Madeline Miller

speaker

219 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 12 Jul

Madeline Miller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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The Daily · What’s Epic About the ‘Odyssey’? Everything. · 12 Jul 2026 podcast

The contradictions and the friction around his character are so fascinating.

I think he's very complicated.

And I think that, you know, the Odyssey is just one view of him and it's sort of his ethic.

So he gets to take center stage and we get to appreciate so many parts of him.

But if you look at him in other ancient texts, like, for example,

Sophocles Philoctetes, he is much more villainous in that text.

Even in the Iliad, I would say he's much more of a schemer and not as honorable.

And there's this great, like he and Achilles make wonderful foils for each other, Achilles in the Iliad and Odysseus in the Odyssey.

There's a great line in the Iliad when Achilles says, I hate like the gates of death, the man who says one thing and hides another in his heart.

And so I love, I love that tension where, you know, it can be really, you can be get out of some really tough situations if you're a, you know, a liar and a, and a good speaker and you know, can, can spin the situation to your advantage.

But does that make you a good person?

You know, question mark.

Absolutely.

The ancient idea of hero and modern idea are very different.

Very different.

But he's so much fun to write as a character.

And I got to write him both ways.

I got to write him from the perspective of Patroclus in Song of Achilles and then from the perspective of Circe in Circe.

And so it was also fun to play with the chameleonic aspect of him, where he changes himself depending on who he's talking to, right?

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