The Endless Knot
We discuss etymology, history, literature, science, and language, and the connections between them.
We head back to the Endless Knot Cocktail Bar to talk about the history of the Mai Tai, the Tiki craze, Polynesian mythology, cultural appropriation, and World's Fairs. And then we turn to Rome's relationship to Greece, and discuss whether Horace wrote the Exotica music of the ancient world!
@AllEndlessKnot on Twitter
Polynesian Lexicon Project Online
This podcast episode on YouTube
This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Author Don Hitchcock
In part two of our discussion about racism, we talk about ways to respond to the problems in the field, in teaching, scholarship, and more. Thank you to Katherine Blouin, Damian Fleming, Usama Ali Gad, Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Asa Mittman, Dimitri Nakassis, Helen Young, and Donna Zuckerberg for their generous contributions of time and thoughtful discussion of these difficult subjects. Please join in the conversation with your thoughts and ideas about how to move the fields forward.
@AllEndlessKnot on Twitter
Episode 44: "Us" & "Them" in the Ancient & Anglo-Saxon Worlds
Episode 51: Race & Racism in Ancient & Medieval Studies, Part One: The Problem
Dr. Katherine Blouin
Everyday Orientalism blog
@isisnaucratis
Dr. Damian Fleming
@FW_Medieval
Dr. Usama Ali Gad
Classics in Arabic blog
@Usamaligad78
Dr. Rebecca Futo Kennedy
Classics at the Intersections blog
Sourcebook on Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World
@kataplexis
Dr. Asa Mittman
Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript
Dr. Dimitri Nakassis
Aegean Prehistory blog
@DimitriNakassis
Dr. Helen Young
Race & Popular Fantasy: Habits of Whiteness
@heyouonline
Dr. Donna Zuckerberg
Eidolon
@donnazuck
The Public Medievalist's series on Race, Racism, & the Middle Ages
In the Middle blog (frequently has useful posts on these subjects)
Hold My Mead: A Bibliography For Historians Hitting Back At White Supremacy by Sarah Bond
Medieval People of Color Tumblr
Pharos -- documenting misuse of the Classics
This podcast episode on YouTube
This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
What are the problems surrounding race and racism in the fields of Classics and Medieval Studies today? Where did these fields come from, and how does that affect the way we think about the past, and how we construct the present? For this episode (and the next) we interviewed eight scholars and put it together into an exploration of these unfortunately timely topics. Thank you to Katherine Blouin, Damian Fleming, Usama Ali Gad, Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Asa Mittman, Dimitri Nakassis, Helen Young, and Donna Zuckerberg for their generous contributions of time and thoughtful discussion of these difficult subjects. In our next episode, we will hear about possible responses to these problems -- in teaching, scholarship, and more.
Episode 44: "Us" & "Them" in the Ancient & Anglo-Saxon Worlds
Dr. Katherine Blouin
Everyday Orientalism blog
@isisnaucratis
Dr. Damian Fleming
@FW_Medieval
Dr. Usama Ali Gad
Classics in Arabic blog
@Usamaligad78
Dr. Rebecca Futo Kennedy
Classics at the Intersections blog
Sourcebook on Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World
@kataplexis
Dr. Asa Mittman
Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript
Dr. Dimitri Nakassis
Aegean Prehistory blog
@DimitriNakassis
Dr. Helen Young
Race & Popular Fantasy: Habits of Whiteness
@heyouonline
Dr. Donna Zuckerberg
Eidolon
@donnazuck
The Public Medievalist's series on Race, Racism, & the Middle Ages
In the Middle blog (frequently has useful posts on these subjects)
Hold My Mead: A Bibliography For Historians Hitting Back At White Supremacy by Sarah Bond
Medieval People of Color Tumblr
This podcast episode on YouTube
This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
We interview Emily Wilson, whose new translation of the Odyssey for Norton was published in November to great acclaim and critical praise. She tells us about some of her choices in the areas of metre, vocabulary, register, and more, and we discuss the very concept of 'choice' in translation, the notion of a 'faithful' translation, the complicated question of heroic women, and 70's blaxpoitation films!
This year's holiday podcast looks back at last year's Christmas video, Stocking, and we talk about the Christmas treats our families enjoy, their history, and their etymology. All you could ever want to know about plum pudding and tourtiere, along with the story of St Nick himself. (PS: since the recording, I've seen indications that the 'mincepie ban' by the Puritans may be a myth, but Christmas celebrations in general definitely were banned, and mincepies and plum puddings were strongly associated with observances of the holiday, so were presumably included.)
Gerry Bowler, The World Encyclopedia of Christmas
Bruce David Forbes, Christmas: A Candid History
Desmond Morris, Christmas Watching
Andrea Broomfield, Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History
Kaufman, Cathy. “The Ideal Christmas Dinner.” Gastronomica, vol. 4, no. 4, 2004, pp. 17–24.
Leach, Helen. “Translating the 18th Century Pudding.” Islands of Inquiry: Colonisation, Seafaring and the Archaeology of Maritime Landscapes, edited by Geoffrey Clark et al., vol. 29, ANU Press, 2008, pp. 381–396.
Canadian Encyclopedia "Tourtière"
Lemasson, Jean-Pierre. "The Long History of the Tourtière of Quebec's Lac-St-Jean", in What's to Eat? Entrees in Canadian Food History, edited by Nathalie Cooke, McGill-Queens UP, 2009.
Alison & Darrin from MythTake Podcast dropped by Sudbury -- and sat down with us for a chat about teaching myth, literature, and more. Make sure you check out their podcast for great discussions about myth and Greek literature.
Introduction to Mythology from Oxford UP
Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
We talk to Prof. Richard Thomas about his new book about Bob Dylan and the Classics, discussing Latin poetry, intertextuality in music and literature, Dylan's similarities to Catullus and use of Virgil and Ovid, and the unexpected connections between Classical scholarship and research into folk music archives.
Monday, Dec. 4, 2017 at Newtonville Books in Boston, MA
Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017 at the University of Tulsa, in Tulsa, OK
We talk to podcaster and author Mike Duncan about his book, podcasting, Roman history, and more. Thanks to Mike for joining us -- and everyone, go get his book, it's great!
The Storm before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic
Our Hallowe'en themed episode this year is about costumes -- and etymologies and origin stories of a whole bunch of iconic items of clothing. We talk about the semiotics of fashion, the many varieties of the toga, and hats that caused fainting fits, and finish off with a couple of spooky Roman stories! Also, check out this year's Hallowe'en video, on words for Ghost.
"Costume" video
"Jack o'Lantern" video
Ep 22: Jack o'Lantern podcast
Justin Trudeau in Canadian Tuxedo (Source)
What words did the Greeks, Romans, and early medieval English use to talk about different groups of people? What differences did they think were important? How do those compare to modern conceptions of ethnicity, national identity, or race? We try to give some basic background on this complicated question, starting with the etymology of the vocabulary and addressing some of the ways differences were conceptualized.
Full transcript of this episode
Video on the Anglo-Saxon Invasion, collaboration with Jabzy
Ethnicity in Herodotus--The Honest Entry
How is the Ancient Mediterranean Diverse If Everyone There Is "White"?
“Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did "White People" Become "White"?” James H. Dee. The Classical Journal. Vol. 99, No. 2 (Dec., 2003 - Jan., 2004), pp. 157-167
“Did ancient identity depend on ethnicity? A preliminary probe” Erich Gruen. Phoenix. Vol. 67, No. 1/2 (2013), pp. 1-22.
“Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity” Robert Bartlett.
Caitlin Green’s blog, for general evidence of diversity in Britain
Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Stephen Harris, Taylor & Francis, 2003.
Where the the term "White People" come from?
Colorlines in Classical North Africa
Time to talk about the greatest hero of them all! Why are there so many movies about Hercules? Why do they all have lions and snakes in them, but no journeys to the underworld, and only a sprinkling of family murder? Who's the most Herculean Hercules, and how did Mr. Universe do in the role? And, most importantly, how much virtue is in every part of the mighty Hercules???
Movies discussed:
Hercules, 1957, Steve Reeves
Hercules in New York, 1969, Arnold Schwarzenegger
The Adventures of Hercules, 1985, Lou Ferrigno
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, 1995-1999, Kevin Sorbo
Hercules, 1997, Disney, Animated
Hercules, 2005, Paul Telfer
Hercules, 2014, Dwayne Johnson
The Legend of Hercules, 2014, Kellan Lutz
Wyke, Maria. “Herculean Muscle!: The Classicizing Rhetoric of Bodybuilding.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, vol. 4, no. 3, 1997, pp. 51–79. JSTOR
The Emperor Commodus
We're declaring this the first episode of Season 3 of the podcast! In this episode, long after everyone else has talked about it, we review the movie Arrival and discuss the linguistic and philosophical issues that it raises, including of course the infamous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Oh, and check out our attempt at creating a theme cocktail!
We're back at the cottage, and this time we're talking to Ian and Susan McMaster about language, computer programming, poetry, music, theatre, and more, as we chat about the serendipitous connections that led to careers, performances, and relationships. Along the way we play a few tracks of Susan McMaster's poetry, more of which (both texts and recordings) can be found at her website. Susan's recent publications include Crossing Arcs: Alzheimer's, My Mother, and Me and Lizard Love: Artists Scan Poems.
The three works included in the podcast are "Shadowless" from Pass This Way Again (Underwhich Editions), the beginning of "The Pleasure of Lusting" from Geode Music & Poetry, and "Science Song #1" from Dark Galaxies.
Susan McMaster's website (with links to poems & list of publications)
We talk about the early history of paleontology and geology, the first fossil hunters, the Bone Wars, and the possible ties between fossils and Greek myth. Also, a bonus poem about a mammoth cheese!
“Ancient Fossil Discoveries and Interpretations”, Adrienne Mayor, The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life, Edited by Gordon Lindsay Campbell
Mayor, A. (2011), The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times (2nd revised edition of The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times (2000)), Princeton, Princeton University Press.
The Feast Podcast: A Victorian Dinosaur Dinner & Thomas Jefferson & the Mammoth Cheese of Cheshire
See the end of this blog post for the "Ode to a Mammoth Cheese" poem.
We talk to Laura Carlson from The Feast Podcast about recreating historical recipes, the many meanings of food, and what exactly defines a 'recipe'. This is part of The Recipe Project's Virtual Conversation: What is a Recipe? which started on June 2nd, 2017 and is continuing until July 5th, and you can join in the conversation by leaving a comment here or by checking out the hashtag #recipesconf on Twitter and Instagram.
The Recipe Project: A Virtual Conversation, "What is a Recipe?"
Episode 3: The Medieval Michelin Guide: Finding Food on the Camino de Santiago, 1490
Paul Freedman's Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination
We finish up our colour series (for now!) with a discussion of Purple, Pink, & Brown. From Phoenician shellfish, Virgil's Aeneas,& Propertius's Cynthia, to flowers, beavers, & bears, this episode covers a lot of ground. Let us know what fun colour facts we've missed, and what colourful topics you might like us to cover in the future!
Note: one area of discussion we rather left out is the place of purple in Byzantium/the Eastern Empire... maybe we’ll pick that up in the next episode briefly!
We've joined forces with the MythTake podcast for a pair of episodes about the myth of Theseus, the Minotaur, and Ariadne. In our episode we talk about the story of Theseus & Ariadne, and the development of the word 'Clue' from Chaucer's version of the tale, as well as Catullus and Ovid's depictions of Ariadne's abandonment, and the connections to fingerprints, detective fiction, and Agatha Christie's life. Meanwhile, Alison & Darrin in their episode talk about two poems by Bacchylides, and the Greek sources for the life of Theseus and his heroic exploits, as well as a few more English words derived from his adventures.
It's #CreateICG Week! A bunch of internet creators are putting out videos, podcasts, blogs, & more, all on the theme of CREATE – with all sorts of different approaches and interpretations. The event is centred around the Internet Creators Guild, a non-profit organization with a mission to support, represent, and connect creators whose primary platform is online. If you’d like to find out more about them, you can go to internetcreatorsguild.com – and to find more amazing creations by ICG members, search #CreateICG on your social media of choice, check our show notes for links, or go to createicg.wordpress.com for lists of creators and their works.
In this episode we talk about the etymology of CREATE, the origin of breakfast, how mealtimes moved around the day, the history of theatrical and artificial lighting, and Greek and Norse creation myths -- including the story of the body-fluid-filled mead of inspiration!
"Create: Myth, Mealtimes, & Matinées" video
Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology
We have the immense pleasure of interviewing Baba Brinkman, a Canadian rap artist & award-winning playwright best known for his “Rap Guide” series of plays and albums, with which he has toured the world; these cover topics like evolution, religion, medicine, and most recently climate change. He’s also pioneered the genre of ‘lit-hop’ with his adaptations of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Gilgamesh, Beowulf & more. Our conversation ranges through tree-planting; the connections between Homer, Chaucer, & rap; Horace, Lucretius, & Erasmus Darwin as science communicators; the comedy of neuroscience; Trump; language & dictionaries; and more.
At the end of the interview we play a couple of tracks by Baba: his newest single "Erosion", and the first two tracks from his Rap Canterbury Tales album, "General Prologue" & "The Knight's Tale (scene 1)".
A brief history of rhyme | Baba Brinkman | TEDxNavesink
Baba Brinkman & Professor Elemental - What's Your English?
How do words change their meanings? What are the mechanisms behind semantic change? And how do technological advances -- like the development of e-books -- affect language? We discuss these topics and more with Ray Belli, host of the Words for Granted podcast.
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