Camp Gagnon - The Real Story of Zeus is DARKER Than You Think

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Today, we explore the world of ancient Greece and the king of the gods, Zeus—from his etymology and his rise to power during the Clash of the Titans to his lasting legacy as Jupiter. Welcome to History Camp! 🏕️ Shoutout to our sponsors: Mudwtr and Blue Chew -Go To https://mudwtr.com/CAMP And Use Code 'CAMP' And Get Up To 43% OFF Want the even WILDER theories? SIGN UP TO THE PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/cw/CampGagnon 👕🧢 Shop CAMP Merch: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo 🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets: https://markgagnonlive.com 🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.com Timestamps: 0:00 Comment Your Fav: Miles vs Christos 2:33 Etymology of ‘Zeus’ 5:24 Spread of Zeus Worship 8:13 Birth of Titans + Kronos Eats His Children 16:35 The Birth of Zeus 18:07 Clash of The Titans + Titanomachy 24:10 Destruction of Typhon 26:45 Administrative Role of Zeus 28:09 Zeus Controlling Fate 30:17 Different Versions of Zeus 32:16 Ancient Sites Dedicated to Zeus 36:31 Concept of Xenia 39:11 Controversy of Zeus 40:50 Curse of Zeus 44:48 Zeus Becomes Jupiter 49:55 Achilles’ Powers + Camp Greece Trip? 54:43 Greek Hospitality + Drop Your Thoughts! #foryou #history #zeus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For thousands of years, he's been the terrifying, all-powerful, and ruthless king of the gods. We even named the biggest planet in our solar system after him. And we're still telling his story today. In books and on podcasts, and even on the big screen, this is the story of Zeus. He's one of the most enormous figures in all of human history. A god who survived thousands of years across peoples and cultures and continents, the star of the oldest poem that we have. the feared god of gods and of mortals.

The name of his temple is still celebrated all across the world every four years when the greatest athletes alive gather for the games that we named after it. A figure so massive that he still reigns not from a mountain anymore, but from somewhere even more powerful, our cultural imagination. But what makes him such a fascinating mystery? Who is this all-powerful king of the skies, really? Where did he come from? And why, after all this time, after the empires that worshipped him,

crumbled into dust, are we still so obsessed with his story? Well, today we're going to walk through the entire tale, from the child hidden away on a secret island, to the cosmic war where he overthrew the Titans to the moment he's handed the most famous weapon in all of mythology, the lightning world. We're going to unpack all of it and find out who this impossible god Zeus really is. If you're interested in Greek mythology and Greek history, well, this is the episode for you. So, sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to History Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single Wednesday we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from all history, from all time forever. Yes, that is what I do here is I try to figure out everything that's ever happened. I don't know if you're weird like me. I just want to know what's going on, right? I hear a name like Napoleon or Genghis Khan or Attila the Hunt, and I'm like, I kind of know about them, but who were they really? And why are they so important? Well, today's episode is going to have a little bit of a different flavor because we are talking about a historical figure, kind of. I don't know if you're like me, but I've been super

obsessed with the Iliad and the Odyssey lately. And throughout all of my readings and watchings of, you know, the film and the books and all that stuff, I was like, what's up with Zeus? Did people really worship him? Was he like God? And how long did they worship him for? And where did his whole story even come from? Like, what is the essence of this character? Was it based on like a real king? Was it something that was made up by priests? Like, what is the actual genesis of this religion and of course this God within the religion and why is he so important to us today? Well, great news for you. We're going through all that and it actually is going to probably contextualize a little bit of the Odyssey for you if you saw the movie or even if you saw our other episodes on it.

Once you understand Zeus and like the whole backstory, you're going to be like, oh, the Odyssey got way more interesting. Because you've got to understand the audience that was originally listening to the Odyssey by some Rhapsode or a bard somewhere, they knew who Zeus was. They worshipped him. So when they heard stories about Zeus, they were like, yep, that's a story. old Zeus, that makes sense. A lot of stuff that we lose contextually. So don't worry, we're going to break all that down. But before we go any further, I want to say thanks to you, dude. Yeah, I want to say thanks for tuning in. Because every time you click on an episode, you like,

comment, any of that good stuff, you help the show grow. You tell the algorithm like, yo, Mark and Christos are doing a pretty good job. More people should watch this. You keep the lights on in the tent and you keep the fire burning here at the campsite. Now, I can't go any further without giving a shout out to the Greek freak himself. My personal Zeus, my good pal, Christos Paccidacados. How worry, my friend. It's a very special episode today.

Calamera, Christos. Calispera. Sorry, I don't know all the words. Okay, I'm trying. But, a faristo for your help. I forgive you. Thank you. Now, today, Christos, you're going to need a yap.

The day has come. Finally. The comments, I don't care what they say, all right? We need Christos to help me with pronunciation because you speak Greek, and I obviously don't. A lot of people like Miles. I don't know. No, Christos. No, of course.

Miles is better in every one. way. But on this episode, when we're talking about Zeus, we need you. We'll see. So, where do we start with Zeus? This is a wild story with a wild history and goes deep into understanding Greek society. And yeah, all the stories that we have about Zeus are crazy. But before we get into any of that, I want to start by breaking down the significance of just his name. Because honestly, the story of his name tells us a lot about who we're dealing with, even before you read any of the stories, right? Zeus isn't just a Greek word. In fact, linguists have traced it all the way back

to an ancestor language that is called Proto-Indo-European, which seems like a mouthful. You can see why the language kind of died out. It's a lot. Now, this language was spoken thousands of years before Greek even existed. If you can imagine a time that there was no Greece, I mean, can you?

No, we were first. Now, if such a thing was impossible where Greece wasn't a thing, well, this was the language that they spoke. Hey, real quick, most people who watch this channel aren't subscribed. And when you subscribe, you help the channel grow and you stay in the loop with every new drop. Religion camp, history camp, and camp gagnon. Now let's get back to it. Now, in this ancient language, there was a word, deus. And it meant something like bright,

shining daytime sky, right? It is the same exact root. It is that route that travels forward through the centuries, reshaping as it goes until it becomes Zeus. For the Greeks, and then even further down the line, it'll become the name Jupiter for the Romans. but we'll get into that later. So the thread that traveled across history was the root of the name, plus a very broad and important idea, the god of the sky, right? Deus, deus, deus, or however you pronounce it. That is the big blue skies, and Zeus is the god of that.

But everything else, like the personality, the myths, the wars, the drama that we're about to explain in detail, all of that got built by Greek storytellers after the fact over the course of like centuries in a specifically Greek world. which is why it's like a little too simple to be like, oh, Zeus was copied from like an older pre-Greek god or something like that. That's just not what the evidence shows. But, and this is cool, we can actually see the ancient version of Zeus pop up in historical records, like centuries before famous poets, like even Homer would write about him. He even shows up in the oldest form of Greek that we can read.

It's called Linear B, and it's used by the Mycenaean civilization all the way back in the Bronze Age. And these records are basically like ancient accounting. To be honest, it's like pretty boring. I was looking at it and it's like an inventory list and like debts and how much olive oil needs to get shipped to this town and how many sheep some guy had. But scattered across those tablets is a name, Daiwi, which is one of the iterations of Zeus. So even all the way back then in the accounting records, Zeus is there. And he's already a part of civilization and already getting offerings more than 3,000 years ago.

But here's the thing that the tablets don't show. There's no backstory or lore or thunderbolts or any of that stuff, right? It's just like, okay, one sheep goes to the, no, Dawi, and, you know, that's it. Now, how does Zeus make the leap from being a vague god in the sky that gets a sheep from some farmer to the beating heart of an entire religion, a whole pantheon, and, of course, several books and movies? Well, it happens slowly. As these scattered Greek-speaking communities would grow and trade and would tell stories to one another, about one another, their local gods started merging and sharpening into these shared figures.

And of course, Zeus, the Sky Daddy himself, rose to the top of the pile. And so by the time that the great poets were, you know, writing and sharing stories, he wasn't a distant name. He was the God that the Greeks would pray to. And they would pray for rain over their crops and protection over their cities. They prayed to him for a ton of different things. I mean, he's the goddadi. He's the one.

So they swore their most sacred oaths in his name. If you were doing a thing, you'd be like, hey, swear on Zeus, and you'd be like, all right, fine, I won't lie. Like, they would pour out wine to him before meals. Like, they built altars to him and their thrones. They gathered by the thousands at his temple to sacrifice in his honor. Which is kind of funny, because even to this day, we still pour one out for the homies. But all the way back then, they were like, all right, a glass for you, a glass for you,

and one for old Zeus dog. Kind of cool. Humans don't really change that much. Now, we're going to talk about all the stuff. about like the technical side of worshipping him. But what's interesting is that that is the Zeus that they worshipped, like in the ancient religion is like, you know, the Zeus of, you know, crops and fertility and stuff like that.

But the Zeus of stories, like the one with war and thrones and like family dramas, that's a whole other beast. So where does that Zeus come from? Well, we're going to talk about him first. We will definitely get another episode on how the ancient Greeks got their whole pantheon and all the gods and goddesses, Athena and all that stuff. But for now, we're going to stay focused on just Zeus. And real quick, just to give a little context on the Greek religion and their gods and all that stuff, because without the framework, Zeus is basically impossible to follow.

So for starters, there was no single official book that told them how or what to believe. Like, Christians have the Bible, Muslims have the Quran. Like, the ancient Greek world didn't really have that. I mean, they did technically have the Bible in a way, but that's neither here or there. There was no central authority deciding which version of a myth was like the correct one. There was no, like, central pope that was telling everyone like, oh, the Zeus that did that, that's actually not true. The Greek religion was a living, sprawling thing, and it was different in different cities and

told by different poets and across different centuries, all of them overlapping and even sometimes contradicting each other about the same gods. And so when we say the myth of Zeus, what we really mean is like a bunch of different accounts that don't always agree. But there are two sources who write about Zeus that tower over all the rest. And those are the ones that have been used over and over to really paint this picture for us across history. And the first is a poet named Hesiod. He wrote around 700 BC, and his poem is called Theogony, which basically means like the birth of the gods.

And that's exactly what it is. The poem is about a cosmic family tree that starts at the very beginning of literally everything and works its way all the way down to Zeus taking the throne. So if you want to learn the Ordinner story and the war and like the Book of Genesis of Zeus, if you will, you're going to want Heesiod. Now, the second source is none other than Homer. The guy who wrote The Alien, The Odyssey, even if it was a real guy or a collection of people, no one really knows.

But assuming it's a real guy, and if you saw the full episode on The Iliad or The Odyssey, you already know kind of like the world he was writing and what he was writing about. But here is the fascinating part. Both Heziod and Homer wrote Zeus in different ways. Heziod gives Zeus, like, the vibe of like a young revolutionary. Like, he's fighting to build the universe and all that stuff. but Homer gives Zeus like an admin role. Like he's running a world that already exists.

It's there. He's spending his days like breaking up fights and grieving over war and that kind of stuff. So one poet will tell you how Zeus rose to power. And then the other one shows you how brutal it was to keep that power. And remember that for later because we're going to come back to that. But for now, let's go all the way back before Zeus, the Titans, anything, and we'll go to the very beginning. And this is, of course, according to Hizziad, all. that there was in the world was chaos. Now, when you hear the word chaos, you're probably thinking

like noise or stuff flying everywhere. But the Greek meaning of chaos was actually the opposite. It just meant that things were quiet and empty, which is hilarious. That the Greeks were like, oh, man, chaos, peace and quiet. That's the most Greek thing I've ever heard. Well, we live in chaos, so. That's what I'm, no, you don't live in chaos. You live in harmony where plates are breaking everywhere and people are flinging towels over their head. That's hard. That's hard. harmony for Greeks yes chaos for Greeks is like a quiet restaurant where everyone's like cutting like a French restaurant it's opposite there the Greeks are the opposite people right Christos am I wrong on that and the best the Greeks like a party and they like noise so the idea of the universe being quiet they're

like oh man this chaos is just brutal so this is the void that existed before anything had shape it wasn't a storm but literally it was absence and then out of that emptiness comes the first beings so first we have Gaia that is the earth and then you have We have Tartarus, a bottomless abyss buried far below the world, like a cosmic dungeon that we'll be coming back to. Just remember Tartarus, because that's going to be important. And then, of course, you have eros. This is desire. This is the force that pulls things together and it makes new things.

And it's like the energy, the life force behind all things. And notice, these aren't places. Like Gaia, even though she is Earth, she's not the planet Earth, right? She's a person. She's a divine feminine being. The earth that thinks and feels and schemes. It's a living female deity that's also the earth. Does that make sense? So remember that because that is central to the whole of religion. Now, Gaia gives birth to Uranus. Uranus, not a pun, actually Uranus. That is the starry sky. And then the skies settle over the earth and the two of them actually become the first couple. Now, notice really quick what the Greeks are doing. The universe doesn't

start with a creator outside the religion being like, let there be light, bang, everything exists, giving orders. It starts with the world like generating itself. It is birthing its own next generation. And the cosmos is most importantly a family. And if you know anything about families, they fight a lot. So Gaia and Uranus or Uranus, they have a ton of children together, which is already kind of weird because you're like, okay,

Gaia was first and then Gaia creates Uranus. and then the two of them are married and they have kids, look past that. It was a different time, okay? Now, some of their children are extraordinary. So the Titans, which are the Elder Gods. And then, of course, the Cyclopses, the one-eyed giants, and then the strangest, maybe, of all.

And Chrystos, I'm going to need help with this, okay? The pronunciation that I have is Hecatonikaris. What do you got? That's good enough for me. Nice, dude. I was able to get Chrysos. So the strangest of all of them is these Hecatonikaris. These are the hundred-handed ones.

They are these like beings that are beyond monstrous. Like they're so scary that even the gods are afraid of them. And they each have 50 heads and as per the name, 100 arms. And then there is the first crack in the cosmic family. Uranus looks at some of his own children and he's horrified by them. So he does something pretty gnarly. He shoves them down and he traps them inside Gaia, inside the earth herself, and then refuses for them to be born.

Kind of like, I don't even know what you would call it. He basically is just like, you're unborn now. Like you were born, you exist, I'm scared of you. Back to mama. So the earth is now a prison for these creatures and she's now packed with like her own captive children and she can feel all of them. And as a result, Gaia is now in agony and she's pissed.

So she makes a plan. She's like, you know what? I'm going to forge a weapon. And it said in mythology, a great jagged sickle. And she goes to her children, the Titans, and she asks them which of them is brave enough to use it against their own father.

Now, of course, all of them are afraid, except for one. The youngest and the most ambitious of all the Titans is named Kronos. And Kronus, well, he has his own plan. Basically, Kronus takes the sickle from his mama Gaia, and he waits. And then when Dada Uranus comes down

to lie with Gaia, the way that he always does, Kronus springs out of hiding, and attacks his own father, castrates him, overthrows him, and ends his reign as, you know,

the male, like the chief, like daddy of everything. And he does it all in one stroke. So immediately the sky god Uranus, he's defeated, and a new king takes his place. Now, before we go any further, we got to pause,

because this same instance is going to repeat, like, a bunch of times. The Greeks, along with basically a lot of other ancient cultures, they often use repetent, in these stories to communicate something really important. If you've ever read the Bible, this is a common theme where things repeat and you're

kind of like, all right, we heard this already. Well, it's done to highlight how important it is. And they're going to drive the point home to make sure that the audience doesn't miss it. So Uranus tried to hold on to power by controlling his children, caging them, bearing them, refusing to let them rise, pushing them back into Mother Gaia in like a prison. Hey guys, we're going to take a break really quick because if you know me, you know, I'm constantly trying to find the perfect level of stimulation. Yeah, I want enough energy at the beginning of the day to go to the gym, be a good dad, and then record a three-hour podcast about like ancient civilizations

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And you can check out more details and important safety information. Thanks so much, Blu, let's get back to the show. And that very active control is the exact same thing that creates the rebellion that then kills him. His fear of being overthrown is ultimately what leads to him being overthrown. So in this universe, a ruler's fear. of losing power is the thing that creates the rebellion that makes him lose power. So now, Cronus, he's the king of the cosmos. He killed the other king.

He took down his dad. And now he rules over the Titans in what later writers will call the Golden Age. And you would think, like, all right, we had this crazy thing. This child kills his dad, takes a throne. The story's going to chill, right? Wrong. Because Cronus now has a problem. And he knows it.

He knows exactly how he got the throne, how he took it from his own father, with his own and then Kronus hears a prophecy, that one day the same thing will happen to him. So now Kronus is like, all right, I have to do something to protect myself. So his wife, the Titan Rhea, starts having children, beautiful, powerful gods, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, names that you've probably heard. These are like the first Olympians. And as each baby is born, Kronis takes the newborn and swallows it whole. Yeah, he's trying to prevent another rebellion against him.

So five children swallowed alive, sealed away inside their own father so that none of them can ever grow up and take the throne. And this little detail is actually super important. He doesn't kill them. He can't. They're gods. They're immortal. You can't kill the immortal gods. So they don't die.

They just are now trapped inside of him alive, which, I mean, if you can imagine immortality, that is way worse, right? Being immortal and condemned to live inside like a prison inside your own father. It's kind of abstract. But you get the point. Now, Ria watches this happen five times. Five of her children immediately gone. And then she gets pregnant with her six child and something in her just breaks. Like any mother who sees five of their children swallowed whole by their husband,

they're going to be pissed. So she can't take it anymore. So what does she do? She runs. She flees to the island of Crete, a place that I've been to. I love Crete. I just got back. You were there.

Yep. In Hanya? Yeah. It's the best. Old town. It's beautiful, right? Lovely. Maybe the best food in all of Greece.

I'm willing to say it. I can attest. Wow, even a mainlander saying it. Look at that. Now, she goes to Crete, and in secret, she gives birth to her sixth child. And then she pulls off a trick that changes, I don't know, the history of the whole universe. She wraps a stone in baby blankets and cradles it like it's a newborn and then hands it to her husband, right? She kind of knows what's happening.

Fool me once, shame on you. Full me five times. Shame on me, right? Now, Kronos, very arrogant, paranoid, not really paying attention. He says, oh, thanks for the baby, appreciate you had another kid. Swallows the whole thing whole. Completely certain that he's just killed his six kid, not killed, swallowed whole. You got what I'm saying.

Now, Kronos has no idea that he's been fooled and that his real child was hidden back on Crete. Now that child, who is it? It's Zeus himself. Yeah, baby. That is the birth story of Zeus. And somewhere on the island of Crete, far out of his father's reach, young baby. be Zeus is growing up with one purpose in mind, and I bet you can guess what it is. So Zeus is growing up on Crete, right?

His dad doesn't know that he even exists, and then when he's grown, he finally comes back for a reckoning. But Zeus doesn't attack, not yet, at least, because Cronus is still the most powerful being in the whole universe, and Zeus alone doesn't really stand a chance. He needs an army, and he knows exactly where to find one. It's trapped inside his father's stomach. So instead of force, he starts being a little clever, and for the cleverness, he needs help. So first, he gets an ally. This is a goddess named Metus, whose name literally means like

super smart, intelligent person. So she brews a potion, something to make Kronus violently sick, and together they trick Kronus into drinking it. Now, does Kronus know that he's being played by his own hidden son? Well, in the oldest versions of this story, not really. He doesn't even know that Zeus exists. So, you know, he swallowed a stone years ago. He thought that he swallowed up Zeus and he's in his belly with his other five kids and that's what it is. So he takes the drink from this random guy and from this other god and this other goddess rather. And it works. So first, all of a sudden, Kronos starts to project a vomit. Up comes the stone, the one that Kronos ate thinking that it was Zeus. And then one by one up all the others. Zeus's brothers and sisters,

like I mentioned before, Hescia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon all alive, fully grown and absolutely pissed that they had to spend their entire lifetime up into this point inside their father's stomach alive. So in a single move, Zeus didn't just reveal his own existence, but he freed an entire generation of gods who are now going to fight alongside him that are also his siblings. And every single one of them now owes their entire existence and life to Zeus. But of course, Zeus has it done. So Zeus goes down, deep into the cosmic dungeon, and frees the prisoners of the old regime. Yes, you know who we're talking about. We're talking about the Cyclops, the other guy whose name is.

really hard to pronounce. Hecatonkiris. Hecatonkeres. You're doing great. Hecatankeris, I think is good. That's like the hundred-handed monster thing that's still been locked away all the way back from Uranus. Uranus. And in gratitude, the Cyclopses forge Zeus a gift. I bet you can guess what it is. What does Zeus need? He's trying to kill Kronis. The Cyclops are going to forge something. it's going to be a weapon, something that no one has ever held before. It is a Thunderbolt. And this is the moment where he starts to become the Zeus that we all know and love and worship and war, why not to? It's cool to know that he wasn't born without, like, with the Thunderbolt. It's not like he was just like, here, you're the God of the Thunderbolt, right? It was not something

that was like entitled to him. It was something bestowed upon him as a weapon of war forged by these super grateful prisoners that he freed. And Zeus is really going to need it. Because Cronus and the Titans aren't about to just like surrender the cosmos without a fight. And what's coming is the greatest war that the universe has ever seen. So this war is titanomarchy. This is the war of the Titans. Everything Zeus becomes, gets built like in this very moment. So here's the war.

All right, you got Cronus on one side. He's, of course, the big daddy god. He's the one in charge of everything. And then, of course, he's got like some of his other homies, other Titans that are like the old military, the old government, you could think, right? This is like the reigning gods of the universe. They want to keep power at all costs. On the other side, you got his son Zeus that he thought that he swallowed. And then all the newly freed siblings. These are the young Olympians that were vomited out of the mouth of Kronus. And they're also backed by like monsters and cyclopses

and all the new people to want of revolution, right? And the war, according to the mythology, is devastating. Hesiod describes fighting that is so violent. It cracks the found foundations of the world. So the seas boil, the earth screams, the heat and the light is so intense. Like, it feels like the sky itself is crashing down. And it lasts for 10 years and this like total cosmic stalemate. And what finally breaks it are those guys whose names I don't know how to pronounce the 100-handed people, those hundred-handed like terrifying monsters. They get involved. And those beings with 100 arms each, they're ripping entire mountains out of the ground and they're throwing them, 300 boulders at a time. And storms of like stone coming out of the sky and

bearing the Titans under like this crazy weight. And then above it all, Zeus is just posted up, raining down fire with his thunderbolts. The old regime finally breaks. And Zeus and all of his homies, they win. So he takes the defeated Titans and he locks them in Tartarus, the same bottomless dungeon sealed away where they can never threaten him or anyone else ever again. And here is why this whole war matters for understanding Zeus. His power isn't just handed to him. He didn't wait for his turn to rule because, well, it was never going to come. He had to make it happen. He had to go build a coalition, free prisoners, help out his siblings, beat the reigning old regime in a war, and then completely redraw the map of who holds power in the cosmos. It is a classic revolution,

and that is why the Greeks treat his rule as legitimate. It wasn't something that he inherited, he wasn't born into it. I mean, technically he was sort of born into it, but he was not like just given the throne. He conquered it fair and square, but of course he hasn't secured it all the way because the earth, remember Gaia, she isn't finished. She's about to give birth to one final horror

to test whether this young king actually can rule on his own. So real quick, a clarification that's important because a lot of retellings of this story actually like completely butcher this part. People tend to smash three totally separate things into like one blurry like gods versus the monsters brawl. They're not all the same thing. The Titans were the old divine generation.

That was the great war, the Titanamiki, the war that we just talked about, right? That was ruled by their father. And then there's going to be a different later war called the Gigantomachy. This is where the Elisianamaki. Olympians are versing the giants. These are different stories.

And then there's a third thing that's in a category on its own that also has its own war. And this is called Typhon. So after Zeus beats the Titans and that war is finally over, Gaia, the Earth goddess herself, mother of everything, brings forth one last child from the pit of the cosmos. And Typhon is not like anything before him, depending on the telling. He's a towering monster whose head scrubs. scrapes the stars with a hundred serpent heads, like, writhing off of his shoulders and fire flashing from his eyes and, like, just a horrifying chorus of sounds that are pouring out of him all at once. He is the raw, untamed force of the universe manifest into a single grotesque, terrifying being.

And he has come for one reason, to kill Zeus and to take the throne before the new order can settle in. But Zeus meets him with the storm. So Thunderbolt after Thunderbolt, fire, lightning. The two of them are now like shaking the entire cosmos once again until Zeus finally overwhelms the monster and casts him down. Now, later versions of this very story love to say that Typhon got buried under a mountain and that Mount Etna is the mountain that Typhon is buried under. Its eruptions are explained as the monster still raging underneath the earth.

But that's like a later kind of flourish. It's not really in like the super, super ancient like OG versions. so just be aware of that, but it's a fun little thing, right? Now, what matters is that this victory happened and what the victory means. Zeus doesn't beat Typhon with clever trickery or, you know, like making him drink a poison or something like that, like he did with his daddy cronis. He beats him with the Thunderbolt, with the storm itself from the get-go. It's just like straight-up war.

And that's kind of when the Thunderbolt becomes iconic for Zeus and his kingship, right? The proof is, you know, the sign that he and only Zeus was meant to rule. He's now beaten his grandfather's fate, he's beaten his father's armies and killed his father himself, and he's beaten the last monster that the universe could actually throw at him. Now, once and for all, Zeus is finally a real king. And this, the triumphant god of the sky on his mountain, is exactly where most versions of this story stopped. But what's interesting is that this is not where the ancient Greeks stopped, because winning the throne, it turns out, is the easy part.

It is actually keeping the throne that is way, way hard. harder. So when we say Zeus is like the king of the gods, we picture an absolute ruler, a dictator who just kind of runs everything and it's his word is the law. And that's not really the Zeus that the Greeks tell us about. So if you notice how he rules in the myths, especially in Homer, which if you remember is the side of Zeus that's older and more of like an administrator, Olympias looks less like an empire and more like a royal court. So it's packed with like powerful nobles and all these different nobles and gods and goddesses, they all have their own agendas. And Zeus does not control them.

Like, he's the king, but he's not in charge of what they do. And so there's all this plotting. So Poseidon, he has his own kingdom and his own pride. And Hera schemes against Zeus all the time. And then Athena and Apollo, they're all pushing and negotiating and trying to work around him. So Zeus, of course, is powerful. He's the most powerful by far. But the other gods also have their own free will.

and he governs them through persuasion and negotiating and bargains. And he's dealt with like the endless work of trying to manage all these other gods and goddesses ambition. So what he does is holds assemblies and cuts deals. And every so often he has to raise his voice and remind the whole room like, hey, I could destroy you guys with a single thunderbolt, so stop messing with me. Which is exactly what a ruler would have to do when his authority isn't secure. So trying to maintain the royal accord. court of Olympus, that is a fight that Zeus can win. He can deal with that. He can manage all their

egos. But there's a bigger fight that no one can win, not even Zeus, and that is fate. So, here's the question that sets us up here. And we kind of already touched on it, right? Is Zeus actually all powerful? We know that he doesn't control the other gods of Olympus, but does the king of the gods control everything else, even fate? Which for the Greeks, fate is massively important, like this destiny, like this thing that's outside of you, sort of like the simulation that's running that you're kind of playing a role in. Is God, aka Zeus, inside that or outside that? And for the Greeks, they never really give us a clear answer. Sometimes Zeus seems to like control destiny in his hands and, you know, do things to manipulate destiny. Other times, he's bound by destiny, unable to change

what is faded no matter what he does. One scene from the Iliad captures this better than anything else. So in the story, Zeus has a mortal son. His son's name is Sarpidon. He's a warrior that is fighting in the Trojan War. Zeus is watching from above, and he knows that Sarpedon is fated to die in the battle that's coming. And it's tragic because Zeus loves him. So the king of the gods, the being who overthrew the Titans and crushed Typhon, rules the entire cosmos. He sits on his mountain and seriously considers reaching down to grab his own son and save him,

from death, but he doesn't. Because he understands what will happen if he does. If he starts overturning fate every time it is personally hurting him, then the whole order that he fought a war to build would fall apart. Every other god would demand the exact same for their children, and then the whole system collapses. The gods are now meddling with humanity too much. So Zeus, in one of like the most human moments, he grieves the death of his own son.

The most powerful being in existence cannot save the person he loves. Rather, he can save the person he loves, but he chooses not to in order to maintain the harmony of the universe. And that is maybe the most interesting part of this. Because basically by manipulating humanity and fate, he's now destroying the very thing that he's ruling over. And this is what the Greeks were trying to communicate through the story about power, that even at the very top, it comes with a price. And that's kind of what the gods of the sky look like from the top. But what do they look like from the ground to just like the average person that's in Athens who's praying to the gods every day?

Because everything that we've covered so far is Zeus's mythology. It's like the epic story about Zeus. But there's another side of Zeus that needs to be talked about. This is the Zeus that real, regular Greek citizens actually worshipped day to day for basically a thousand years. And he was way more complicated than the God that we heard about in the stories because the ancient Greeks didn't really pray to one singular Zeus. Let me explain. It was technically one Zeus, but like, there were different manifestations of him that people would pray to depending on what they needed. They approached him through something called epithets, which were essentially like titles, like different cults, kind of.

And the list of those titles is actually really interesting, because it basically shows you what people needed God for and really what they were praying for. So at first there is Zeus Caranius. This is the Zeus of the Thunderbolt. This is the Zeus that everyone knows and loves. Can you hit me with the Greek on that? Gerovnius and Gerovnaud's thunder. Okay. So that makes sense.

And then you have Zeus Sultur. This is Zeus the Savior, like almost like the Messiah Zeus. How did I do on that one? That was perfect. Nice. And then, of course, you have Zeus Katibatus. This is the one who descends. This is the Zeus who comes down in the lightning strike.

How is that one? Even better. And then there is Zeus Horkios. This is the Zeus. of oaths. This is the God who looks at like all the sworn promises. So like if you break an oath, you don't just lie to a person. You're committing a crime against God. So like swearing on the Bible, this is when you're invoking Zeus Horkios. So to the ancient Greeks, they weren't just praying to a god of the sky. They could basically pray to Zeus for protection from storms or for

the safety of their city or for like a promise to not get broken or for like a stranger. You know, He was basically stitched into every possible need that a person could have. But it wasn't just who they prayed to. It was where. So this is the really interesting part that you can kind of still see because the Greeks would build Zeus real places on earth that they could go pray. And two of them show you just how differently people experienced the same God. So first is, of course, Olympia. And here Zeus's worship hits its peak.

Olympia was a sanctuary of Zeus, and it was the home of the original Olympic game. And here's the part that people don't always realize. The ancient Olympics, they were not like how we look at the Olympics today. It wasn't like a secular sporting event where people would run around. It was a proper religious festival. And just like today, it was held every four years in Zeus's honor. And it would fuse competition and sacrifice and worship and like the Greek identity all into one sacred gathering. So the athletes weren't just chasing glory.

They were literally competing to appease God, to appease Zeus. And at the center of all of it stood, one of the most staggering works of art that maybe the ancient world has ever made. The sculptor of Phidius built a colossal, like massive, seated statue of Zeus. If you ever saw Hercules, this is what they're drawing on, where Hercules goes to Zeus, like the giant throne statue. It was literally, it was 40 feet tall, made of gold and ivory, and it just showed Zeus enthroned and, like, this beautiful majesty in his temple. It was so magnificent, it got named one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. And I would tell you to go see it now, but it's gone. Sorry.

Ancient writers described standing in front of it and feeling like they were in the actual literal presence of God. Like, Fiddeus didn't just sculpt what Zeus looked like. It's like he made Zeus. So at Olympia, everything converged at once. You had Zeus's political power, the religious authority, the Olympic Games, like the festival, and like the peak of Greek art and sculpture. It was all there at one place where just a normal citizen could stand and like be in the presence of God. But the second place couldn't be more different.

Because at Olympia, Zeus is overwhelming, monumental, 40 feet tall, gold, ivory, all that stuff. Well, the next place, it was something that was literally the opposite. You had to go and be quiet and you had to listen. So it's called Dodana. It's in the region of Epidus. and it's one of the oldest and most important oracle sites of Zeus in the entire Greek world. So forget everything that you're picturing. When we think Greek Oracle, you're probably thinking like the Oracle at Delphi, the famous prophetess and a trance and giving you like a cryptic riddle and like having visions.

Well, Dodona was nothing like that. At Dodona, Zeus didn't speak in words. He spoke in sound. So there was a sacred oak tree and trained priests would basically go to the tree and interpret the rustling of its leaves in the wind. and they would read the calls of the birds nesting in the branches. So you'd have doves and you'd have pigeons. And they would listen to the ring of these bronze vessels, like resonating in the breeze, like wind chimes.

This was a god who communicated through the living world, through wind and wood and through animals and like the hum of like these metal chimes. It's almost like, what you would think of almost like an eastern religion, almost like Buddhism or like Shinto or something. So this wasn't a, bunch of people standing around like listening to leaves. These were like authorized priests and interpreters reading the landscape of sacred signs. And the whole environment now turned into like a

temple for Zeus. So if you close your eyes at Dodana, Zeus is all around you and it's murmuring through every natural sound. This is like very much like an animistic way to interpret God. This is kind of like how the Native Americans did it, right? They would be like, God is in the trees, is in the mountains. This is where our gods reside. There's different gods. And if you listen, you can hear the messages. And that's the Zeus that people prayed to for storms and cities and for their fate at the, you know, whisper of like an oak. And then there's one title that I left off the list on purpose because there's not really any type of temple or anything to, anything that you can physically be in. And it's the strangest contradiction in Zeus's whole

personality. And that title is Zeus Xenius, the protector of guests and of strangers. If you saw our episode on The Odyssey, then you've probably heard about this idea that's essentially the whole, like, heartbeat of that poem. And it's really more than that. It's one that centers on, like, the Greek identity. And it's the concept of Xenia or Filio Xenia. You pronounced it the Greek way. Senia or Philoxenia. Fyloxenia. You say it so nice. Now, this idea in the modern Greek really gets translated to, like, hospitality. But I think the word in English is too week. Like, Zenya is sacred. It is a binding code of friendship and love to strangers and to guests and to people that are in your space. That is a obligation with a very real meaning. So here's how it

work in the ancient Greek world. You're in your house, a stranger shows up. And under this, like, divine contract of Zenya, you don't interrogate them. You don't demand to know who they are. you just take them in and you feed them and you offer them protection and comfort and first before you even ask their name you just try to help them and in return the guest is also bound by the same principle of zenia they have to respect the household they have to never abuse the generosity and they have to return the favor if the day ever comes where they're in their home and someone shows up at their door and the god enforcing that agreement is zeus zenius which means that if you mistreat a stranger It's not just rude.

You're not just like, you know, being like an a hole to him. It is like a sin. You're doing a religious crime. So if there's a beggar at your door, you might be turning away someone who's under the direct protection of Zeus himself. And the Greeks would tell stories like this all the time of gods walking the earth in disguise. They'd be wearing rags just to see who was being nice. And if you slam the door in their face, well, that was an issue. And this is why the Odyssey judges every household base.

on this one test. How do they treat the strangers who show up hungry? So Zeus is the great protector of that bond and he's the God who upholds that entire obligation, which makes what we're about to talk about kind of impossible to square because in myth after myth, the God who guards this bond is also the one that's like breaking all the bonds that he's under. So try to make sense of this, okay? Zeus is the guardian of oaths, right? He's the protector of strangers, the God of justice, order, all that stuff. It's very nice. But Zeus is also kind of an asshole. Pardon my language here. I know this is a, you know, we're trying to be polite and educational, but he's sort of violent. And it sounds intense to say, but it's true. So like a huge share of Greek mythology's family tree

exists because Zeus pursued and forced himself onto goddesses, even just regular women on earth through some type of deception. Like he transformed himself to get close to them. and then like kind of gaslight them or like get them off the you know keep them on their toes or catch them off guard and then he would swoop in now you'll usually see these stories retold as like romance like oh yeah Zeus is like very seductive and charming and they frame Zeus as like a womanizer and like a charming kind of like shape shifter but i don't know if it is actually that way right like by modern standards they read pretty poorly and sure it's a different time and context but it's worth saying that, you know, even by ancient standards, they would be pretty disturbing.

So how do you hold these things together? That the God who protects the bond between guest and host is also the God who is like violating these bonds of like marriage and family and like, not to be all gay about it, but like consent. Well, you can't really. And that's sort of the point. The Greeks didn't build themselves a flawless God. They built a God who was power, like literally power incarnate. And power they understood is not the same. thing is goodness. Like being powerful doesn't mean that you're all good. It just means that you can do whatever you want. Zeus is what unlimited authority looks like. And sometimes it's great and sometimes it's bad. He isn't the moral ideal, which again is something that the Christian sort of Western

framework doesn't really handle well because we're like, no, God is all powerful and super moral and knows everything. Well, not Zeus. And nowhere is that clearer than in the last piece of this story, the one that we've, you know, kind of been inching around. And it's the one that Zeus has been running from since the moment he's born, the exact same curse that took down his father and his father before him. So at this point, we've been all over Zeus's story. So really quickly, let's just review the trajectory of the curse, of fate, and remind ourselves ultimately what Zeus is most afraid of.

Uranus feared his children, and his children destroyed him, or specifically one child. and Cronus, after taking out Uranus, fears his children. So he swallowed them whole and then got destroyed anyway by Zeus. And that is the iron law of the universe. The king is always overthrown by his own child, and no one knows that better than Zeus himself. So when Zeus's turn comes inevitably, or when it is coming, he's like, am I going to go out the same way? You know, like, is this going to happen to me?

Am I going to be able to find a way out? Well, don't worry. Here's what happened. Zeus takes a wife. Should I say his first wife? This is the goddess named Metus. And if you remember from earlier, she's the cunning goddess who helped Zeus actually trick Cronus into vomiting up his brothers and sisters. And then Zeus gets a warning that Metus will bear children of tremendous power. First a daughter and then a son. Now the son is faded to overthrow his father and take the throne just like all the great gods before him. So it seems like at this point Zeus is destined to be the same. as Kronus and as Uranus. But Zeus does something different than either of them in order to try to get out of this curse. While Uranus imprisoned his threat and then Kronus swallowed his threat, Zeus goes further than either of them.

So while Mides is pregnant, Zeus swallows Metus herself before the sun can ever be born. Now keep in mind, Metus was already pregnant, but at this point with the daughter. So sometime later, Zeus is hit with a monstrous headache. literally he's just like oh man my brain hurts and out of his own skull springs forth a full grown fully armored goddess screaming a war cry and this is the birth of Athena the goddess of wisdom and war and she's the only child that medis and Zeus end up having so instead of fighting the threat from the outside Zeus made it impossible for the threat to even take root so his dangerous son is never even born and just like that, Bada bang, Zeus breaks the cycle of fate and destiny. But there is one last part of the story that just shows how he learned this lesson for good. Later, Zeus falls for a sea goddess named Thetus.

And he's, you know, ready to chase her the way that he's chased so many others. But a prophecy reaches him just in time. Any son born to Thetus is, once again, faded to be greater than his father. So this is the curse. This is fate. It just continues to follow Zeus. He can't escape it. And so Zeus just stops. He's like, hey, if I have a kid with you, that kid's going to grow up, kill me, take me out. I don't want that to happen. So he basically marries Thetus off to a mortal man. And then they have a son. But remember, her son will be greater than his father. But now the father is a mortal. So the greater son is simply just the greatest of all mortals. And you already know

his name. His name is Achilles. He is famously Zeus's favorite man, but he's technically not his son, right? He married Thetis off to a regular human, and their son is Achilles. So anyway, Zeus sees the curse coming, and he steps out of the way, and he wins again, and he's able to keep his throne. But the story of Zeus doesn't end on Olympus. A god that is this big doesn't just fade away, right? So what actually happens to Zeus? Well, depending on how to Jesus, you look at it, he gets conquered. So when Rome swallowed up the Greek world, the Romans looked at their own sky, daddy, and this is a god that they named Jupiter. And they basically said, hey, that's the same guy. That's Zeus. Zeus and Jupiter, these are the same people. And just like that,

they folded the entire Greek mythology into Roman religion. So all of Zeus's stories, his imagery, his children, his affairs, all of that gets poured into Jupiter and carried straight into the heart of the Roman state. And here's what people don't realize. The Romans didn't just borrow Zeus. Like in some ways, they took Zeus and then added onto it and they made Zeus even bigger. Because to the Romans, Jupiter, aka Zeus, remember, these are the same people. Jupiter wasn't just a character in old stories. He was the divine guardian of Rome itself. They called him Jupiter, Optimus Maximus, literally the best and the greatest. They built him a massive temple on the Capitoline Hill, the religious center of the entire city where he ruled alongside his

wife Juno and his daughter Minerva, the Roman version of like Hera and Athena, generals march to his temple in triumph after they won wars. The most sacred oaths of the entire Roman state, they were sworn in the name of Jupiter. He wasn't just the god of the sky anymore. He was the god of Rome and its power and its military and its victories, like the entire identity. whatever the Greek identity surrounded around and how they made Zeus the focal point, Jupiter was the same thing, if not greater, to the Roman people. So in a way, Zeus didn't die when the Greek world's faded. He just changed and put on a Roman toga and just kind of kept on ruling.

It's one way to interpret it. And that's kind of what makes Zeus interesting. Throughout all of this, like the whole story, he never really settled into one shape. He just kind of got carried over from different people and different things got added on. Think about how many versions of him we've already talked about in this episode. There's the Zeus scratched into like Bronze Age clay. And then there's Hiziod's version of Zeus that's like the young revolutionary that fights his dad. There's a cosmic war.

And then of course you have Homer's version of Zeus that is like the administrator that kind of keeps everything going. He's the father that cries over his own son's death. The Zeus who's like, you know, tricking his father. who beats the Titans, the Zeus that's literally whispering in the trees at the Donna, the 40-foot version of Zeus that's crafted by the master sculptors of their day. And you could argue that the new version of Zeus is Jupiter, the Roman state god that presides over the entire empire. There's not one Zeus. There is an ever-changing, multi-layered version of Zeus that is stacked and iterated over thousands and thousands of years.

So what a massive God and an insane story to try to squeeze into one episode. Any part of the story could honestly be an isolated version, and scholars have written literally entire books on just one little section that we've talked about. You have the revolutionary, the king that tries to hold together a court, the giant statue of gold and ivory. All of them are Zeus. I mean, Jupiter. They're all Zeus. And most gods don't get that. Most gods kind of rise with the people, and then when the people get conquered or dispersed,

like the gods fall. And, you know, they get worshiped for, you know, a couple decades, maybe a few centuries if they have a good run. And then they're forgotten. But what's crazy is that for Zeus, like for thousands of years, basically 3,000 years, if you really want to be generous, he just continued to change. And every era that met him, they made their own versions, right? Like the Greeks, the Romans, the poets, the philosophers, the sculptors, each one handed their

version of Zeus down to the next and when they passed it on, they maybe added to it a little bit. And here's the thing, we're not apart from this. Like, we are a part of this. I am in a way a part of this because I'm continuing to tell his story and you are continuing to listen. Like literally, he's the biggest planet in the solar system, Jupiter. He's in movies and books and video games. Like the word Olympian alone is a term that we hand to our greatest athletes every four years at games that now are secular, but still carry over the tradition and the ethos of Zeus. So, you know, we don't worship Zeus anymore,

but we didn't really let Zeus go. Zeus has been living in human imagination since before recorded history, and in a way, still here. Kind of, right? I mean, still present and still relevant, and maybe still ruling. And maybe,

that is the god, like truly the only God who really became immortal. And that is why so many people around the world, specifically the Greeks, they see Zeus as the immortal king. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief history on who Zeus is, how he got his name, how he got his role, and why he is so important to Greek literature, history, and mythology. I mean, crazy, right? There's a couple little parallels here between like Christianity and uh Greek mythology where like you know God giving up his own son on earth and like Zeus watching his son you know get killed in the Trojan War and like grieving over him it's like one little thread but there's so many interesting things about like how Zeus just like kind of got away from fate

like he didn't stop fate but he was able to like work around it fate is like hey cronus kills uranus you kill cronis your kid'll kill you it's done It's going to happen. And he was like, well, what if I just don't have any more babies? And then fate's like, well, it didn't really think of that. Which kind of shows like he is all powerful, kind of. You know, like he could mingle with fate, which actually that might be my favorite part of this whole thing. Looking, because I think there's even parallels with like modern religion today.

They're like, oh, if God is so powerful, why doesn't he just like stop war? Why doesn't he just like intervene? It's like, hey, we have free will. And even the Greeks knew this when talking about Zeus. Hey, your son is going to go into the Trojan war and he's going to die. That's really sad, right? But if you mingle with this and you, like, get involved and you save your son, well, guess what?

You are going to now be stopping free will. And if you stop free will, then this whole creation that you're the God over all of a sudden stops. To me, I'm like, again, it's not as sophisticated as like modern sort of understandings and explanations of like God's divinity and free will and how they intersect. But it is an interesting thread that even, you know, 2,500 years ago, 3,000 years ago, the Greeks were talking about like, yeah, God just can't come in and, like, intervene on free will.

Sure, he could stop war, but how do you stop war? You have to come in to a general or to a dictator or to a president and be like, hey, I'm going to change your free will. I'm going to change what it means for you to be human in order to achieve my own ends. And if that's the case, then it's like, well, reality is now a moot to existence because free will is now taken away. And that is ultimately like the presiding thing within Christianity that makes human being so significant

in why everything kind of makes sense is because Christians believe in free will. And it seems like the Greeks also had a high premium on free will as well. Fascinating. Anything you learned Christos, the Greek freak? A couple of things, actually. What's that?

It's amazing how time changes what swallowing your kids means, first of all. That is a great point that I didn't even think about. You dirty dog. I've been thinking about it since the start the episode. Wow. I wondered aloud for a second when I was dumb that, like, why Achilles has powers

if he's not actually Zeus's son. Right. And it's because his mother was a C-nymph who was a divine mother. Right. So that's the powerful. She's a goddess. Right. That at one point was Loki with Zeus.

Right. And so, like, I guess technically no, but like, if they're married, like Zeus is like, I guess now. Zeus is kind of the stepdad. Yeah. But not the biological dad. Right.

And that's what makes Achilles. And that's why Achilles is so bad. And that apparently Achilles gets dunked in the river. Right. And is given like impenetrable, like immortality everywhere except his heel. Kind of awesome. Yeah. The name of the sculptor.

I can't remember his name that made the 40 foot statue, Fidius. Yep. That guy's awesome. Yeah, I mean, we don't know what it looks like because it's no longer in existence. But the ancient riders were like, hey, gold, ivory, 40 feet tall, badass. That's pretty sweet.

Also, that second location. Yes. Not the first, the one where you hear Zeus. Dorana. And Ipiro, which is where my father's from. No way. Yep. How far from Athens?

Six hours. No, it's far. But you can still go there. Yep. Have you been? Yep. No way. That's where one of the properties that I tried to salvage is. No way. Yeah. That's awesome. Yep. So you have, if you go there, do they do like historical kind of like reenactments where they're like, hey, this is like the temple of Zeus in the wilderness? I'm embarrassed, but I've never looked into it. Brother, I didn't know about that until just now. I have great news. You're going to go back to Greece again soon. I'd love to. And I'm coming with you. I'll see you later. And we're going on a tour of Dodina. And we're also going to go to Olympus. And we're going to hit all. these spots so we can figure out what's going on i can leave right now all right now all we have to we have some other stuff to do yeah but then eventually we will sure what do you guys think are you

a practitioner of the temple of zeus do you currently still worship him if i do if you do i apologize if i was uh offensive or or uh sacrilegious in anyway now if you are a greek historian and the mythology and the pantheon of the greek gods and goddesses anything i missed anything that i didn't cover or anything that you learned or any connections that you got from this that you can tie to other things like religions or parts of history, even in the Iliad and the Odyssey, that now make more sense, that contextualize many more things. Again, looking at Zeus is like, oh, you're the god of Xenia, filio Xenia. Senea.

Senea. Filirozenia. If you are the god of that, like, you can see why the Odyssey is like him just watching over being like, yo, what are you going to do? Are the Greeks as hospitable as Greek mythology would make you believe? So hospitable, the most. They're not going to be happy about it, but they, will take care of you.

They oblige. The Airbnb that I was staying at, a lady that never met me before washed my clothes. I had the same experience. And I assumed it's because like I'm a tourist or like, oh, because like I'm an American, we tip because we don't know how things work. I assumed they were being nice to me because they were like, okay, we want you to come back, like just capitalism. It's the idea that you're staying in their house.

They're going to take care of you. It's so ingrained. Now, be honest. If I were to go to like a random apartment to like an old, old Greek guy, you know, somewhere and knocked on the door and I was like, hey man, can I like bar your phone or like, can I just, do you have any food? I'm so hungry. He'd grill you, light up a cigarette, and then give you a full feast. You really think so? Absolutely. I'm putting this to the test and I cannot wait. We're going to Greece, baby. Anyway, guys, I have great news. If you like

religious content, similar to what we talked about today, but practicing religions that people adhere to and the millions, well, great news. We have religion camp. That's where I deep dive and all the crazy stuff from every religion from around the world, not just Christianity or Catholicism, the faith that I belong to, but Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and I try to understand the secret teachings of all religions ever. And if you like crazy deep dives and mysteries pertaining to, you know, more current affairs, crazy mysteries, conspiracies, that kind of stuff, well, great news. Camp Gagnon, the main channel is for you. And if you just like to rock with a history vibe, well, you're in the right spot because every single Wednesday we drop these episodes.

So make sure you subscribe, like, comment, all that stuff. Also, we do have a secret society. that is patreon.com slash camp gagnon you can check that out and you'll get every episode of this show for i mean not for free ad free and there'll be no ads and on top of that you're going to get monthly zooms with me and the rest of the squad you're also going to be able to contribute ideas for future episodes and it's just a great community where people hang out and chit chat so you can check that out patreon dot com slash camp gagnon five bucks a month and you're going to get all that and more thank you guys so much for tuning into another episode of History Camp. God bless you all, and I will see you in the future to talk about the past. Peace. Hey guys, if you love conspiracies and hypothetical history,

well, I want to invite you to check out Signal 33. This is a companion pod to our podcast here at camp. It's made and edited by the same team that runs all of our shows, and I choose the topics every single week. So check it out, subscribe, and start the dialogue in the comment section.