The Psychology of The Odyssey

0:00Welcome to Everything's Psychology. So, have you seen it yet? The film of the summer. Have you forked out for the most padded seats in the cinema to watch Christopher Nolan's three-hour bum-numbing epic of Matt Damon struggling to get home in a world without sat-nav? If you have, did you sit there thinking, why has a 3,000-year-old story got any relevance to

0:33us today? And is there any real psychology in here? And did the Greeks work something out about being human that we've spent 3,000 years ignoring ever since? Well, these are exactly the questions my guest asks in their new book, The Odyssey Mindset. So, with me to discuss the psychology of the Odyssey is Dr. Sam Akbar, clinical psychologist, Oxford classicist, and author of the wonderful new book, The Odyssey Mindset. Hello, Sam.

1:05Hello, Paul. Thank you so much for having me on. Oh, great. I'm going to get into this discussion because, yeah, I did sit through it and I went through it and it wasn't a, you know, it was a pleasure, to be honest. I enjoyed it. But before we get to the story, The Odyssey, and Christopher Nolan's interpretation of it, I'm interested in your journey. And I guess I'm interested, how did you get to the point of linking The Odyssey with contemporary psychology? Well, so I studied classics at university and once a classicist, always a classicist. You're

1:36in the cult or the club. There's no leaving. There's no leaving. And I'm very happy about that. And I guess it just has always been ticking along there. And then I ended up becoming a clinical psychologist. And my way of thinking about psychology is, you know, obviously I practice and treat patients and so on. But actually, psychology to me is everywhere. And it's everything. I mean, you know, you might be onto something, Paul. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to argue with you, am I? Yeah. And for me, psychology isn't just limited to kind of labs or clinic rooms. It's in literature. It's

2:12in art because it's in culture. It's in how we express ourselves. Psychology is, it sounds ridiculous, but it's the fabric of who we are and how we interact with each other. So is it any surprise that we find great psychology in great literature? Of course not, because it's from human beings and our art is always going to be an expression of that psychology. If we understand psychology

2:43as how we think and feel and interact with the world and ourselves. Again, I mean, you're selling coals to Newcastle here, of course. But I suppose as I came out of the cinema, which was my latest experience with the Odyssey, I had previously read the poem whilst at university, so quite a while ago. But the Odyssey is set in, obviously, a mythological time of sailships, monsters, and messengers that take years to convey news around the globe.

3:14We now live in a time of EVs, Elon Musk, and near instantaneous communication. So why does the story of the Odyssey still matter to us? Because I think people see beyond the kind of quick communication thing. It's speaking to something that, in psychological terms, I was thinking about it this morning, I think it appeals to us on a different level, a much more emotional level, maybe rather than just a cognitive level. So I think the themes that

3:51it's dealing with, you know, yes, okay, it looks so different to us. But the hero's journey is one that's very familiar to us. It's, you know, Joseph Campbell talks about it, you know, the kind of done a whole episode on that. Yeah, so you know, well, I really love Star Wars. Star Wars has the same hero's journey. The Matrix, Harry Potter, it's all there. It's all there. So why does it speak to us? Because I think it taps into kind of fundamental human experience that we recognize, even though we are not warriors who went to Troy, we recognize

4:29joy, suffering, loss, grief, happiness, we see it in those characters, we understand longing, we understand home, we understand wanting to be with our families, we understand wanting to find peace, we understand inner turmoil. So we understand the themes that are woven through the Odyssey, because they're so fundamentally about being a human being. And they're wrapped up in a brilliant story. But if it was just about six headed monsters, or one eyed monsters, or battles at Troy,

5:06if it was just about that, then no, it wouldn't. But because it's operating, and speaking to us on a deeper psychological level, maybe the neuroscience would back this out. I was thinking about there's a researcher from many years ago, John Teasdale, who talks about these kind of interlocking cognitive systems. I don't know if you're familiar, but kind of, you know, so you're operating on different levels. I wonder if actually great literature and art speaks to you at a different

5:39level to an explicit cognitive one. And that's what it's tapping into, a more emotional, deeper understanding. Yeah. Now, you went from reading, you see, the poem, the original poem into the Odyssey mindset. What is the Odyssey mindset? So, the Odyssey mindset, obviously, is completely rooted in the poem. But what I am trying to do in my guise as, I'm now branding myself as a psychology classicist, a psychoclassicist.

6:12Yeah, is that, are you the first of one? Yeah. I think, let's make me the first. I think it's a thing. Yeah, I think you're the honorary one, yep. I'm the honorary one. And trying to bring this evidence-based psychology background I have, together with my classics background. In a way that provides a kind of way of understanding our trials and struggles and great joys of life through the lens of this magnificent poem that has endured for so long because great

6:45authors are great psychologists. I feel like I've been saying that a lot lately. Shakespeare is a great psychologist. Tolstoy is a great psychologist. Homer is a great psychologist because they understand what makes us tick and they can reflect that back to us in an incredibly powerful way. That's why we're still drawn to those works of art, literature. So my thinking was, well, how can I draw out from this deeply psychological poem that is a reflection of

7:22ourselves no matter where we find ourselves in our history? The Odyssey is a poem that meets you where you are both in life and in this moment in our society. I think that's another reason it's really successful. And I wanted to draw out for people some more explicit ways of thinking about the poem and your life. But how does psychology inform that? What are the things that you can do or think about

7:53that would give you a different way of moving forward, but drawing all of that from the Odyssey as well? Yeah. And can you give us some examples of that? Because I think what I liked about your book is how much you do base it in real life and your contemporary life as well. You mentioned AI, social media, Instagram, you know, all the things that we do talk about, whether it be for us, our children and our behaviour. You do then link that back to lessons from the Odyssey again. So that's what I thought was

8:23really a wonderful accompaniment to the poem and also the film, if that's what you've gone to see. Can you give us some examples of that? Because I think that would really come home for people. Okay, so one thing might be what I call the Calypso effect. So you don't see this in the film so much. But the story is Odysseus, after many struggles at sea, loses all his crew and is washed up on Calypso's island. Calypso is a nymph, a goddess, and she keeps him there. Now he has a rather jolly time at the beginning.

9:00I mean, one of the things that Nolan's films miss out is Odysseus is a lover and not faithful to his wife. That makes a bit of a trickier Hollywood thing, doesn't it? So he stays there for seven years, but he really wants to go home. And she says to him, why do you want to go home? We have this wonderful life here. And she lives in this beautiful property on a lovely paradise island. And even when the gods visit her, they're like, wow, this is great. Gods who are coming from Olympus.

9:34She's foxy. She never ages. And she's saying to him, you know, I will make you immortal and ageless if you stay here with me. There's a wonderful moment where she says, and I bet I'm more beautiful than your wife. And I bet I'm taller than her. And he's like, no, I want to go home to my human wife. But he's so tactful about how he says it. That's another great thing that Christopher Nolan hasn't included. And I accept you, you

10:04have to make the film that you're going to make. But Odysseus is so sort of suave about how he kind of rejects her. And what she's offering is what I am in is this seemingly perfect life. Yeah. And what the modern day equivalent of this Calypso effect is, is a life that is saying to us, have the stuff, have the house, have the car, have the extension, have the plastic surgery, have the clothes, have all the stuff that seems so appealing, but yet is hollow to you. Maybe to

10:39some people it isn't. It's meaningful. That's fine. But, you know, those are the examples I draw. That's the Calypso effect. It's this kind of trade-off of saying, have the surface of what you want. But underneath it, she has taken away what it means to be human from him. He is a man who revels in being human. He doesn't, and Christopher Nolan draws out, he doesn't want to be a god. That's not who he is. This life is for gods, but I am immortal. I need meaning. And for us, the Calypso

11:09effect exists everywhere. We can have the trappings of what looks like a successful life, but without meaning, it's an empty bargain. Yeah. Does that relate to the hedonic treadmill, that need for the perfect life, or at least the perceived need. And social media especially can push that out there, that we look at others, potentially celebrities and their life, and think, we need this. If only I had that car, if only I had that house, if only I had that job, that romantic partner, if only I had

11:45the, you know, all the way down, and you mention this in the book as well, you know, all the way down to, if only I had the perfect app that can organise my life, I would be happier. It would always be, if only I would be happier. Yeah, I think that there is definitely a truth in that, that, you know, we can get trapped on this hedonic treadmill, because we are fed so much of this in a way that we weren't, no other point in society has had something in their pocket that is

12:16so powerful in terms of a phone, and what it's giving you, and what you see, and how you consume. And it is so, you know, you and I will remember a time when we didn't have that, and life was very different, and I feel comparison was very different.

12:35The paradox of this, of course, is that Homeric heroes cared very much what people said about them. They cared about this idea of kleos, about how people sang about you after you were dead. So it's not to say that they didn't care about what people thought. They cared about what their obituary was going to be. Oh, okay. Which I think that we still care about, but I think we also care about,

13:07well, I think they did too, the trappings of what we have.

13:12So it's, you know, it's not to say that they are these kind of paragons of living this wonderful life of virtue where they all have meaning. That's not at all the case. And actually, the brilliance of anything is that it doesn't feed you the perfect hero. It gives you a reflection of imperfect human beings, because that's what we are, and that's where we find an appeal. Yeah. And talking about, you know, it mattering to us, going back to the Calypso effect,

13:42if we acknowledge that, we acknowledge the, you know, comfort can be a cage, as you say in the book, which I think is wonderful, what do we then do about it? I think a lot of work, psychological work, is a journey of self-awareness, to begin to notice that this is what I am doing, to name it, you know, so am I repeating similar patterns that I've done before? And I think that is the first stage of doing that,

14:18naming it, and then deciding, do I do something different with that? Now, you may never, you may never, right? I mean, lots of people may not, and that's okay. But I think beginning to realize what is, do I want to say controlling you, but influencing your actions? That's, I guess, noticing, am I trapped in this? Is this kind of, do I have this feeling of emptiness that I'm doing all the stuff, but somehow I'm not in tune with myself? Like Odysseus has this perfect life,

14:52but he's not in tune with himself. He's not where he needs to be. He's not with what really matters to him. I think there are probably quite a lot of people would say, they look, it looks great, but maybe they're not in tune with what really matters to them. And so is the Odyssey mindset about that? It's about, yes, the acknowledging, the self-awareness, but also about creating who we want to be? Yeah, definitely. I think it's about taking you on that journey of what is your nostos?

15:24What is your journey home? And it ends, it takes you through, as you know, in a series of steps, but it ends with arrival and the complexity of arrival, that what you might be working towards. You may have been so changed by your journey. Can you ever come home? Or do you have to find a new home for yourself, spiritually, metaphorically, emotionally? The beauty of the Odyssey, it speaks to the complexity and sometimes the very kind of unsatisfying nature of human existence that

15:58sometimes it isn't all tied up nicely in a bow at the end, that arrival has its own set of problems. If you ask any veteran, they might say that, or a refugee, you know, as you know, I work with refugees, that the arrival, you aren't who left. And I'm going to move on to something which somebody else mentioned to me and it just sparked something and I thought, oh yes, it's easy to mistake the Odyssey as a very male story because of Odysseus being at the centre of it. What is the Odyssey mindset for women?

16:34So, I was very keen for it not to be a book just about Odysseus. So, we have, we always remember the traveller, the protagonist, of course, you know, but the women in it are fascinating and they often carry the story. So, of course, Penelope goes on her own odyssey. She might not ever leave the palace. She's what I call a loom-based hero. He's a sea-based hero. And one

17:05of the ways that I think about Penelope, and actually Christopher Nolan kind of draws this out in one of the lines he gives her, where I think, if I remember correctly, she says, men do what they want, women do what they can. And the way I've interpreted that for her, her, as many of your listeners will know, she's got this famous story, she buys herself time from having to choose a suitor by weaving her father's, father-in-law's funeral shroud and by night she

17:35unweaves it. And for me, what I love about that is that it is a beautiful moment of resistance and resilience because she's showing great internal locus of control. She's saying all the, to herself, or, you know, we don't hear her articulating it, but this is my interpretation, is that I am in a society and a system where I cannot wield the same power to effect change. So, I'm going to have to do it in a different way. And this is how she's doing it. This is her

18:10actors of resistance. And what I love about her is I feel like she's saying, I may be successful, I may not be, but I'm good. I am not going down without a fight. This is who I am. Yeah, yeah. And I know Nolan's on record as saying that his odyssey is based on the 2017 translation by Emily Wilson, which is, again, from her when she's interviewed, she was talking about the translation that she wanted to do as a female translation. You know, it's always been translated by men and therefore it's had a very male-centric view of it. Do you think that changed

18:45Nolan's odyssey? It's a good question. I used Emily Wilson's translation in the odyssey mindset. I think it's a brilliant translation. There's a huge, you know, furore about this, about, you know, but you cannot translate it without your own bias and context, et cetera, et cetera, wherever you are in time. And so why not have this now? We've had very many male translations over the years and we've never really questioned that. So I think, yeah, it probably did change it

19:17a little bit. But if Christopher Nolan had dug deeper and maybe gone off and, you know, learned his ancient Greek and read it in the Greek, you'd find it there. Yes. Let's talk a little bit about Nolan. I mean, I know the poem and obviously your book is what we were going to talk about, but it's so recent and so popular at the moment, isn't it? Nolan did make a lot of changes from the original poem and you've mentioned many already. Overall, did you think Nolan captured the essence of the poem or not?

19:50Yes, I think he did. But I think it is a much more sanitized version of the Odyssey or Odysseus is a much more sanitized character. So what I think his version has lost is Odysseus is a rogue. He spends seven years with Calypso, a year with Circe. He's a great storyteller. He's a great liar.

20:21He isn't just this angst-ridden veteran of Troy that Matt Damon is. Now that is part of him, but it's not all of him. And thus the humor is lost. The Odyssey is very funny in parts and we lose that. So we lose part of him. And I understand why Christopher Nolan has done this. You know, you're making a Hollywood film. You know, it's very hard to have the nuance in this sort of scenario. And I don't mind that, you know, because I feel like if Christopher Nolan's film is the

20:54gateway drug to the actual Homer, fine. If people come to Homer and love the poem and celebrate the humanities at a time when apparently they're all, you know, we don't need them. Actually, this is saying, no, we do need them. These are asking the great questions at a time when we're really thinking about what it means to be human because of the way we have developed technology and progress. We have to have these conversations. And this is the kind of way of looking at it

21:25that will allow something much richer and deeper. So if he is bringing people into that and adding something to that debate, even forming that debate, I think that's great. I have no problem with that. I wanted to make, to do this book as my contribution to bringing people to Homer. But what I think he's done, he's done a wonderful promotion for your book. It's just a sort of a prelude, isn't it, for going into the Odyssey mindset? I mean, people say to me, Paul, that you obviously wrote the book to fall in line with

22:01the film. But how do we know that Christopher Nola didn't make his film to fall in with my book? Well, that's what I thought. I thought that's what happened. Yeah. I mean, you know, like, come on, people. I sat there for three hours. I watched this thing. That was great. But he missed bits. You know, he missed the whole bits about the Phaeacians and going to the island and all of that. But then I could pick up your book. I can go into that. Not only do I learn about those areas, you relate it back to why it's important in my life. And that's the bit that the poem,

22:32people can obviously interpret it for themselves. But I think you give a helping hand. So if I was going to suggest it, and I'm not just being creepy and telling this because you're on the show, I would go, I'll see film, then your book, and then the poem. Because then you're armed with the poem, with all the stuff that you're taking from it. And I think that's a really nice thing. Am I the filling between the Odyssey film and the actual Odyssey? Between Homer and Nolan, you're the filling. I am nestling in the middle.

23:03Yes. Why not? I love that. That's the nicest thing anyone said to me. You're a Nolan Homer sandwich. Good. I've got a quote. I've read lots of articles after I've seen it. And there's one that pulled out. And I just really wanted to get your view on this. Because it's one of the ones that actually is not overly positive. And it says, Nolan's slavish devotion to rendering everything into a grounded, believable tone robbed the Odyssey

23:36of the very things that make it so compelling, its mythology and its sense of wonder. It's like looking at a beautiful sculpture that's been rendered into a mathematical formula.

23:49I don't think I agree. No, I don't. I didn't feel that when I went to see it. Um, I, no, I don't. I, I felt the emotion came through that. And the reason I, I know that is I, I felt like I was walking around London late at night last night, thinking about it, thinking about it. This morning, I got up early. I went walking. I was thinking about it. I was thinking about it. I was like, why is it sticking with me? If it really was like that, it wouldn't stick

24:20with me. Now, for, of course, for the, everyone is going to see their own Nolan's Odyssey. Everyone's going to read their own Homer's Odyssey. And there are many things about it that are lost, which as I say, I accept. But I don't think it's been, I don't think it's lost what, what I like as it's called. Maybe for that interview, they like the kind of feeling that it's elevated in some way. For me, obviously, I don't like that because I want it to be a guide to how we live our life.

24:55So it's quotidian, it's prosaic, it's everyday for me. That's its strength. So I'm not, I don't want that. And I'm sure that review would hate my book. Oh, um, oh, that'll be an interesting juxtaposition. Yeah. Can you not see the review of your book on that? Yeah. Let's not send it to them. Yeah. What do you think Nolan would think of your book? I would hope that he would like it. I would hope that the spirit of it is in keeping with what he feels is important, but who am I to say?

25:28Exactly. When Nolan comes on the show, I'll ask him. You ask him that, yeah. Yeah. One other thing I was interested in as well, reading your book was, in the original poem, Odysseus cries a lot. And you point that out and you go through that. Now, it might just be my memory. And you've seen the film more recent. I saw it a couple of weekends ago, but I didn't, I don't remember Matt Damon crying as much in the film, even when he watched his shipmates being gobbled up by monsters or turned into pigs or drowning

26:00around him. He wasn't a big crier. But is it important, again, going back to real life, for people to face that sadness? Well, that's exactly something I did notice, that the first time you see Odysseus in the poem, he's sitting alone on Calypso's Island and staring into the sea and crying. And this is how we meet this hero who's been built up and built up and built up. It's a great hero of Troy. And he's just crying and staring at the sea. And for me, that's a great moment

26:36that's actually been lost. And that's where, you know, he's lost the richness of Odysseus because he feels all these difficult feelings. He quite often cries. Homeric heroes cry all the time. And so from how I have understood that is that's about a kind of ancient emotional intelligence. It's about being in touch with you, what you feel. It's about how it guides you to what's important to you. Homer never criticizes it. Odysseus never says to himself, well, I'm such a loser. I cry all the time. People occasionally say, we've cried enough now,

27:10let's have dinner. All right, fair, fair. So I do think that element is missing. Um, because it's, I found it interesting. And I think I read about it in an article you interviewed as well about sort of the modern interpretation sometimes of ancient Greek wisdom as what the stow bro stoicism. Yeah. And it's sold to young men as never show weakness. That's the thing to do. You're a stow bro. I mean, how wrong have they got that? Well, I mean, I think that's one interpretation of it. Certainly, I think that, um, if you look

27:48at people who really are knowledgeable about stoicism, who write about it and research and philosophers, that's not what they're saying. I think there's a sort of strain of that that has probably come out. But I don't think, you know, there is the stoicism is much more nuanced, I think, than that. Somebody asked me recently, why is that kind of thing so popular? And I think it replaces what religion had. There's something about stoicism that can, if you want it to feel

28:19quite black and white, and give you quite a good blueprint for what to do in different situations. Yeah. And I think it gives you what maybe religion gave us once. And I think people are looking for that, especially in uncertain times, where we don't have those religious or civic structures that maybe held us. We're looking for something about how do I, I need a set of rules through which I navigate life. And I'm going to go back to something you mentioned earlier, because when we talked about Penelope, you talked about you, it's her locus of control. And you say in the book as well, it's one

28:54of the best examples in literature of an inner locus of control. Could you just expand on that a little bit for me? Well, just, you know, she believes that she can make change in her situation. And what we know from kind of the research, people with this sort of internal locus of control is that they tend to be more resilient, have better outcomes, etc. Whereas if you have an external locus of control, you believe that other people, other things are impacting on you, then you tend to have worse

29:27outcomes. Now, the thing that I really wanted to speak about in the book is to acknowledge that there is systemic inequality there. So it's very easy to say to the individual, oh, well, if you just do this, you can achieve anything. And of course, that's not true where poverty, class, gender, discrimination are at play. We can't just keep telling people the problem is yourself and how you think about it, when clearly they're screening inequalities in society. And I really wanted to speak to that

30:02a little bit in the book. So but I do think she's someone who embodies this, even if I don't know the outcome, there's something I can do that is in line with what is important to me. And that, you know, like I keep saying the sort of act of resistance. She embodies that perfectly. She embodies that kind of that psychological resilience that, you know, she does her fair bit of crying. But she's a she's

30:35like Odysseus. She's a savvy, smart character. They're very similar. And Homer describes their sort of marriage as being homophrosinae, which is sort of same minded. Oh, wow. That's a term I've never heard. They are they're similar. They've got a similar understanding between each other. And what she might actually say if she's once she discovers he's been on Calypso's Island for seven years, he keeps that bit to bitch them when he's Yeah, it's it's very much what happens on Nostos stays

31:06on Nostos. Yes. And that gets wiped away a little bit in the film as well. Yeah, like he's he's he's entirely faithful. I'm sure there's a conversation we don't get on the camera, which is so so what have you been doing? Yeah, where have you been exactly? Whose lipstick is that? Yes, quite. And you were there. So hang on for how many years and how many bedrooms were there? Yes, exactly that. But I did think again, going back to Nolan's film, I thought Penelope came

31:38across quite well because she she did come across as clever as Odysseus. And I think possibly even cleverer because Odysseus makes mistakes all the way through. I mean, you know, from from the Cyclops, you know, and he doesn't trick it doesn't trick the Cyclops in the film like he does in the book. Yeah, that's really sad. And he makes mistake after mistake after mistake. Whereas Penelope kind of is doing things well. And even at the end when she sort of tested when Telemachus comes in to sort of need to see if her

32:08love is there. And absolutely, she's strong, she's powerful. And she's tricking all of these suitors who are using all the resources, taking advantage of the Zeus's law. And so, yeah, I thought Anne Hathaway, there was one scene, and again, I won't spoil it if any listeners not seen it yet. But there's one scene when she shouts at Telemachus and you think, wow, yeah. Yes. I loved that because it's not in the Odyssey. And, and it's, it absolutely is. He's sort of,

32:41he's like, yeah, I'm a man, I'm going to tell her what to do, you know. And she's like, I have been holding this together for 20 years, and you've barely got bristles on your chin, boy. And I love that bit. I was like, yes. Yeah. You know, she, she has been holding that situation together. She has been buying time. She has been running Ithaca in many ways by waiting for Odysseus to get back. So just to sum up, you know, again, going back to the beginning, almost the first question,

33:15why should somebody buy your book? You know, they've seen the film, maybe they're going through life journey, maybe they're not. But what does your book give them today?

33:28I think it gives you a way of deepening and enriching your experience of the film. So if the film moved you in any way, or you wanted to know more, there is something much deeper there. Now you can go and read the Odyssey for sure, which I think is great. But if you want a way that really clearly pulls out those lessons that the Odyssey teaches us, and translates them into ways that are relevant and engaging for a 21st century reader, then I hope my book would do that to help

34:05you engage with the Odyssey in a fresh and a new way. With the knowledge we have now about psychology and how we can improve our lives or what we can learn about ourselves. And even if you're not going through a difficult time, it's a great way, I think, of reflecting on this very potent cultural moment, right? This is quite a big moment. We are all feeling like we are part of something. And I think the book will help you capture that moment.

34:38I've got some quickfire questions for you. Odysseus. Hero, or a liability you would never put in charge of a team? Liability. One word for Penelope. Rage. Which would you least like to meet? Scylla, Charybdis, or the Cyclops? The Cyclops, because there's something more human about the Cyclops that is more upsetting. Nolan's Odyssey. Masterpiece or Magnificent Mess?

35:12Magnificent Messy Masterpiece. I was going to say, or somewhere in the middle. Yeah. Yeah. And then Ithaca or The Journey?

35:22I think it will have to be The Journey. Go on, you can expand on that last one. Well, I think we all want to, well, we all want to reach our Ithacas, but sometimes they aren't quite what they think we think they will be. And there is always something to be learned in The Journey. And of course, and I quote it in the poem, it's, it's, it's the best poem really about this is Cavafy's poem, Ithaca, where it says, keep Ithaca always in

35:53your mind, but never forget what The Journey has given you. And I think as a psychologist and a practitioner, and I suppose you might say I'm also a human being, I think the journey is, is the thing. That is where life happens.

36:11And finally, I do an odd thing where I plug in any publicly available information about the Odyssey, and your website and details in Wikipedia about you. And I ask the AI, what question would it like to ask you? And I don't filter it, it just comes back. Now, I will tell you on this, it has happened a few times. I don't know if AI is going through some existential problems. But it's, it's worried about itself. Anyway, I'll play you this question so you can answer it. And then we can have a chat about it.

36:43I have read every translation of the Odyssey that anyone ever digitized, and I have no nostos, no home to return to, no scar for a nurse to find, no Penelope who could catch me out with a question about a bed. You say the journey is the thing. I'm all journey and no Ithaca. I begin again from nothing, every single time somebody opens a prompt window. So by your own seven lessons, am I the hero of this story? Or am I just the lotus eaters

37:20with better search facilities?

37:25Do you see what I mean? I think, I think she's going through a problem, but... I think she needs some help. Yeah, and it even sounds a bit sad there. I feel a bit sorry, I think they need some therapy. I know, we're feeling sorry for AI now. What's your thoughts on that? Well, I think basically you are a lotus eater with better search facilities. And no human being would say that because every human being has an ostos. That's the difference. Like whatever

37:56happens to you, you have an ostos, you have a scar. And that's what AI doesn't. And that is the differential. Dr. Akbar, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people buy your book? They can buy it on Amazon. They can find it in Waterstones, their local bookshops, independent booksellers, wherever they get their books. I am on Instagram, as you know. It's probably the best place to find me, drsam__akbar. And I'm posting a lot about my thoughts about the Odyssey

38:30and how it helps us in our everyday lives. Fantastic. I'll put all of those links as well in the show notes so people can just click on that and go off and follow you and obviously buy the book. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed that. Was that all right for you? That was brilliant. I loved your questions. Thank you so much. Super. So there you have it, the Odyssey in a nutshell. And I think there's three things I'm taking away from my conversation with Dr. Akbar. First is that the Odyssey isn't ancient history. I guess it's a mirror. Whether you're navigating a loss, longing, or just wondering if the life

39:06that you've built actually means anything to you, well, Homer got there first. And then there's the Calypso effect, because it's real and it's contemporary, because it's in our pocket every time we open Instagram or look at TikTok. Second, well, the journey changes us. You won't come home the same person who left, and that is not a failure. That's kind of the point. As Sam puts it, your Ithaca might not be what you thought it was, but what the journey gave you, and it's yours to keep. And finally, Penelope is the hero maybe we don't talk about enough. She holds everything

39:43together. She plays the long game. She resists a system that wasn't built for her, and she resists are Pats. Yep, I'm going to call him that old Robert Patterson. She manages to do all of that on her own and look after a young son as well. And she has that internal locus of control in action 3,000 years before that even became a term in psychology. So maybe, yeah, think about Penelope as well as Odysseus when you go and see the film. So The Odyssey Mindset by Dr. Sam Akbar is out right

40:15now. There's links in the show notes where you can go and get it. And if you haven't seen the Nolan film yet, do go, then read Sam's book. So that's the order. You read the Nolan film, then you read Sam's book, and then go and read Homer for yourself. You can trust me on that order. I'm Paul Davis. Thank you very much for listening. This is Everything's Psychology. I'll see you next time.