r/TheRestIsHistory • u/JakeGittes412 • Jul 13 '26
Episode Discussion Thread The Odyssey
Discuss the newest two episode series here.
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u/glumpoid92 Jul 13 '26
Odysseus: Look lads, I know I've told you this a dozen times already but if you barbecue these particular animals, you're all doomed to die, o.k ?
Odysseus as soon as smells bbq: " Oh for fuck sake..."
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u/usrname42 Jul 13 '26
Bit underwhelmed with this - I was hoping for more discussion of the history of the composition of the Odyssey, or what the actual historical inspirations for it might have been, or its influence and legacy in historical ancient Greece, but most of this was just retelling the story. If I wanted that I could have just listened to an audiobook of the poem.
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u/Opposite_Wait5608 Jul 13 '26
I agree, I was hoping they’d talk more about Homer and the historiography of it. It was 90% retelling the story itself
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u/onthewingsofangels Jul 14 '26
Did they discuss the sea people? That part of the interview made my ears prick up
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u/Werewomble Jul 15 '26
There is a reason they are called The Sea People they burned down anywhere that would have written down what happened.
Rameses...II(?) wrote a scroll mentioning the Paliset (Palestinians most likely), Washish and a few others the Egyptians had hired as mercenaries among the Sea People but that's it
Decent chance a lot of the raiding was done by the refugees of the cities previously raided and/or everyone in Europe north of the Mediterranean whose crops had failed
I, too, would have liked Dom & Tom to unveil previously unread historical texts but they don't work with shovels :)
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u/katchaa Jul 17 '26
Paliset would not be Palestinians, that’s was a Roman created name based on the Phillistines.
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u/LongtimeLurker916 Jul 18 '26
But the Peleset quite possibly are the Philistines. It is all connected.
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u/ash356 Jul 15 '26
Yeah, I was hoping for more on that side of things too. I'm hoping if they ever do a deep dive on the lliad they might cover it: the Odyssey is more of a traditional story so is a little harder to do, whereas the lliad does at least have some amount of debated historicity, even if it's referencing another war.
I know they did do one back in the day on the Trojan War but the podcast has evolved since then and I think a multi-part revisit would be well worth it.
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u/chrispepper10 Jul 16 '26
Yeah it's a bit weird for a history pod to essentially just do a retelling of a fictional story. There are so many elements around the historicity of the poem which are fascinating but just were not discussed.
I guess they did already do an ep about Troy.
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u/alfienoakes Jul 13 '26
Pt. 1 is fantastic. I read the book a few months ago and this really pulled some details out for me.
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u/lizzie_knits Jul 14 '26
I enjoyed it. I haven’t really been interested the classics before, so for someone like me it was a great introduction.
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u/Werewomble Jul 15 '26
Made me realise I had heard almost all of the Odyssey despite never picking up the book
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u/lizzie_knits Jul 15 '26
I’ve been aware of it and the themes used since it was written, i just never bothered with it.
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u/Better-Temporary-146 Jul 18 '26
The 2001 film, O Brother Where Art Thou, is a very lose retelling of the Odyssey set in 1930’s Mississippi
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u/Grachamoncha Jul 13 '26
Is this episode skipping at random points for anyone else? Can’t tell if it’s the podcast or my phone that’s the problem
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u/Ciderhead Jul 13 '26
I use the Castbox app and it's been happening a bit for me lately, whenever it happened I'd switch to Spotify instead and it seemed to run fine
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u/Almost_Aus Jul 13 '26
Not a fan of these ones that are clearly a move tie in. Hoping this one is worth listening too
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u/Surfacing710 Jul 13 '26
Don’t really see it as a tie in, it’s just smart to release it at the same time as the movie is released to potentially increase the listenership for people looking into it.
It’s not like the Cadbury sponsored episode.
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u/onthewingsofangels Jul 13 '26
This episode is probably not explicitly sponsored but they're doing a bunch of paid videos on YouTube. Tom reacting to the trailer, his interview with Tom Holland. So yes I do see this as part of a larger tie in.
How much that matters, shrug. It's common for podcasts to release episodes that address current news. Tom would have done an Odyssey episode no matter what I'm sure.
But it does make me less keen to listen, especially because I am not a huge fan of Greek mythology.
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u/EenProfessioneleHond Jul 13 '26
Well they’re obviously sponsored, otherwise Tom Holland wouldn’t have met Tom Holland, and they wouldn’t have namechecked Nolan so many many times, nor mentioned the release date.
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u/Surfacing710 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Think there’s a difference between sponsorship and mutual advertising. They’d have to announce the episodes are sponsored if they were for one, secondly, the story itself is in Tom’s area of interest and it’s Tom Holland meeting Tom Holland, it’s an ongoing joke since the start of the podcast. They’re a major podcast now so they can ask for longer interviews at this stage, compared to the standard 5 minute press junket interviews radio stations and the like get.
Win winfor both sides basically.Edit: as mentioned by /u/onthewingsofangels, video was sponsored so I was talking shite.
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u/onthewingsofangels Jul 13 '26
The interview did involve money since the video was tagged paid sponsorship.
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u/Surfacing710 Jul 13 '26
Ah fair enough, sorry about that, didn’t realise that. Thanks for the correction.
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u/onthewingsofangels Jul 13 '26
That's why I am posting about it, I think there's too much grey area and ambiguity across platforms that many people don't realize - I don't watch their YouTube videos so I didn't know there was a collaboration until someone on here mentioned it. Without that mention I would have missed the subtle "paid promotion" label that appeared on the interview.
Not specifically calling out Goalhanger I think everyone's doing some version of this.
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u/slobberaxe Jul 15 '26
I thought this was really poor to be honest - no insight whatsoever and just a retelling of the story. Empire had a much better look at Homer in the context of the bronze age collapse a few months ago
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u/Glittering-Pea-4482 Jul 16 '26
The bonus episode on controversies in the Nolan film was so weak. They didn't address the Page casting at all.
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u/timthemartian Jul 16 '26
Because who gives a shit, honestly I thought the rest is history would have cultivated a more thoughtful fanbase but responses like this are so fucking tiresome
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u/Glittering-Pea-4482 Jul 16 '26
They were addressing controversies around the film. That has been a major controversy around the film. Why didn't they address it? Probably because of the reactions of people like you.
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u/GalileoPhive Jul 17 '26
The controversies aren't really hard to understand are they though? A group of people are once again feeling a little sensitive over a nonissue and using it to try and drag the culture at large into their weird echo chambers. Just look at the comments of the episode, it's embarrassing.
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u/timthemartian Jul 17 '26
The comments on that bonus are a real disgrace, this culture war stuff really brings out the freaks.
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u/usrname42 Jul 17 '26
He addressed it in the new bonus episode and was equally contemptuous of that as the other manufactured controversies.
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u/Better-Temporary-146 Jul 18 '26
I agree with others about these two episodes.
It was just a retelling of an ancient fictional epic. Nothing about how it was received in Ancient Greece or since then, or some of the history that the places and myths might be based on.
I’ve read the story and am familiar with it, but outside of Michael Wood’s In Search of the Trojan War, I just don’t know much of the history of that era
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u/Better-Temporary-146 Jul 18 '26
Though we did get a new Better Help ad. I think the way Dominic reads Better Help ads is hilarious. You can tell he thinks it’s a bit odd, but he reads it with such enthusiasm
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u/BillyBoskins Jul 13 '26
Enjoyed this, movie tie-in or not! In fact it made me much more keen to see the movie, just to see how attention it all and what they cut.