Plato's Republic 4: Myths 4 KidZ

Summary

This episode covers parts of books 2 and 3 of Plato’s Republic. Adeimantus and Socrates start planning an education for the guardians. As it stands, young Athenians are fed an unhealthy banquet of lies written by the likes of Homer and Hesiod. Socrates wants new lies that set a good example for the kids. Lies with less fighting and sex and crying. Boring lies. And they might be for adults too.

Credits

Ancient music: Michael Levy

Adeimantus: Rebecca Amzallag

Transcript

Transcript

Note: this is transcribed using an online transcription service so it’s probably going to have a lot of errors. We do don’t have time to go through these all carefully but still thought that it would be more helpful than having no transcript at all.  

Clif Mark  00:13

Today, Socrates and Adeimantus recommend the lies you should tell to the healthy child and they introduce a new epic hero: Achilles the sensible. I'm Clif Mark, and this is good in theory. Last episode, Socrates in the boys invented a city as a thought experiment. And they gave it an army. And then they asked: now that we've given these guys spears, how can we make sure they don't point them at the other citizens and say, give us everything you've got? Glaucon and Socrates agreed that the first step is to pick guardians that have good natures, like dogs. And in this episode, Socrates and Adeimantus are going to talk about how to educate them. They asked the timeless question: what do we tell to children, so they don't grow up to be assholes? And as is often the case, when people are discussing child's education, they spend a lot more time discussing what they should avoid telling children, rather than what they should tell them. Socrates and Adeimantus, they're going to go through Greek mythology and poetry with a censor's pen, and cross out everything that might have a bad influence on the guardians. And when they're done, there's hardly anything left. And this raises a big question. How much should the goal of moral education determine the stories that we tell the children? And what about the stories that we tell to adults? I find this conversation interesting. I think it raises some really important questions. But I also find it actually funny. And I didn't the first time, maybe even the first couple times I read it. And that's because I didn't know about the background. I didn't know about the Greek poetic tradition, mythology, the kind of education that Adam Manchus and Socrates are referring to. So to start, I want to spend a couple of minutes giving a little background. So when the dialogue starts, it has something to land on.  Traditionally, ancient Greek education had two components, gymnastic for the body, music for the soul. The word gymnastic is pretty straightforward. It is basically gym class. It refers to your whole physical regimen, exercise, sport, diet, all that stuff. The word music is a little trickier. Because in Greek, it means more than one thing. Sometimes when they say music, they mean the same thing that we mean songs, notes, instruments, stuff like that. But usually, music refers to all the arts, painting, sculpture, philosophy, everything is called music, because it means everything to do with the Muses, the Greek goddesses of inspiration. So when I'm talking about musical education, I'm really talking about arts education, and it was supposed to develop the soul in the same way that gymnastic is supposed to develop the body.  And the most important subcategory of music by far was poetry. In Greece, poetry was not just a niche interest like it is now. It was a major part of the culture, they would recite it aloud. They would listen to professional performances of epics like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. In the theater, also written in poetry was the most important form of pop culture in Athens. And poetry also included as Socrates and Atlantis are going to discuss the stories that were told the children. So poetry as an art form, and Athens was treated with a lot of reverence. It was a really important part of civic and religious culture and of ethical education. The Athenians, they learned about religion, and the myths through poetry. They learned about heroes like Achilles and Ajax and Hercules that the young would look up to the poets were seen as teachers of the people, and they were considered wise and even divinely inspired. That's why the characters in Plato are quoting poets all the time. Now, what was Greek poetry? Like? Because I just told you that this is a very important art form that is treated with a lot of reverence, and is involved in ethical education. You may be imagining that it was something like Sunday school lessons, or after school specials or some other form of boring and didactic storytelling. You would be entirely wrong. Ancient Greek poetry was written to entertain. The characters are larger than life. They're Gods heroes, royalty. Most of them have superpowers. And nearly all of them have massive personality issues. The plots are full of violence and conflict, sex and scandal. The Greek poets, they wanted to make their audiences cry and laugh and have nightmares. And they weren't at all shy about using melodrama in shock value to do it. So those are the two things I want you to know about Greek poetry before I start the dialogue: that it played this really important central role in the culture and in ethical education. But also, that it was written for maximum juiciness and drama. And if you remember those two things, the conversation that's coming up should make a lot more sense to you than it did to me the first time through. We're picking up the conversation right after glaucon. And Socrates discussed what kind of nature the Guardian should have. And now at a mantis play by Rebecca ambs leg is going to jump in and carry on talking to Socrates, who is played by me.

Socrates  06:07

So it settled, we should find guardians that have natures like dogs, Swift, strong, spirited and wise. But how should we educate these young dogs? Do you think that talking about education might be able to help us find justice?

Adeimantus  06:21

Definitely, Socrates, tell us what kind of education Do you think they should have?

Socrates  06:27

Well, that question could take all night. But I think the first step is to decide what lies we're going to tell to the children. What, what do you mean? I mean, their kids, what you tell them is going to affect them for the rest of their lives. So we can't just let their mothers in their nurses decide what to tell them, can we?

Adeimantus  06:47

No, I guess not Socrates. But what do you mean exactly about telling them lies,

Socrates  06:53

myths Adeimantus? Think about the stories we tell to children, stories about Gods and heroes. They have some truth in them. But you know, they're not 100% factual, right?

Adeimantus  07:04

Yes, of course.

Socrates  07:06

So they're lies. And I'm saying we need new lies, because most of the ones we tell now are totally inappropriate.

Adeimantus  07:14

Really? How so?

Socrates  07:15

Well, it's not just that our poets tell lies, that can't be helped. It's that they tell ugly lies. The story that he said, Tell us about Uranus, how kronas to prevent and what his son did to him. That is a slander against the gods. And even if it were true, I don't think it's appropriate for children, or even for most adults.

Adeimantus  07:37

Yeah, those ones are pretty rough.

Socrates  07:40

We want our citizens to love the gods and their families. We want them to get along with each other. And to think that fighting with each other is the worst thing they can do. So we can't have stories like we do now about Gods fighting gods and fighting heroes and mortals. Our guardians should only hear the best stories.

Adeimantus  08:00

Well, which ones are those?

Socrates  08:03

Well, I'm not a poet, and neither are you at a mantis. We're founding a city here. We're not writing fairytales. So we just need to set some general models or guidelines that the poets in our city can follow when they're writing the stories.

Adeimantus  08:17

Fine, then what are the guidelines?

Socrates  08:20

Well, the gods are good right out of Mantis?

Adeimantus  08:22

Yes, of course, then the first rule should be that no poem can show the gods causing harm. If anything bad happens in the world, it's not the gods fault. No more Zeus on Mount Olympus throwing down good fates and bad fates at random. No more Gods starting wars, no more Gods hurting people. You've got my vote on that one. What's the next law?

Socrates  08:47

I think our second law should be that the poet's can't show the gods lying. There's all these stories about the gods shape shifting and appearing as mortals or animals or even inanimate objects to trick us. You've got Proteus as a tree fetuses fire.

Adeimantus  09:04

Is this the goose? Ha,

Socrates  09:07

exactly. Isn't it ridiculous? Why would the gods lie?

Adeimantus  09:11

Wait a second, Socrates, you said that our education was all about which lies to tell to the guardians. And now you're saying that Gods can't lie?

Socrates  09:22

Well, there are lies, and then there are lies. Let me explain. First, they're the lies that are bad for you. These are the ones that really deceive you and create ignorance in your soul. These are True Lies. Everyone hates them, and nobody should tell them neither Gods nor men. But on the other hand, there are lies that are pretty useful sometimes, if you need to deceive your enemies, or to help your friends. Or if you're just telling stories about ancient things like we're doing right now. We don't really know what happened. We just have to tell something that's as close to the truth as we can imagine. Technically, yes, these are lies, but they're only lies in speech. They're not lie lies.

Adeimantus  10:07

Yes, I can see how this kind of thing could be useful. But I,

Socrates  10:12

well, obviously, we don't want just anyone running around telling lies in our city, in our city will say that only the rulers can lie, and only for the good of the city.

Adeimantus  10:24

All right, Socrates. But what about the gods? Why can't they lie?

Socrates  10:28

Well, they're so powerful. They don't need to deceive their enemies. They can just help their friends without lying. And they know what happened in ancient times, so they don't have to make those stories up. The gods have no reason to lie.

Adeimantus  10:41

Okay, I agree to both of the rules. No more stories that show Gods causing harm or lying.

Socrates  10:49

Excellent. Well, now that we've covered the gods, we should probably say something about death.

Adeimantus  10:55

Sure. What are you thinking?

Socrates  10:58

Well, have you ever noticed that when our poets talk about death, they're always describing bodies as moldering corpses, or food for worms. And Hades is always dank and miserable. And when people die, their souls are shrieking as they're being dragged off to the underworld. Hmm,

Adeimantus  11:19

yes, I have noticed.

Socrates  11:21

Well, why do the poets have to be so negative? in our city, we need to sit the poets down and ask them to find something nice to say about death. All that spooky stuff is fun, but it's not going to make our guardians fearless in battle, is it?

Adeimantus  11:36

I guess not. We should probably be saying that death is great. Exactly.

Socrates  11:41

You get it? And you know, what else? If heaven forbid, someone that you know dies? What is the best way to act? Does the good man carry on and act like there's been some kind of catastrophe? Or does he try to hold it together and act sensibly?

Adeimantus  11:58

Oh, I think that good men try to control themselves in that kind of situation.

Socrates  12:02

Well, not in Homer. Homer is always describing heroes and kings crying and rolling around in dung and rubbing ash in their hair, just because they lost a friend or a child or some money. Is that really setting a good example?

Adeimantus  12:17

Definitely not. Because if our guardians see the gods acting like that, they won't make any effort to control themselves.

Socrates  12:25

And if we can't show our heroes lamenting too much, then by your logic, the poet shouldn't show the gods or heroes laughing too much, either. Am I right?

Adeimantus  12:34

Yeah, by my logic, Socrates. Sure, I accept that.

Socrates  12:38

And I assume we want our young guardians to be moderate men don't mean they should be obedient to their rulers. And they should be masters of themselves when it comes to drink and food and sex, right?

Adeimantus  12:51

Yeah, of course they should.

Socrates  12:53

Our poem should reflect that. We need to make sure that the guardians hear all the passages in Homer, where the characters silently obey their leaders, and where they show fortitude in the face of adversity instead of moaning and complaining.

Adeimantus  13:06

Yeah, we definitely can't leave those out.

Socrates  13:09

And you remember that scene, where Odysseus is talking about how the best thing in life is a table piled high with bread and meat, and a goblet full of wine, of course, in the part where Zeus sees Hara, and he wants her so badly that he forgets all of his plans and has sex with her right there on the ground. Because he can't even wait to bring her inside.

Adeimantus  13:31

 How could I forget?

Socrates  13:33

And what about the part where Achilles calls his own commander? A dog I drunk with the heart of a deer?

Adeimantus  13:39

Yeah, that one was the best.

Socrates  13:41

I know. And if you want to set a good example, for our guardians, we're gonna have to cut out all of them, aren't we?

Adeimantus  13:49

Of course, you're right. They have to go. What else Socrates?

Socrates  13:53

 Achilles. It always bothered me how Homer portrays Achilles, it seems a bit off because his version of Achilles is totally out of control. He's always telling his commanders fighting with the gods. But Achilles is the son of a very wise and moderate man. And his mother is a goddess, and he was educated by the wise kyron. So with that kind of background, I think Achilles would have been a very sensible young man. And I think anyone who says he's a hothead, must be lying.

Adeimantus  14:26

Absolutely, Socrates. Achilles the sensible,

Socrates  14:31

perfect, because if we allow any of these stories about men and Gods misbehaving, then our young guardians will probably think it's okay for them to misbehave as well.

Adeimantus  14:42

Yeah, they will for sure.

Socrates  14:45

Then we're agreed about what stories we should tell. And now we just have to decide how they should be told.

Adeimantus  14:52

I'm not following you, Socrates.

Socrates  14:55

I mean, that we need to decide if story should be told in simple narration In imitation,

Adeimantus  15:01

what are you talking about?

Socrates  15:03

Sorry, I'm not explaining this. Well, you know how sometimes the poet just describes what happens and tells you what everyone does. But he does it in his own voice. He's narrating what goes on.

Adeimantus  15:15

Sure.

Socrates  15:16

But other times, the poet speaks as if he were the character. Homer tries to make us forget that he's Homer, and instead tries to speak in the voice of whoever's in the poem. Like when he has crises go down to the Greek ships to beg and try to ransom his daughter.

Adeimantus  15:33

Okay, I get it.

Socrates  15:34

Well, that's what I mean by imitation. The poet is imitating the characters by trying to seem like them.

Adeimantus  15:40

Let me guess you're about to ban theater along with everything else.

Socrates  15:46

Maybe Adeimatus, it may be even more I don't really know yet. But we've set sail. And we have to go wherever the argument blows us.

Adeimantus  15:56

Right, you are Socrates. I'm with you.

Clif Mark  16:11

   Socrates, and Adeimantus go on to talk about imitation for a while, they aren't absolutely clear on whether they're going to ban theater altogether. But they do put some pretty heavy regulations on imitation. If it's allowed at all, it can only be imitations of good men doing good deeds, because anything that young people imitate may become part of their character. So imitations of bad behavior are forbidden. Plus, imitating a lot of different things doesn't fit well with the one man one job principle that they set up earlier. And so Adeimantis, and Socrates agree that if some amazing poet who's capable of imitating anything in the world shows up at their city, someone like Homer, then they'll just send him away, because the only poets that they want are the ones who are less fun to listen to, but who are willing to follow all the rules for poetry that they already set up. And that means that the way of telling stories is just as controlled as the content of the tales. The position that Socrates and Adeimantis wind up in is pretty extreme. And I have a lot to say about it. But first, I just want to talk a little bit about the philosophical method by which they got there. 

At the very end of that bit of dialogue, when Adam Mantis realizes Socrates might be about to throw out the theater along with everything else. Socrates says, we've set sail, and now we have to go wherever the winds of argument blow us. And that line has always stuck with me, because I think it tells us something really interesting about how these guys do philosophy, and how it differs from a lot of other kinds of conversation. For example, imagine that you are sitting on a committee for education reform. And like Socrates and Atlantis, you want to hear the education more towards creating good citizens. A reasonable approach would be to share your goal with the others come up with some proposals, and then discuss them with all the relevant stakeholders. You talk to other teachers and educators, you talk to parents, maybe the poet's will be writing the stories, there'll be religious groups who are concerned and other groups of citizens who care. Ideally, you'd hear everyone's point of view and hammer out a consensus, or at least, something that doesn't completely alienate any important group. This kind of discussion can actually be really challenging, and it takes a lot of careful framing and small incremental changes, and especially compromise, for it to work. And this kind of discussion is the opposite of sailing wherever the winds of argument blow. 

Socrates and Adam mantus, they start with a plausible argument with sturdy premises. We don't want children to grow up to be bad people, what we teach them at a young age can have a big effect. And therefore, we should avoid children's stories that could have a bad influence on the kids. This is straightforward, it makes a lot of sense. It would be welcome at the committee meeting. But instead of trying to avoid offending anyone and finding a compromise, Socrates and Adam and to start ruthlessly deriving all of the arguments implications, the Wilder and more controversial, the better. I think of this as playing a game called by that logic, if children's education should be moral education, then by that logic, we shouldn't show Gods fighting each other or hurting good people. And by that logic, we should also take out any scenes of excessive mourning, of insubordination in any depictions of people enjoying sensual pleasures like food, sex or drink. And by that logic, we should also eliminate imitation, no more theater, and so on in that direction.

If you're the kind of person who's into philosophy, you know that the whole point is to see how far you can take it. And the things only start to get interesting when you get to something that's weird enough that people say, hold on, that can't be right. And that's where all the thinking and discussion happens. If you're like Socrates, this is your idea of a good time. But not everyone is like Socrates, not everyone is into this game. And it's much more welcome in some contexts than others. As a general rule of thumb, you will be kicked out of a committee meeting before you get to say anything that's philosophically interesting. And that's because the higher the practical stakes of the conversation, the more likely they are arguing for wild, counterintuitive positions, often called “hot takes”, will seem like you're showing off or trolling or trivializing serious issues. Or worse still people might take you seriously and conclude that you're some kind of extremist. But Socrates and Adam Mantis are not on a committee for education reform. And they don't care about being taken seriously or outraging people. They're at a private get together. They're talking about a hypothetical city that they just invented. So they can really cut loose. 

And the educational plan that Socrates in adamant is come up with is radical. They're asking, What if we chose stories based on the goal of moral education. And it turns out that doing that would require completely bulldozing the existing tradition. First of all, their plan is deeply empires. If you take Greek mythology, and you remove all the stories that have Gods fighting, or lying or harming mortals, there's virtually nothing left. Any devout Greek pagan would strongly object to this plan. And the reform isn't just a religious outrage. It's also an aesthetic outrage. Socrates and Atlantis are systematically going through poetry, and removing anything that might provoke a strong reaction. provoking a strong reaction is the whole point of poetry, it's supposed to move you. So not only would Greek poetry be totally unrecognizable, if it followed their demands, I can't imagine any popular culture that could follow these rules. Think of the TV shows and the movies that you've enjoyed over the past couple of years, how many of them would make it past Socrates and Atlantis. And even though they start the discussion, talking about what stories we should tell to little children, there's a lot of stuff in the text that implies that this program of censorship would apply to adults too. When the all imitating poet comes to the city and wants to recite his poems, they don't slap a Parental Advisory sticker on him. They banish him from the city. 

So this is the plan that Socrates and Atlantis agree on. And because of that, it would be easy to assume, and a lot of people do this, that Plato himself is a real prude hates poetry, and wants to censor all art. And actually, if you hear or read a very brief summary of Plato, this is probably what it will tell you. But I don't think that's right. I don't think that is the message that Plato is trying to convey. Plato never says, burn all the Homer books.  Socrates and domantas are two characters in a play, written by Plato. And they are suggesting this education policy for a city that they made up as a thought experiment.

And when they're developing this policy, they're not having a straight face policy discussion. They're riffing. They're being purposely over the top and trying to make it sound as ridiculous as possible. They're asking poets to make death look good. And they're asking the characters in melodramas to stop crying. And one of the big kickers is what they do to Achilles his whole character, his cocky, emotional warrior genius. The tantrums and the arrogance are the whole point of the character. It's what makes him fun. But Socrates wants to turn him into a sensible and obedient young man. It's like saying, let's have Inigo Montoya but more forgiving. And all this joking and absurdity is easy to miss if you're reading this book for the first time. But I think that most Athenians who read it would have been laughing or rolling their eyes because it's silly. Nobody would have read this and thought of it as a serious political proposal. And I'm sure you've enjoyed this kind of conversation before. We're being ridiculous and edgy and coming up with the most outrageous conclusions that you Can is the whole fun of it? In my opinion, that's what's happening here between Atlantis and Socrates.

And there are some people who read this book. And they see that. And they think that maybe, since Socrates and Adam Mantis are laughing about the idea of moralizing poetry, that means that Plato was against it. They're mocking the idea that poetry should be subject to morality, because it's a bad idea. Now, I think this reading of Plato is mistaken as well, Socrates, he never rejects the idea of moral education or of censorship, we have no good reason to believe that Socrates doesn't think the things that he's saying, even if he's laughing while he says them.

And this brings up one of the most important interpretive questions that you're going to have to ask yourself when you're reading the Republic, which is, Is he serious? This question is going to come up again. And again. Even if you don't care about poetry, I promise you that Socrates and the gang are going to decide some things for the city and speech that you would not want for your own community. And you may start wondering if that's the kind of thing that Plato really wants? 

Well, in my personal opinion, it is a mistake to come to Plato, looking for a conclusive argument on one side, or the other of the political questions that he's addressing. The Socratic art isn't about instilling beliefs. It's about engineering train crashes between your existing beliefs, in hopes that you'll start to examine them more closely. In this case, he takes the totally plausible idea that we should choose children's stories that will have a good moral effect on them. And then he sets it off on its logical rails, until it smashes headlong into other things that we believe in, like telling exciting stories, maintaining our religious or mythological tradition, and so on. Socrates is about highlighting tensions and contradictions, not resolving them. So I don't think he's saying that we should give up art for the sake of morality. And I don't think he's saying that we should give up on moral education for the sake of art. He's just saying that if you follow either one of these right to their logical conclusion, they're going to crash into each other. The aim is to make us uncomfortable enough with our own beliefs, that we start to question them.

 In that spirit, I'm going to look at how these two ideas play out in the present day. The two ideas I'm talking about are the idea that we should choose stories based on the moral effect that they'll have. And the idea that doing that would probably ruin stories. I think that both of these ideas are still in play today. They're still intention. But most of us managed to ignore that tension by applying these thoughts to separate stages of life. So for children, people do seem to believe that moral education is very important. We think that children are malleable. And then it's important that they don't get the wrong messages. And because of that, we've turned children's libraries into artistic wastelands. A lot of people I know have had kids recently. And as far as I can tell, baby books are either supposed to tell you what the animal say, or to instill moral virtues. I've seen recent titles like the anti racist baby, the feminist baby. And when I was a child, I grew up reading a series of book called value tales. And they were biographies of exemplary historical individuals who illustrated some virtue or other. We had Jackie Robinson for courage, and Helen Keller, for determination, and so on. Nearly all the children's books that I've seen have been like this tendentious pedagogical moralizing. There are some partial exceptions. Roald Dahl may give you under notes of obscenity and creepy Oompa Loompa antics, but none that I've seen have the kind of action or moral chaos that you find in Greek poetry, no killing, no incest, no baby eating nothing.

And you might feel uncomfortable that I'm suggesting more incessant murder and children's books. But the people who made the Athenian golden age were weaned on Hesiod and Homer. And so we're at a mantis and glaucon and Plato and Socrates. And they turned out all right. And these men who lived through one of the high watermarks of human civilization, would have been astonished at how completely we've handed over children's art to the moralizers. We have actually instituted a version of the program Adam Mantis and Socrates we're doing as a bit. And they might ask us, if children can't be exposed to anything but spiritual pabulum. And how will they ever learn anything about life? And why would they ever pay attention to this boring kind of story in the first place? So if you've ever read a children's book and thought, gosh, that was a really beautiful message. It's so important, or is it really safe for kids to read Huck Finn, you may have lost your sense of how ridiculous the notion of a completely moralized culture is. 

But the fact that so many of us completely accept the moralization of stories and art for children is especially funny to me because we totally reject it for adults. When it comes to adults, most people tend to think of the idea of submitting art and stories to the demands of morality, as unnecessary and even demeaning. We imagine that grown ups are not at the mercy of cultural influences. We can consume ambiguous and even disturbing art without being warped or traumatized by it. So if you want to watch porn or SBU or read conspiracy forums all day, there's no reason we shouldn't. And I think this risks forgetting the other side of Socrates and adamant is his argument. The base assumption that Socrates and Adam ant is built up their whole program on the thing that they thought was obvious was that culture and stories matter. Over time, our culture becomes part of our nature. And I think that actually, most people do believe this is true, on some level, at least, for others, that some kinds of stories in media actually can affect who we are, for example, maybe consuming a lot of political media can lead to political polarization. A lot of researchers believe this. And this is exactly the kind of change that Socrates and Atlantis were most worried about. stories that make the citizens more inclined to see each other as enemies. Or to take another anecdotal example that I've never read a study about. I know adults who love horror movies, true crime, haunted houses, stuff like that, they like being scared. But these are the same people who are afraid to walk down a dark street at night. And they think everyone's going to attack them. And they can't see a roll of duct tape without mentally coming up with an escape plan. So if any of these things are true, and the kind of media and stories that we consume, does affect our character, then the stories and media we consume can't be purely a question of enjoyment or aesthetics. It's always also a moral question. We have to at least consider the effects on our character of the stories and culture that we consume. We have to think of the moral implications of our taste. Now Adam, Mantis, and Socrates, they were talking about ancient Greek poetry, not 21st century popular culture. So we might hope that our taste isn't as corrupting as theirs. We don't have the same kind of murderous children's stories after all. But look at the kind of things they cut out. emotional scenes, conflict, images of sensual pleasure. These are not particularly to Greek poetry. These are still the key elements in appealing and popular story. And that raises the possibility that it's not Athenian taste that's bad for people, but human taste in book 10, right at the end of the Republic, Socrates is going to come back to this topic and explain why that is. Why the very things that we like, maybe turning us into worse people. But that doesn't happen for ages.

Next Episode glaucon is going to jump back into the conversation, discuss other enjoyable things that we can cut out of the Guardians lives. And what more nutritious stories we can actually tell them.

This episode was brought to you by Patreon sponsors Adam hardtop, and Stephen or Stephen Barnum. Thanks for your support. It's really encouraging and helpful. If you like what we're doing, and you want to help us out, please tell someone else about good in theory. We're still a new podcast and I want to get into as many years as possible. Thank you also today to Rebecca Amzallag for playing a mantis, and to set it up for editing, social help, and one of my favorite episode arts to date. Have a look at that.

In the bit of text that we covered today, Socrates and Adam mantas talk a lot about the things they want to cut out of Greek mythology. And there are a ton of specific references couldn't really get into without getting off track. But still, I think it'd be nice for you to have an idea of the kind of story that they think is so morally harmful, that the guardians can't hear it. The first story that Socrates mentions is the myth of Uranus, Kronos and Zeus. And he says, this story should absolutely not be told to children, and it probably shouldn't be told to adults either. So if you are a child or adult who is concerned with your moral well being, cover your fucking ears, because this one is a doozy. Uranus is a primal cause he's the sky and he hooks up with his mom Gaia, aka the earth. Gaia gives birth to a bunch of Gods called the Titans. But Uranus hates his kids. He locks them up under the earth. Gaia gets mad and she makes a sickle with a blade made out of Flint. And she says, Here you go kids go cut off dad's balls. And most of the Titans were too nervous to try it. But Corona says, hell yeah, he takes the signal castrates your anus and the dick blood splatters all over the earth. And it turns into giants and nips in the theories. And then Cronus throws his dad's dick and balls into the sea, and a bunch of white foam forms around it. And that is where we get Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It's not over yet. Cronus becomes King and Gaia and his dickless dad say, hey, tough guy. You're not going to be so tough when one of your ingrate kids does the same thing to you. And Cronus he comes up with a plan, not contraception. He thinks my kids can't kill me if I eat them first. So he knocks up a goddess named Rhea a half dozen times. In the first five times she gives birth to Gods like Hara and Poseidon in Hades. Cronus eats the baby. That's what's happening in that spooky boy. When Rhea is on her sixth pregnancy, she's a little feather. And she and Gaia hatch a scheme. When it's time to birth Zeus, she does it in secret. And she wraps up a rock and baby swaddling and gives it to Cronus and says, "honey, I made your favorite" and Cronus just gulps it down and doesn't even notice. They raised Zeus in secret. And he's grown up and strong he comes and he sneaks Cronus a barf pill and Cronus barfs up all of Zeus his siblings who are still sitting and digested in his stomach, and together they waged war on the Titans defeat them and that is how we get the rule of the Olympians who are the Greek gods that we know and are mostly horrified by