know what is it about him and this story that is so indelible that has made it the architecture for all stories and a tale that has withtood you know eons of time and is still relevant today that's the debate that we should celebrate and that's what the conversation is about and I think that's very different than you know hey should Helen be black or not is it okay to have a trans person in or not like which which which which is one of the points that I want to make and I think Emily Wilson would appreciate given that she wrote she wrote a famous biography of Senica uh or earlier in her academic career but Senica 2,000 years ago in one of his letters is lamenting just people totally missing the point of the Odyssey and and I think it's it's fascinating to think that 2,000 years ago people were having these debates about where was Troy and um you uh where were the different islands and like did it actually happen or not? Just like today we're like is Homer really one person was he blind or not? And he was saying that that this is not what it's about. like we're not supposed to be debating the trivia of the art, but we should be going to the essential questions of the art and that ultimately we should understand that Odysius a in his odyssey is a reflection of the human undergoing any kind of ordeal, battling their sort of higher self and lower self, you know, the perils of hubris, the impossibility of ever returning home, you know, that that he he's saying like If you don't see the phil if if what you're debating about the Odyssey is not the philosophical questions, then you're just, you know, you you're you're just engaging in culture war nonsense. Obviously, he wouldn't have used that term. And I think it's sad that it's devolved into sort of culture war nonsense, but if if that's what you're fighting about, then uh you're part of the problem, right? Like I think there's like a lot of things to argue about in the Odyssey. And I I there's a bunch of issues I take with I I would argue over interpretations and arguments that that Nolan's uh Odysius and Odyssey are making and and how they um not like because oh, you have to be true to the text, but but this choice versus that choice, you know, fundamentally changes the arc of the story. I'll give you a really good example. So like the whole the whole and are we cool with spoilers uh in this thing? >> I think so. Yeah. Okay. The the the cat should be out of the bag by now, 3,000 years later. But I I think the premise in in Nolan's uh odyssey is that this sort of law of hospitality, how we treat strangers, how we treat others, um and we violate this at our peril. And so the the tale of Polypheis, the the the interaction with the Cyclops is so fascinating because um in and my again my children love this story, you know, Adysius in the in the poem, you know, he introduces himself as uh that his name is no man. He tells Polyfamous that his name is no man. So then when they blind Polyphemis and he's screaming to the other Cyclopses, which also don't exist in the movie, he's saying they say, "Who hurt you?" and he says, "No one has hurt me or no man has hurt me." And they say, "Okay, well, if no one has hurt you, shut up. This isn't a problem." And then he goes away. And then Odysius, having escaped, shouts out at him, "Hey, uh, actually, it wasn't no one that hurt you. It was me, Odysius, sacker of cities that did it, and you'll know my fame." And and so it's this moment of hubris and ego where Odysius needs credit for what he inflicted on Polypheis that sets in motion the central conflict of the book which is he's cursed by the gods. So that's missing and I think uh people will will recognize that. But to me the the critical choice that Nolan makes is that they walk into the cave, they start to sense something is a miss and then the cyclops walks in and then begins eating them. Right. So, so the Cyclops is is indisputably the monstrous villain of the encounter, but in the in the poem and in the most retellings, Odysius and the men walk into the cave, see that it's full of sheep, slaughter the sheep, and eat them. And then Polypheis comes in and is enraged that someone has killed his sheep. And so it's actually Odicius first who violates the law or oversteps and and Polypheis is although monstrous and and and eats humans somewhat righteous in his anger and then Odysius is cunning in his craftiness for getting out and then egotistical in in claiming credit and then bringing the wrath of gods upon him. So, so it's it's like obviously you have to simplify it in the movie, but I do think this is an essential simplification because first off, it makes it simple and the whole point is that the Odyssey is complicated and you it's hard to know who the good guy is. [clears throat] But but also um the idea that Odysius just shoots Polypheis with an arrow when he escapes and this is what makes the gods angry is is really not what is the driving force of the Odyssey going forward. >> Mhm. It strikes me as a glaring omission if you're trying to underscore uh the hubris of Odysius. But the way that I make sense of that begins with the Chiron at the very beginning of the movie where it says this is a time of apparent magic. And I think the word apparent is important. I think what it's telegraphing is that this is a story of unreliable narrators. And the way that Nolan plays with time and narrative is through the this the whole movie is anchored in a recounting of what happened through the perspective of a couple different people. It's Odysius telling the story to Calypso when he's on the island with her and it's Menaaus sharing what he remembers from the Trojan War to Telmachus. And so we have to question whether these recollections or the way that these be these stories are being told are actually what happened or a version of what happened that suits the internal narrative of the narrator. And I think when you think of the way that Odysius is recollecting what happened and you know his version of what went down with the Cyclops, maybe he conveniently decided to omit that part because confronts him with his own guilt. And his guilt and his trauma and this PTSD that he's suffering seems to be what Nolan is most interested in. and he's interested in it because this is his portal into wetting this ancient story with what he with his perspective on what's happening right now in modern society. And for me, that's what makes this version his interpretation so resonant because it seems so current with what we're seeing around us at the moment. And this is something that you talk about a lot through the lens of stoic philosophy. this degradation of of kind of our moral center at the moment where >> if you look at what's happening in the house of Ithaca, you know, there's sick offense and people behaving badly uh acting on their own self-interest in a very craven way and is this not simply a metaphor for the White House at the moment? And >> it's like a hostile takeover. Yeah, it seems to be like where where Nolan's interest is and why, you know, he felt urgently about telling this story now. Yeah, it's it it's about a collapse of the old ways. And I think he does a really good job, maybe a better job than I would have have anticipated or or even considered of showing the collapse of the old ways all the way around. Back to uh even uh you know interpreting the Trojan horse as some sort of um you know violation of the laws of of war and trickery. Although it it it even goes back you know e even further. there there's a sort of predecessor story of of the to the Odyssey of of why they get sucked in to this law of war. There's this, you know, sort of party of the gods and they all make this pact about who's the most beautiful one. And it's a it's a long story, but basically like um Odysius doesn't want to go fight in the Trojan War. That that's not something you see in this movie or in the Odyssey. Exactly. But Odysius doesn't want to fight in the Trojan War. He tries to get out of it and he actually claims that he's crazy at first. Um, and uh, he claims that he's crazy and and only by the test that they prove that he's not crazy. He's like plowing his field and they lay Telmachus down in front of him plowing his field. And when he stops to not run over his own son, that's how they realize that he's not actually crazy. And so the whole idea of this being this sort of insane war that shouldn't have happened in the first place that he's sort of sucked into and fights in reluctantly because of this kind of pact that he'd made many years before. All all these sort like what I think what's so what's so lovely about Greek mythology and about philosophy is that kind of the more you know about it the more it operates on all these other levels. Like this would be a modern analogy, but it's like you can't watch Arrested Development one time. You got to watch it like 30 times. And then you understand that it's it's operating on all these different levels and there these callbacks. And so not only is the Odyssey something you should read and watch and uh read and watch again, but you should read multiple translations and then you have to read the other myths and then you have to read the poetry about it and the stories about it and the interpretations of it. What you start to get each time is just a slightly different understanding of it. And and and from that you're able to consider these questions from all these different angles. Mhm. Each author has a different take on Odysius. Uh has a different take on Helen, has a different take on um Polypheis as we were talking about, has a different take on Telmachus, has it uh you know, is Odysius a hero or is he a villain? Is he both? Um, you know, is is Agamemnon a hero or a villain? Is Helen a hero or a villain? Um, you know, was she kidnapped or did she fall in love? You know, um, uh, or there's another version of it where she's like transported to Egypt. There's all these different versions of it. And so if we understand it more as like source material that people are riffing on over and over and over again, almost like a song sample, I think we understand a little bit more of what they're what they're trying to do. And then the idea is each one of these reads helps correspond to something ultimately in your own life. This isn't just like debating what style of painting is best, but this is like, okay, but what kind of person should I be? And what you find is that ultimately all these things come down to some of the most fundamental questions in philosophy and in life. Like the trolley problem is really interesting in philosophy, right? This idea of okay, do you have a trolley run over one person? Uh if you do nothing, a trolley runs over uh uh what is it? Five people, but if you pull this lever, it runs over one person. Right? That's the trolley problem. But this is actually the choice that Odysius has to make between uh Sila and Corbus. >> Caribbdus, although I always thought it was uh Charbbitus cuz I never heard it out loud. >> Yeah. No, it's I'm pretty sure it's Caribbdus. It it is [laughter] um but but like he and he doesn't fully weigh weigh it that much in the movie but like between a rock and a hard place or sometimes you'll hear people say Sila and and Kuribdus as just meaning like a dilemma like just a hard choice but it's so much more than that. It's Odysius has to choose between letting six of his men be destroyed for sure or do they all go down in in the whirlpool. And and it's actually really interesting because in the in the movie Nolan kind of has him trick the men into choosing for him. Like he kind of abdicates the moral choice. But but as as the band Rush would say, even if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. This is still he's still the moral choice. So anyways, I I just think it's so fascinating that you have this poem from 3,000 years ago accidentally chancing upon or not accidentally but chancing on this moral question that philosophers are still debating to this day. On top of that, there's the question of transparency with leadership. like should he have told his soldiers what this dilemma was and let them choose of their own free will or to just make the choice for them with them knowing uh what the consequences are. And that same dilemma plays out with the Elliot Page character. What's his character's name again? Uh starts with >> Sinnon. uh where in Hades, you know, Sinon is is is sort of taking Odysius to task for not trusting him with the truth that there were soldiers inside the Trojan horse. And this this becomes like a you know kind of a central recurring theme like what is what is Odysius's relationship with the truth and with being truthful with the people that he's responsible for? But I think this idea you you mentioned, you know, Zeus's law a moment ago, which is a reductive take on Zenia, like this idea that there is right and wrong, like there is natural law that exists independent of men. In the same way that what resonates about this story has nothing to do with interpretation or authorship. It's just in the ether. It is a story that speaks to us. It is an architecture that is almost, you know, embedded into our DNA. And I think that that is one of the reasons why it continues to live and and and be relevant. But with this idea of like there being a morality at play and what are the consequences of violating that, we have Odysius who in his hubris thinks that he can defy the gods and get away with it, that he is beyond consequences in this regard. Uh but what's interesting is the denial that he has to harbor in order to, you know, continue to kind of function. Like when it comes to hunting animals with his bow, like he always pulls the bow because this is the just and fair thing to do. But what he does with the Trojan horse is exactly the opposite of that. Like it is the antithesis of that. And it's in the aftermath of that that he recognizes that he he's basically broken the world. And this will end the Bronze Age and usher in this time of darkness where the only stories that will be told of what happened are in song because nobody will be able to read or write again which which kind of conveys this idea of interpretation. Like however this story is going to be told in song, it [snorts] can't possibly be as truthful as it could be because there's no one educated enough around to like be a, you know, kind of a responsible steward of this story. And so it dooms the future to repeat the mistakes of the past. You really get to know your mattress in the summertime. [music] Don't laugh. It's true. 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Our understanding of Greece is like that it was bronze statues and sort of like uh white marble when actually it was an incredibly bright and shiny world. The buildings were painted, the statues were painted, the armor was bright and had things painted on it. Right? It's only because after 3,000 years, most of that is scraped away or ruined. That that we tend to think of that world as being like it's like you grow up now, you think the Statue of Liberty is green, but that's not what it was like when they put it up, right? And so I thought it was interesting that like his castle's kind of old and and dark and like I don't know, like I don't think he did an amazing job of showing the the actual brightness of the Bronze Age. just like what antiquity was like. Um uh and and and there have been people who have quibbled at sort of like how realistic the armor was like. I I care less like whether Agamemnon's uh helmet was realistic or not and more like why was everything so somber and dark when that's not really what that if that's the apotheiois of the moment. It's not fully representing it. So I did I I did take a slight quibble with that. But I think like to me what's so interesting about um the the [clears throat] sort of moral uh the contradictions of Odysius is that is the point of the Odyssey. He's both like the best and the worst. He's this trickster character, right? And and he's both better than everyone and possible capable of worse uh things than everyone. And that to me is supposed to illustrate that we contain that in ourselves too. And which side of that are we gonna are we going to let out? >> Yeah. This is the mindset of every alcoholic and addict. Like I'm smarter than everyone else and I'm actually the worst person in the world. And and it it is a megalomania. Like that speaks to his hubris. like like he believes that he's so powerful that he could break the world or make the world and and that's absurd, right? Like this is, you know, it's death by a thousand cuts or the contributions of millions of people. He's taking the full moral weight of the Trojan War that he was, by the way, as drafted into as everyone else and as at the mercy of Agamemnon as everyone else. And I think that's a great point. There is a there is a grandiosity about >> he makes himself the main character and I mean he is in a way the main character but he has this kind of main character syndrome and and you see it in the movie it's like these other men are raping and pillaging Troy and yes it's it was his idea. Um but he's not doing it but he's looking around and going what have I done? Because I think that's the point. He he has the he has the capacity to feel the responsibility and the guilt that if he didn't if he was more a product of his time I think he would get away with like we don't get the sense that Agamemnon was carrying the same guilt for sacrificing his daughter uh as as say Odysius was even for just being away for 20 years. Yeah, it's important to understand that your actions have consequences. Uh but it's also important to have the humility to understand that you're actually not as important as you might believe yourself to be. And he's on both extremes of of of this spectrum. Um I'm curious also uh around your thoughts around the ending. we see them sort of sail off into the sunset and you know in a way that is not really authentic to the to the text. This is a guy who Yeah. Like this is a guy who can't sit still for a minute. As soon as he's like they do address the this getting back to denial like >> after he hears the song of the sirens, he's he's disabused of his denial that he actually doesn't want to go home. like it's all about like we just want to go home. And actually maybe one of the reasons he doesn't follow Agamemnon is because he doesn't want to go home and he's trying to find the long way so that he can stay away. He he can't say that out loud and maybe he can't admit that to himself but you know he is you know to kind of quote Arthur Brooks like he is a he is a stver facing the stver's dilemma and he just cannot sit still for a moment with himself and the minute he gets home he has to leave again and go off on another campaign and Nolan chooses to end the movie differently. Uh you know what is your what are your thoughts around that? Why do you think he made that decision? And what is it that the Odysius that you know uh did and why? So, I I think there's there's two there's two reads here that I want to get into. The first is is yes, Odysius, the striver. Odysius the restless Odysius actually the tragic tortured hero who not only can't go home as he he hears from the sirens. I think it's worth pointing out, you know, the sirens don't just sing a beautiful song. The sirens tell you exactly what you want to hear or the the deepest most painful slash beautiful truth you can imagine. Um, so so in the movie they tell him, you know, basically you don't actually want to go home. And I think on a simple level the Odyssey is about a guy fighting to get home. Uh but when you when you look at the full arc of the character, you go for a guy who claims he wants to go home, he sure makes a lot of choices that prevent him from getting home as you said in the movie from not uh following Agamemnon, but like you know he he spends seven years with Cersei. Not like uh she does drug him a little bit, but but he basically has a seven-year affair on his wife and he lives in paradise, right? Um, and he also had like a one-year affair with Cersei, didn't he? >> Yes. Yes. He has a lot of affairs. Penelope is supposed to be true and loyal and Odysius is under no such compunction, right? And so, you know, you imagine it's like that's his son from 13 to 20 or something like he misses like a good chunk of his son's life cuz he's really enjoying himself on an island paradise. And if we can understand Odysius as as not just a character who doesn't want to go home, but as as people in the ancient world would have understood Odysius, putting aside Nolan's ending for a second, um he leaves after he gets home in some of the other retellings, like he he has to go replenish his coffers. Actually, one of the one of the post stories has Odysius leaving Penelope at the end and marrying somebody else and and and then like it goes on and on. He he is the the addict. It you know the typical addict, the st person for whom there's never enough who, you know, has the midlife crisis and starts a second family and a third family. Like he can't he can't help himself. And so even I I think when you read Tennyson's poem uh you you get the sense depending on what age you are reading it that actually it isn't admirable and impressive that this guy what is what is the wording? Let me find it here. He says um uh made time made weak by time and fate but strong in will to strive to seek to find and not to yield. You know he's he can't stop he can't slow down. There's never enough. um he's not capable of being still. And if we understand Odysius as this tortured hero in that way, it's like uh you know, and a lot of people have made the PTSD comparisons, but if you've seen the Hurt Locker, right, he gets home or if you've seen American Sniper, they're similar uh character arcs. They get home and then they're just like this is nothing compared to >> what my life was out there. And in that way they are tragic, flawed, broken men that we should pity rather than celebrate and want to be like. Back to the sirens. Uh what's great about that is you can draw this parallel on this notion that they're singing this song of everything you always wanted to hear. And there's a beautiful monologue [clears throat] that that um that is one of my favorite parts in the movie where u Odysius says, you know, I can't recount it exactly, but it's it's basically like everything you always wanted to hear about, you know, everything you always wanted to have and can't have but already had and you know, like some kind of thing like that. And it's just like it perfectly encapsulates this idea. >> But there is this parallel with confirmation bias in social media. It's like it's telling you what you want to hear. And that is a, you know, hypnotic um thing. You know, it's very difficult for us to immunize ourselves from. He has to they have to put wax in their ears to prevent them. We have all these devices that we have to put on our phone to kind of like protect our attention. Something going on with this. It's like it's like these tech and you've talked about this like you know the tech barons and all the like they are the sirens on some level. Well, and the reason we have to be familiar with the Odyssey is just the sheer amount. It's like you have to watch The Godfather or you'll miss like 40% of pop culture references, right? Or you need to know what you need to know your sports history or you're going to miss out on a lot of metaphors and and references. Um, you have to know the Odyssey because so many of the things that we use to explain the the the the present come from the literature of the past. I mean, Chris Hayes last year wrote a really good book called The Siren Song that's all about comparing social media and the attention economy to the sirens. And he makes this point about how the sirens aren't just, you know, this beautiful seductive thing, but there's there's some element of the confirmation bias at work that you said and and and how we are complicit in our own manipulation. And he does a good job in the movie of the guy rips the beeswax out of his ears and throws himself over the boat. It's like the sirens aren't plucking him from the boat the way that the monster is, right? They're saying like, "Hey, come over here. It's nice." And uh and people are willingly killing themselves to get it. Which I think is the sort of ultimate metaphor of the thing. And then yeah, the the the commitment device of Odysius saying, "I want to hear it, but I don't trust myself, so I want you to tie me to the mast." Is what I thought was interesting is okay. So, so Odysius knowing that the that if he goes to the sirens, he will surely die. So, he doesn't just say, "Hey guys, don't let me go over there." He says, "I need you to tie me to the mast, and under no circumstances can you uh can you undo it, and I'm going to block your ears." So, flash forward uh like an hour or so in the movie, they they are landing at the island where the sun god keeps his cattle. And and because they they learned this from from the dead in Hades, if they eat the the sun god's cattle, they will all die. Not Odysius, but everyone else will die. And at first, he doesn't tell them this. And then they ask him, and he does. He discloses. He says, "If you eat the sun god's cattle, you will die." And and they go, "Okay, we still want to land in the island. We just won't do it." And he says, "No, no, no. The best thing is to not go anywhere near the island." Right? the commitment device again, like if you don't want to eat, if you don't want to drink, don't have alcohol in your house. Right? And they go, "No, no, no. We're fine. We promise we won't eat the sun god's cattle." And then what happens? They get there and their willpower lasts for a while, but it's not uh it's not invincible. And eventually they do eat the sun god's cattle and they die. I thought that was an interesting contrast between the two commitment devices. Like a promise is not enough. A commitment is not enough. That you have to be able to prevent yourself from doing the thing that you know you don't want to do. >> Mhm. And Odysius is rolling the the dice and in defiance of the gods by not putting the wax in his ears and and and sort of wanting to be the one person who can survive this to distinguish himself and make himself feel special. >> Okay. So, to go back to the ending real fast, cuz this this is something I I haven't seen enough people talk about. So, there is a giant plot hole in the Odyssey. There's two, but I I'll go back to one, but the the big plot hole in the Odyssey is um Penelope is weaving the burial shroud, right? So, Odysa is without a king and and Telmachus is too young to rule, right? Odysius is gone and Penelope is stalling by weaving the burial shr. Who is she weaving the burial shroud for? Right? Leertes, Odysius's father. So, our modern understanding of kings, it's like, why doesn't he, if he was previously the king of Ithaca, why doesn't Leertes just come back temporarily until Telmachus is old enough, right? I don't really know. There's not a great answer to this question. and and and but I think the idea their argument was like if you're not strong enough, if you're not fit to be the king, you have to voluntarily seed power and then once you voluntarily seed power, it's not yours anymore. Right? So there is something interesting about Leert's waiting on he's like my time is passed. I'm no longer fit to be king. Yes, that leaves a power vacuum, which is a bit weird, but Nolan Nolan kind of solves for this by when Odysius comes home, he doesn't rule Ithaca uh for very long before he leaves and seeds it to his son. So there's an interesting statement here I think particularly in this uh in this aging democracy of ours where uh where where what do they call it a gerontocracy where where old people are not stepping away. There is something about the peaceful transition of power here that's really interesting that Odysius in going into voluntary exile now that his son has proven himself is demonstrating in a way that I think is interesting. It's not the main point of the Odyssey, but the the going into exile to me was less about um in in one reading, it's less about Odysius's restlessness and even the debt he has to pay to his old soldiers and more about solving for the the question of who's the next generation and and I think also the less implicated generation, right? If if Odysius's generation has failed and corrupted itself and stained it its in blood with the murder of the suitors for instance, then what Telmachus portends is a potentially a fresh start, you know, clean hands. And this is why Odysius is so insistent that he not participate in that final massacre. Odysius is the sea people who's been raiding and murdering and doing all this bad stuff. and Telmachus represents potentially a new and brighter future. >> That's an interesting perspective. It's a little bit more optimistic than mine in that uh there is this peaceful transition of power. There is succession and we're meant to feel like things are stable while at the same time understanding that the Bronze Age is over and we're going to now be entering, you know, into this age of darkness. Um, clearly Odysius does not want Telamachus involved in killing all these suitors. Uh, and Telmachus, we're pretty clear that, you know, he's not he's no great warrior. You know, he has his one moment upstairs in the in the weapons locker where he finally gets the best of that one guy. But that aside, we're in no position to believe that he has matured to the point where he's he he can successfully, you know, kind of take charge of of Ithaca and, you know, kind of acquit leadership responsibly. And it's unclear whether Odysius has considered this. He's just like, I'm out of here now and we're going to go over here. And I feel good about my son taking over, but we as the audience are left to question whether that is actually a good idea. I know in other interpretations of the Odyssey, Odysius grappling with his striving and his restlessness says at some point, and I think you've talked about this, to Telmachus, like, "You're a better man than me, and you're more you're more fit to rule than I am because I can't just sit here on a chair in this throne in this house. It's like I have to go out and and conquer in you know like achieve uh >> to use a you know kind of a modern you know a modern version of that and he basically conveys to his son like you know this he he's passing the torch in kind of a beautiful way that we don't see in the movie. >> Yes. Obviously in in the poem, you know, both Odysius and Telmachus are blessed by Athena and guided by her, right? Mentor I is is Athena in in the the poem. And I think what the sun is setting on one and the sun is rising on the other, we could say. And so yes, Telmach is especially at the beginning of the play and and Emily Wilson has talked about this in her translation just like how modern some of the sort of whiny, insolent, insecure, just like how teenagery uh Telmachus comes off in the early pages of the Odyssey and then his journey to see Menaaus and then uh Neestor and then coming back and then you that that this is the be there's also this coming of age story at the beginning of the Odyssey and and throughout it and we're supposed to see Telmachus as a kind of a rising hero who yeah who's young and inexperienced and and and desperately needing of of help but but comes out of the other side of this I think ready and stronger. One of the things my nine-year-old pointed out, or I guess he would have been seven or eight when when he pointed this out, but I thought it was interesting because it goes to the Polyfamous thing we're talking about. He was like, I don't understand if if Polyphemis is Poseidon's son, why did Poseidon need Odysius to take credit for blinding him to know that he did it? Isn't he a god? >> Mhm. I went to read about it and I I I asked chat GBT about I was trying to figure this out because I I hadn't thought of that either. And then like what I what I came to understand is like that was my son projecting like the Christian om omnisient god on to Poseidon like that that the Greek gods knew everything that was happening everywhere in the world that they were minutely monitoring human affairs which they which is not the Greek understanding. Like the Greek understanding is the gods are over here on Mount Mount Olympus doing weird stuff, you know, raping people and taking them prisoner and starting storms and feuding and fighting with each other and then occasionally coming down to earth and interfering and getting involved. And so it is interesting to think that the Greek understanding of of Odysius is that had Odysius just kept his mouth shut, he would have gotten away with his crime. But it was it was the bragging about it and needing attention for it that actually sews his fate. >> Yeah. >> It just shows like the the different understanding of the gods. There's this famous quote I like from Flobear. He said when uh the gods had ceased to be but Christ had not yet come. He says between the time of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. So now we're going from the Greeks to the Romans here. He says man stood alone in the universe. That there was this brief moment of of philosophy when the old system was falling apart. You know the the the Greek understanding of the gods which the Romans inherited and then before the Christian understanding of of an all powerful allseeing god who gives us the golden rule that that that Nolan is sort of projecting back on the Greeks. there was this kind of brief moment where you know humans are just doing their own thing. U and then this is when we get kind of the phil this is where we get stoic philosophy and epicurian philosophy and and and all these other school sort of other ways of thinking. I just thought about that quote because you know at the beginning of the movie he says in a time of apparent magic he's kind of saying the same thing like there are gods but they're not as involved they're not everywhere they could they you know it's the the concept in the movie is that like you have to treat the stranger well not because God wants you to but because that stranger might be a god. They're probably not but they might be. And so it is interesting. Uh this kind of like maybe maybe notness of the magic in the movie is interesting. The first time I saw an R2 in person, I got it immediately. [music] This is the Rivian that a lot of people are going to be able to enjoy. Driving it with R.J. only confirm that. >> All right. So first impressions in my first in your first experience in the R2. Nice. All right. Now I'm getting the feel. >> Yeah. >> Feels really tight. >> It feels nice, right? >> Yeah. >> Interestingly, like from a first impression point of view, when you see it from a distance, proportionally, it looks very similar to the R1, you know, like the way that it is designed, it looks kind of integral with the original. >> It's quite a bit [music] smaller. And so when you look at them separately, sometimes people be like, is that an R1 or an R2? and they have a lot of similarities, >> but I I actually think R2 ended up with a better set of proportions. And it's that kind of thinking that just [music] exists across everything to try to deliver an experience that still feels really Rivianike, but at a fraction of the cost of R1. >> First impressions aside, there's a lot more to the R2 than what you see at first glance. To learn all about the R2, watch the rest of our conversation and book a demo drive at stories. /richroll. This episode is brought to you by Whoop, the wearable health and fitness coach that for 5 and a half uninterrupted years has delivered me tremendously valuable, highly personalized insights [music] into how my habits impact my sleep, impact my recovery and stress levels. So I can uplevel those habits and [music] make more informed decisions about the strain I impose upon myself. It keeps me on an optimal growth trajectory and sets me up to show up as my best self more consistently, which is even more urgent for me these days as I rebuild my body in the aftermath of spinal fusion surgery. And one of the key lessons Whoop has helped me learn is that pushing harder isn't the answer. It's knowing when not to and humbling myself to hold back when my instinct is to hit it like I always used to when [music] I was 23 or even 43. All of which is a long way of saying that Whoop saves me from myself by decoding my body's reactions to my decisions. Now, I adjust my training and my work output to ensure I don't exceed what my body can absorb. [music] By knowing when a hard day is the right call and when the right call is rest. By doing that, I've actually accelerated my recovery because I'm not breaking down [music] and that's really priceless. So, try it for yourself. Go to join.woop.com/roll whoop.com/roll for one month free of Whoop. I thought that Nolan was implying uh indirectly and overtly at times a degree of omniscience with the gods because unlike other versions that have rendered on screen and in the text like the gods are not around all the time. We see Athena pop in and out, but you know, the gods aren't like, you know, coming down and interacting with humans in the way that, you know, other, you know, other versions of this describe. And Odysius doesn't have to say, "I'm Odysius," to the Cyclops. Like, it's just understood that this communication is going to get conveyed to Poseidon, or he's overlooking this, and then, you know, hell is going to break loose on the open seas. Similarly with the sun gods and the cattle like he even says Odysius overtly at one point like do you think did you think like the sun gods weren't going to notice? So >> this is the best part of the movie >> Nolan is saying like there is an omniscience here and he's sort of layering over a more Judeo-Christian notion of God as allseeing. >> Yeah, you're right. Yeah. He says uh did you think if you ate very quietly the gods wouldn't know you still you ate there kind of >> kind of in this hole, you know, like they dig this hole. So like as if they're that is going to protect them, you know, in some way. >> But then they say, "We didn't think we would fool the gods. We were just trying to fool you." >> Yeah. And what does that get them? >> Yeah. It doesn't It doesn't change the prophecy, you know. >> I want to I want to turn to uh some of the lessons for life that we can extract from this story. In your video, maybe we can start with this. you talk about uh the difference between perseverance and persistence and I'd never really heard those parsed in that way and I thought that was super interesting >> and look I I might be I might be making a you know a semantic difference but I do think there is something there there's something about you know uh hey I'm going to I'm going to do this hard thing for a while and then you know I got to do this the rest of my life, right? Like the day-to-dayness of endurance um is is to me the more impressive thing. Like how how do you deal with this forever? Um and and you could say like, you know, the 10 years of of War and Troy, the 10 years on the journey home. In one aspect, that's that's the odyssey for Odysius. But the deeper one might actually be once he gets home, the guilt and the pain and the re-entry is actually the harder and longer battle. in in the obstacles the way I I made us I I sort of did I used Odysius to make that distinction between you know perseverance and and uh persistence that that perseverance is just sort of persistence on steroids and that that you know wanting something really bad and being willing to sacrifice for it is one thing but um you know life life asks so much more of that than you and I do I mean look when you do endurance sports It's like you think you think you've hit your limit and then there's this whole other reservoir that you have. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Yeah. I I think what's interesting in this context is we see Odysius. He is this avatar of perseverance, of persistence, of being unrelenting in this quest to win the war and get home and all these sorts of things. And it speaks to like the human will and our capacity to you know weather obstacles and overcome them etc if we just stay in it and remain focused and you know just never give up and all of that. But ultimately the only way that he gets home uh when he departs Calypso is through surrender. like >> he has to relinquish his his grip on control and recognize that not only can he no longer defy the gods that he has to completely surrender and let go of any attempt to even try to get home and put it completely in their hands. And there's something beautiful about that in a in a Zen Cohen kind of way like you have to stri you have to strive, you have to be, you know, perseverant and persistent and courageous and unrelenting if you want to achieve things and accomplish your goals, etc. And yet ultimately you will be capped in your potential to the extent that you are refusing to relinquish your grip. At some point you have to recognize that your self-will is the obstacle in your way and that the the kind of next level whether it's climbing Maslo's hierarchy of needs or just growing and evolving as a human being demands surrender like this recognition that there are higher forces at play and that you are not the center of the universe that are you know you're not the puppeteer pulling the pulling the strings >> and and that ultimately that requires more willpower and discipline that that surrender that that uh submission. It seems like weakness, but it's not. It's much harder for him to lay down on that raft and let the waves take him where where they will then to stay on that beach for 10 years and figure out how he's finally going to, you know, breach [clears throat] the walls of of Troy. >> Sure. >> Yeah. And look, uh, you know, the the great American named after Odysius is Ulissiz Srant, right? That's how uh the the name is is rendered. Uh Ulisses, you know, uh one of the great military victories in American history is the is is Grant's Vixsburg Grant's victory at Vixsburg, right? Where um you know, he he basically lays siege to this citadel like not unlike Troy for for months and months and months. He has to try to reroute the Mississippi River at one point. He ends up having to cross the river, you know, miles miles south. He has to run these gun batteries. It's one of the great military campaigns in in in human history. Um with with actually an equal amount of cleverness to to Odysius. He he basically goes around Vixsburg and then he attacks it from the other side and then they're they're suddenly trapped in this fortress as opposed to being, you know, safely enscconced inside it. So Grant's sort of success in the Civil War is your sort of standard persistence, right? Like he's like, look, I don't go backwards. I don't quit. I they said he's like a bulldog. He grabs on and he doesn't let go. That's Grant's sort of military strategy. Um and he ends up, you know, succeeding and he probably thinks that's the most difficult thing I'm going to have to do in my life. That's that's his sort of persistence. Well, after Grant is is president, um all of his money is stolen from him. He gets swindled by this uh like sort of ba Bernie Maidoff figure. He loses all his money. he has to hawk his Civil War uh momentos and uniform to to to JP Morgan just to pay off his debts. And so he's basically looking at, you know, complete poverty, humiliation, and then then he finds out he's dying of throat cancer. He's smoked like 20 cigars a day. Uh and so so uh so Grant is now facing what they call his final battle. under debilitating pain. He uh writes and dictates his memoirs over the next several months. Mark Twain agrees to publish them. He ends up publishing them. You know, he dies like 3 days after he finishes his memoirs, becomes the the bestselling book in American history. It's it's his final battle, but I think at some level it's it's a it's a different kind of persistence, right? It's perseverance because it's operating here now at like this kind of soul level. It's it's one thing to like fight really hard for what you want and I think it's another thing to sort of stare down death or to conquer your own body. And so I when we're talking about the distinction between persistence and perseverance, I think yeah, fighting fighting at Troy is persistence, but the odyssey home and the ultimate surrender as you said and then the the as he as he says in the movie just like taking your punishment basically that is a perseverance at a different level and then the making of amends and having to face the people that he's wrong. That's just a whole other kind of journey that's different than being cold and tired and wet and uh and lonely. And and I think ultimately that's the message of the Odyssey that that sort of pers perseverance not persistence. >> Mhm. >> The the acceptance of certain things that are unmutable. Like there is the idea of we're going to breach the walls of Troy. It's unacceptable uh that we can't and we're not leaving until we do. uh a refusal to accept a certain reality because on some level there is a sense of mutability to that. But cancer, you know, like having your money swindled or whatever to persevere, you have to first accept this as reality and then figure out how to survive and navigate your way through it. >> Yeah. To accept your humiliation and your failure and your mortality. These are all, I think, you know, much more soul level battles as opposed to, you know, most of the Odyssey is Odysius fighting with his cunning. We're told over and over again in the poem that he's the craftiest, most cunning, you know, smartest man in the world. And that that only gets him so far and ultimately it gets him into trouble. Right. Like >> Right. He's a he's a galaxy brain. >> Yes. and and it's it's that the sort of um having to conquer the other the other things at the deeper level which I think the movie does a a much better job. There's less catharsis in the poem. there's less resolution because the Greeks didn't have the same the same struggle with guilt and responsibility and you know Odysius is not as tortured of a figure in the poem like he's like yeah I'm going to murder all these people and I'm also going to murder all the female slaves for covorting with them even though I think we could we would say now that they were not consenting participants in in in these exchanges. Um but yeah, at the end he just murders all these. The catharsis is the murder. The catharsis in the movie is the what am I culp is dealing with his own culpability and his own responsibility and and then ultimately trying to make amends uh by heading heading west and and um >> honoring >> honoring the dead. >> Yeah. if if you were going to like what stood out for you as intolerable in the movie that you would change like if you were doing your version like what what was missing or what do you think is relevant for us to know that was lacking in the film? >> I so I I don't think Christopher Nolan does a good job showing how crafty and clever Odysius was, which is his predominant character trait in the poem. And so I think skipping the opportunity to trick Poly Femist, the no man uh joke, which is it's just amazing that like, you know, watching my kids just like fall over in laughter at a 3,000-year-old joke from an ancient epic just it just does show >> it's who's on third, basically. >> Totally. Totally. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. And and so he misses a handful of opportunities to show Odicius as as being clever and how that cleverness, you know, is both his secret strength and the source of his undoing. I I thought that was a a flaw of the movie. The only casting choice that I think people are allowed to uh to to be upset about is the casting choice of Agamemnon. Um, I think uh Black Helen totally fine with uh uh Elliot Pageige totally fine with fine with everything. I just don't understand how the Bane character could be uh one of the Safy brothers. Like how how he's supposed to be the more intimidating brother of Menaaus who who uh John what Bernenthal plays? >> John Bernthal. Yeah. >> Incredibly. And you can get both the the pain and the kind of menace. Like I think he captures like I mean that's why he's a special forces operator in like every movie. Like and and he's the punisher. He he is perfectly cast and captures it perfectly. Peeking behind the mask on Menaaus. I'm like I don't buy it. I don't like it at all. Um I I would have loved >> you mean not sorry. Sorry. I would have I I think Killian Murphy could have done it. I think Christian Bale could have done it. I think so many other people could have done it. I just did not buy him. That that's my that's my I'm violating my own rule by p by questioning about this. But that's my pitily concern with the movie and I hated it. >> But he's framemoging everybody in every scene that he is. I mean, when the gates of Troy open, he's 10t tall and he's just dominating and you don't see his face. you know, someone like Killian Murphy or or or Bale, they're not they're not gonna say yes to a small part like that. >> That's why I think it would have been so good. >> But to me, it doesn't it doesn't really matter because he never you never really see his face. He doesn't take his mask off until the end. And when he does, it's this moment of vulnerability and realizing that he is gravely, you know, made this grave mistake that ends up, you know, with him being killed. And again, it goes to the unreliable narrator aspect of it in that this is a we're seeing Agamemnon through the eyes of Odysius telling the story to Calypso. And so whether or not Agamemnon was as tall and as imposing in real life doesn't matter. It's it's Odysius's interpretation of Agamemnon through his memory of Agamemnon being this imposing figure dressed in all black. It's so interesting that we have Agamemnon in black and we have the black helmets of of you know the Ithaca army, the warriors, and everybody in um in Troy is dressed in white. You know, this is like >> it's you know, it's pretty binary in that regard. Interpret from that as you will. uh but he's inverting you know these expectations slowly. >> If I could give another recommendation to people, Escilis's trilogy Arrestia is a side plot of the Iliad and the Odyssey that you you briefly see in the Odyssey because they do focus on uh Agamemnon a little more than people would think. So, so for people who don't know that the brief story is is uh to to get favorable wins to Troy, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, which uh obviously his wife is not happy with. So, uh what Clemennstra again I'm bad with the pronunciations. Um but but his wife takes a lover while he's gone and then when Agamemnon comes home he and she kill Agamemnon and then they don't bury him and then the the the rest of the the trilogy is in and this is also where we get the story of Cassandra because he brings Agamemnon brings Cassandra home from uh from Troy and she is gifted with uh the the power of prophecy but cursed that no one will listen to her. And so she predicts all this is going to happen and uh nobody listens, right? He ends up dying. Um but then um uh his his son avenges his death, kills his mother and uh her lover. That's the second one. And then the third play is really interesting because you get where all these myths come to explain to us like where our modern system, where our civilization comes from. So, so anyways, after he kills his mother, he brings on the the the furies, right? The gods are angry at him for killing his own mother. And so, they're chasing him and torturing him and and he he flees to the to the temple of uh of Apollo. And and um what is proposed as a way of of um solving this conflict is that he plead his case to a jury of 12 peers and and explain why he did it and what happened and then they'll render a verdict and he will abide by that verdict. And so from this play, this fictional avenge, we have the Greeks explaining and trying to deal with the cycle of vengeance, right? Like somebody does a crime, someone avenges that crime, and then someone has to avenge that crime. So the Greeks were wrestling with this question of how do we stop the cycle of violence? How how does the state step in and resolve the the cycle of violence? And they settle on the legal system, right? the impartial legal system in the jury of our peers. And so it's just incredible. You're just reading this play that's, you know, basically 2500 years old. And then you're like, you're recognizing, you're like, "Oh, wait. This is where that comes from." And so again, these stories are not just weird stories with names that are difficult to pronounce from a time long ago. They are the origin stories for the institutions that we take for granted today. And they are also wrestling with the same like fundamental problems that groups of humans which we call society have wrestled with for all time. >> Everyone can kind of quibble around the margins. Oh, it should have been like this. Why didn't they do that? I don't understand this. It doesn't make sense. If I was doing it, I would do this. Everybody's free to go off and make their version of the Odyssey and render it to film. Uh my thing is we should just be celebrating what is just an absolutely fantastic uh achievement um on behalf of Nolan and everybody who contributed to this extraordinary work of art. like the attention to detail, the scale. Like I've watched all these documentaries on how they, you know, how they did what they did, the behind-the-scenes stuff, um the sets that they constructed, the the the the far corners of the earth. I mean, they go to Iceland for one sequence to shoot the Hades thing, you know, and they're shleing just an unbelievable amount of gear and this 70 mm camera that they had to construct a housing for so that it wasn't uh so loud that they couldn't record dialogue between two characters standing in front of it. The House of Ithaca, like you know, everyone had to get into costume and hike up there. like the commitment to render this story on film in the most visceral and authentic way possible is something to really appreciate and marvel. And I think the fact that leading into it there's sort of this culture war going on at least on X which like side sidebar like everyone on X is arguing about casting. Um >> these are the sirens. >> What's that? Yeah, there are the Yeah, these are the sirens. the influencers are the sirens. They're having this ridiculous debate that makes it seem like there's a controversy when I actually don't really think that there was. And Nolan recognizes this, like he's not paying any attention to this. But all of that quickly gets replaced as soon as Emily Wilson uh writes a a somewhat negative review of the film and then all of the discourse on X becomes like kind of piling on her like suddenly they're on Nolan's side. Like anyway, that's all weird and very funny actually, but we're all talking about this story. >> Yes. >> And we're all wrestling with the themes and what it means and how it applies to our our lives. And I think that that is just, you know, just an incredible thing. Like the conversation that I had with my 19-year-old daughter on the way home from seeing the movie last night was just, you know, precious and I'll never forget it. And I think that that is super cool. And I think that Nolan is his own superhero for figuring out a way to make us interested in this thing and we should be doing nothing but celebrating this achievement. >> It's really powerful to think that that conversation you had on the way home is the conversation that parents have been having with children for for almost 3,000 years. Right. like like people coming home from from hearing uh a bard sing it to them. People coming home from from seeing it performed, people uh seeing art talking, seeing it in museums and in statues and in private homes. Like they just found a mummy that was wrapped in papyrus because that's what they would use to wrap the mummies. They found a mummy in Egypt that was like 19 years 1900 years old. And one of the pieces of papyrus has lines from the Odyssey. Like somebody had a copy of the Odyssey, threw it away, and they used the scraps to wrap a body that's almost 2,000 years old. I was just in Italy and on this island of Ithaca, they discovered a cup that is they call it Netor's cup and it's just like a cup with a line from the Odyssey that's like again 2,000 years old. And so just people have been quoting lines, talking about these ideas, debating them, um, wrestling with the moral questions of them, saying things like, you know, I'm between Sila and Kuribdus here, or you're distracting me like the sirens on the rocks, you know, I'm on an odyssey here. Like, they've been making these references and illusions for for basically as long as there has been such a thing as Western civilization. and like we're a part of that tradition. So Nolan should be celebrated not just for for bringing it back, but I think also for managing impressively to like add a new take on it. Like I I think his take is fresh and new and different. And there's parts that I would disagree with. There's parts of it that I think I prefer the older part, but I think he has he has presented an interesting take on Odysius that it that that lands especially hard now. And as you said, it's hard not to to see the suitors overrunning the house and like the just sort of looting it and destroying the institutions and viol like and then go, yeah, like we have a similar hostile takeover of our political system here in the United States. like this is this is the subtext through which we are interpreting this this art. And hopefully a thousand years from now if we haven't uh you know destroyed ourselves we'll be uh we'll be looking at different takes of different kinds of odysseies because we'll have a thousand years of history um you know repeating the the fundamentally human themes from the art. >> Yeah, beautifully put. I mean, there's no reason in spending years trying to render a version of this story to the screen unless you have an interpretation, you know, and it's about like this is we're kind of like coming full circle to end this with the point that we raised at the beginning, which is >> the point is >> interpreting it and sharing that interpretation and the discourse around that interpretation and other people's versions of that story and their interpretations in that synthesis. this we find some indelible truths about what it means to be human, what it means to live a meaningful good life and what's important. And I think that the conversations that are happening all over the world right now around this, we're getting like a B12 shot right now. And I think it's really [ __ ] cool. >> Yeah. And and I I'd much prefer we were debating this about Homer and the Odyssey and Odysius than, you know, like superheroes. No offense to the Batman movies, which I also thought were good and he imbued with with sort of real substance and symbolism, but like these are the myths that people used to understand. They used to un we when we we would teach kids at a young age about hubris about loyalty about angering the gods about moral injury and by by sort of going like oh that's a bunch of old dead white guys you know um or oh those are old stories or those are racist or violent or all the different you know both the right and the left have undermined our collective stories and and then our education system has underplayed them. They're like, "Oh, let let's read The Hunger Games." You know, I think anything that brings these ancient stories to a modern audience is doing something really important because all those norms that Odysius is lamenting are being violated, are being violated today. But we just don't have the shared language and story and myth that helps people appreciate where those norms came from and what they mean and and and what the costs of violating them are. That to me is is the the sort of the the one of the root causes of the the political and cultural nightmare we're in. >> Agreed, my friend. Uh well, this was super fun. I could talk to you about this uh for a million hours. Um I appreciate your perspective on this. Uh hopefully more conversations uh like this to come and uh I loved it, man. >> Thanks. >> Anything else? Was there anything unsaid that any point that you wanted to make before we end it here? >> You know, I actually I was curious for you. How did the Calypso scene resonate with you as a person in recovery? Because in the poem, he's a much more active participant and conscious participant in his sort of indolence and escapism. She presents him more as a as a person who is injured and physically and spiritually and is just in a kind of a self-induced stuper because he can't can't handle the pain and it takes him time to sort of claw his way out of the bottle, so to speak. I was curious how that how that scene landed with you. >> Yeah, I thought it was fascinating. Here you have this guy who's, you know, in a modern day context, he's a workaholic. He's a stver. He can't sit still. It's always about, you know, the next conquest. What's he going to achieve? And the thing that he's trying to achieve in the moment is to get home, whether he's in denial or not, like he's on this quest. Um, but he doesn't really want to go home. uh and he can't tolerate the internal dissonance that he's experiencing. On the one hand, he's being celebrated as this great leader and he has this egoic attachment to his identity as this great leader. And yet, he also knows that he is a complete piece of [ __ ] who has just broken the world. And how do you reconcile that internally? And that dissonance is eating away at him. he's already established himself as an addict, addicted to uh striving and work, etc. Uh and that blinds him from being able to be uh the better leader that he could be. And so when he lands on this island and Calypso gives him the lotus flower and he takes a taste of it and suddenly he can't remember and he doesn't feel so bad, he's all in. like this is like the person who's tried heroin for the first time and they're like, "Oh my god, like finally I can breathe and all I want to do is do this." And even Calypso says to him at one point like, "Wow, you really like that." Like even she, you know, I know she's a manipulative figure and she's got her own agenda and all of that, but she's the codependent in this relationship and she's more than happy to hold him captive and feed him the lotus flower because her emotional needs are are being met on some level by him. remaining there. So she's participating in this and contributing to it. And the only thing that brings him out of it, the only way that he'smer able to emerge out of it is because deep down he has this knowing that uh that um he could be better. Like he in order to save himself, he's going to have to get off of this island >> and drugs. >> Yeah. like he doesn't have there isn't like a a a well- definfined like rock bottom for him. But he recognizes that if he doesn't get off this island and stop eating, you know, these these lotus leaves that, you know, he's never going to leave and he's going to he's going to perish on this island. And that is more painful than the pain of him having to reckon and reconcile his guilt and his guilt over what happened in the Trojan War and his guilt for having left his son and his wife for so long. And that's ultimately what wakes him up. But in this very kind of like 12step way. Yeah. The only solution, the only way he's going to solve this problem isn't through like white knuckling it or like trying to just will his way out of it. He has to surrender. And this is beautifully illustrated on screen. Like he has to let go and like I can't like the the alcoholic is like I I can't control my drinking. My life is unmanageable. I have to turn it over to a higher power. And Odysius >> has to turn it over to the gods when he lays flat on that raft and says just, you know, you take me like it's your problem now whether I get home or whether I end up drowning in the sea. And I think that there is this really poetic and beautiful parallel with the the addiction recovery story in that. >> I I thought the same thing. It's like there's surrender, there's accepting a higher power, there's the fearless moral inventory, there's the making amends. He basically goes through most of the 12 steps to remember doing this inventory. >> Yeah, he's got and she he's doing a fifth step with her like she's on the receiving end of him like explaining like all of his moral failures and character defects. And she takes that and says, "Okay, now you have to go. now you have to really surrender and like take these contrary actions. >> Well, and his his speech to Penelope is a similar one. You know, he's making amends to the men when he goes and leaves. But but when he sort of when he lays out everything and she sees it, she goes, "Oh, you were the sea people." This is her wrestling for the first time with who her husband was and what he did. And you know, she accepts him anyway. um which is a beautiful sort of gesture and that the screen between them eventually comes down. But yeah, if if you told me Christopher Nolan was was in recovery and that was the subtext for the whole movie, I would buy it. You know, it seems like it's there. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty well illustrated. Yeah. And the final amends is him going to the West to pay tribute to the dead. It's a living, they call it a living amends because he can't actually make amends to these people. They're already dead. Yeah, I'll probably see it a couple more times in the theater. The first time I saw it in Washington DC in a Dolby uh with Dolby sound, but not in IMAX. I saw it last night in the Chinese theater in IMAX 70 millimeter, which was its own insane experience. Um, if you have made it all the way through to the end of this podcast and have not seen the movie, I don't know why you would still be watching or listening. Uh, but please make a point of of going to see it preferably >> in IMAX. You know, I just >> nine years old is too young, right? I can't take my nine-year-old to see. >> I think I think it's I think it's too young. Yeah, I think it's too young for that. But there is this thing like I'm sitting in the Chinese theater. It's being projected in there's a difference between IMAX and 70mm IMAX. Like this. There aren't very many theaters that can do this. And I just thought like this is, you know, I'm so glad I'm doing this because soon this will not be in the theaters and maybe five years from now they'll screen it again, but um there was this specialness to the idea that um we have this [clears throat] opportunity to have this story be told to us in this way. >> Uh hopefully more stories like this will be rendered to the screen in the wake of this massive success. >> Um all right, dude. I'll let you go. Thank you so much. Super fun.