The Eric Metaxas Show - #164 - Mike Lindell

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with Mike Lindell about President Trump’s endorsement, Lindell’s campaign for governor of Minnesota, his battle with the state Republican establishment, election integrity, newly declassified voting-system information, and the future of MyPillow. Eric then speaks with literature writer Lisa Libes about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the modern translation that shaped the film, and how Hollywood weakened Homer’s heroic vision.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/

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Every time I see you, I say that because it's true. You cheer me up. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me on, Eric. This is awesome. There's a lot going on. First of all, somebody told me, I think you told me, that you're running for governor in Minnesota. Is this true?

This is true. This is a Facebook fact check type thing. I already knew you were running for governor. Some things, though, it's like my friend Victor Marks running for governor in Colorado. I think, is this real? Like, this is just something that I would wish could be true. But in this case, it's actually, it is true. Victor Marks got the Republican nomination in Colorado.

You, my friend, where are things with the Minnesota governor's race? I just cannot believe this is happening. Well, a lot of things. Obviously, you had the, with the GOP in Minnesota, we had the conference in May. They don't want Mike Lindell. So they wouldn't let me come to any of the delegate debates. They wouldn't give me the delegate list. They wouldn't get, I couldn't go to a lot of the forums.

And they got up there and the people, and during this time, there's five, five polls came out. And the people of Minnesota, I was favored upwards of seven points better than that, the one that they wanted, this Lisa Damoth. And they had the big convention up in May. and get this, hold it everybody, the machines broke. Three hours, the machines went down, the electronic clickers. So through all that chaos, they ended up, this Kendall Qualls got their endorsement. And so then everybody was running in for the August 11th primary date.

And of course, they're all voting early now. But I have a big advantage. And by the way, I was still polling number one by seven. And then last week, the president endorsed me and two days. Wait a minute, wait a minute. The president of the United States. Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

President Trump endorsed you. Of course he endorsed you because he knows you. And he knows that you would be by far the best thing that could happen to Minnesota. So that's great. So this is August 11th. Yeah. And Eric, he endorsed me on Minnesota. merit on not our friendship. I want to go back to...

Oh, I know. Listen, Mike, look, we got to be clear. We know this. The president, he loves this country more than he loves his friends and he loves his friends a lot, but he loves this country. And I'm glad you clarified that, but at the same time, most people, I think, tuning in would understand. He wouldn't be friends with you if he didn't believe in you and what you've been fighting for this country for years and years. So God bless you. And congratulations. Well, thank you. Thank you. And, you know, like I said, when I told him back in December, I didn't ask for his endorsement. And I wanted to show him our great campaign, which we're holding number one. And we're just, we're going to have October 20,000 yards. We've got 5,000 out now. All the things we're doing and then putting out my budget in the next couple weeks here. It's going to, it's going to be a little controversy. I'm going to have people on both sides, especially Republicans, going, why would you do that? This is. This isn't a Republican thing you're doing. And so, but he endorsed me.

We had a big fundraiser that I had, just had a bedmister that was scheduled a long ago. And he came in and told him, kind of like a re-endorsement Saturday night. So that was really, really amazing. I was sorry. I was very sorry I couldn't be there. I heard about that. I was up in the great state of Maine.

There was a Christian conservative gathering in Bangor, Maine. And I got to tell you, something is going on in this country. When you've got blue states like Colorado and Minnesota and Maine, the people are waking up. The conservative base, the MAGA base, that's what it is, is waking up. It's not the Mike Pence conservative base. It's the MAGA base waking up and saying we've got to step up. We've got to prevent communism from destroying the country. We're at that point, obviously.

Well, so look, this is exciting. So August 11th is the election, and that will determine whether you get the Republican nomination. Yeah, that's right. And everybody's voting now. And with the president's endorsement, I went up, I'm up by 25 points now. It's a huge lead. But I'm not taking that for granted. I've got every step of the way here.

I've been since December just kind of going, okay, I'm going up against Amy Klobuchar, the machine, the Democrat machine. And she just got on TV this morning and bashed me. So, you know, the gloves are off. Let's go. Now, Mike, you remind me of what a hypocrite Amy Klobuchar is because you were the one that told me back when you were bringing attention to how all the machines could be hacked that there was a big, was it a Netflix documentary? HBO documentary called Kill Chain. Kill Chain. Yep.

You were the one that told me about that. And Amy Klobuchar is in that. And all this is before you got into this whole thing. The Democrats were screaming about how the machines are hackable. Amy Klobuchar is front and center in this HBO documentary Kill Chain. Now suddenly not one word from the Democrats. It's like this, Eric. This is actually what I'm going to be saying nationally.

Here's Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lindell. This documentary came out in 2020, everybody. It came out in 2020, Killed, There's two movies kill chain. Make sure you get the one that says it's cybersecurity. And Amy is the star. She's the biggest, the loudest voice in the nation to get rid of the voting machines. She named them all.

Of course, she didn't get sued for a couple billion dollars, but she named them all. She says, we've got to get rid of these and all these things that three companies control our elections. And let's see what's going on since then. Mike Lindell went and spent, I don't know, 70, 80, 80, million dollars, his life, everything he had to secure our elections and keep fighting for paper ballots, hand counted, build teams of 300,000 people with Cause of America, have movies and events and stuff to get the word out. We've got to save our country and get rid of these machines.

What did Amy do? Amy, after the 2020 election, she turned her back on that, and then she went to Washington and got, I don't know, upwards of $20 billion to bring into Minnesota for our programs, our welfare programs, and that gets shipped off to Somalia. Well, Eric, I don't think that's a good steward of our money or good help for our people that actually needed that money. Well, corruption, ladies and gentlemen, is a moral issue. When we're talking about character and morality, corruption is a moral issue. It's called stealing.

and God comes out, are you ready? He comes out against stealing in the Bible, which is his bestselling book. So this is basic stuff. I hope people are waking up to it. Before we talk to you about election integrity, I do want to mention there is a mega sale at mypillow.com. Folks, I tend not to mention these things on the program.

We run ads, but in the middle of this program, I want to let you know the code to use when you go to my Pillow.com is Eric. Please tell your friends, this program needs the help. We need the help. But we also know that whatever you buy at MyPillow, you are buying great products and you're helping the hero of our story, Mike Lindell.

Mike, we're just so proud of you with the company you've built. And maybe you should say word about the mega sale. Yeah, I mean, I just sent my son in the other room. We're going to surprise everybody with free shipping on Anything you order today with promo code Eric, that's a nationwide exclusive right now. Promocode Eric, best promo code. And you guys, we have the mega sale. We have our premium my pillows, 1898 for the Queen, 1998 for the King.

You've got our mattresses 50% off, the lowest price history made in the USA. Best mattresses you'll ever sleep on six-month money back guarantee. When did you start selling mattresses? I know this happened a while ago, but I still can't believe you're now selling mattresses. Yeah, we had our mattress topers, everybody that I helped develop. Oh, boy, probably 10 years ago now, maybe 2013 or 14 and, or no, no, no, I'm sorry, 2015 or 16. And when we did that, everybody, the technology, it wasn't any other mattress topper. It was like my pillows patented foam in that to turn any bed into the best bed ever.

And then I said, you know what? The demand was to make a mattress. I helped design them. I went there, how does this help you sleep? How does this help you sleep? It's a coil and a foam hybrid, okay? You can flip it, you know, both sides. They last, but the biggest thing is sleep is about temperature and pressure points.

And it's the most amazing mattresses you'll ever sleep on. I built, as you know, Eric, I build everything or develop everything to help you to We help, you know, first and foremost. Then, because we were canceled everywhere with all the box stores and everything, we're able to not have that middleman, you know, they mark it up 50s, 55 points. We're going right to you with promo code Eric for 50% off the best sleep in history. And a six-month money back guarantee. These got with free shipping comes right to your front door.

They're easy to set up. You know, and we didn't have the technology back then to put them in a box, right to your front door. It was all clumsy. Everything shipped in you. And then you picked something out in the store and you're going, you lay on it in the store and it didn't quite work quite right at home. Well,

we treat every customer like our only customer. You're going to love the mattresses. You're going to love that. The guarantee backing it up, but most of all, you're going to get the best sleep of your life. And I got to tell you, Mike, you know,

because I joke around a lot. I don't use every product. I barely use a pillow. No, but I'll tell you something. When I got the mattress topper, I've talked about this, not recently. I really, I kind of scoff at everything because it's kind of like with pills or whatever. Whatever I do, nothing really changes in my life.

You know, like I'm the same. When I got that mattress topper, I thought, wow, this is, what is this? So I can attest, honestly, you take this stuff very personally. You get involved. You care about this stuff. You test it out. You know, you're not just talking. A lot of people are just talkers.

actually do this stuff. And the mattress topper, I was amazed. So if you've put the mattress topper technology into an actual mattress, I think where my, I know what my next mattress is going to be. And there's a passage in my book, my new book, Revolution, where I talk about Ben Franklin. You ready? Ben Franklin and John Adams spend a night together in a bed. One bed, not a big bed. was a twin or a queen they spend a night together this is september 1776 in new jersey in and in they're sleeping on the bed they did not have the mike lindell technology so who knows who knows how their negotiations the next day went because of the poor sleep that they got but that i that's actually in my book i don't mention your name in the book uh i don't mention the size of the mattress

but that's a true story uh and i would i just like to know where that matter that's mattresses today, 250 years ago. So, Mike, you're telling people to go to MyPillow.com. Go to MyPillow.com forward slash Eric, or just go to MyPillow and put in that promo code, Eric. You're going to see all these exclusive prices. We have over 250 products, already 40 new ones with from kitchen towels to bath towels to bath robes, out of slippers, all on sale for your audience, Eric, promo code Eric. I'm going to give you another thing, 800, 978 3057, 8057, 800, 9757. Tell my operators, promo code, Eric,

you guys, with all your support, your audience support, Eric, we've been able to get through being the biggest attack company in history to try and silence their CEOs' voice out there trying to secure our elections and save our country. And so everything you're helping, it's a win, win, win.

You're helping support the greatest program ever, Eric's show. You're helping support. you're not my pillow, my employee own company, but you're helping yourself. Get the best night's sleep in the whole wide world. Yeah. Look, this is the, it's so funny because we live in a world

where everybody blows so much smoke. It's just a joy to know you're the real deal. Your products really are great. We're not just saying this. I think by now people who listen to this program know that. But you want to go to mypillow.com, use code Eric, and the phone number is 800-978-3057-80-80-9-7.

800-9-7-8-3057-30-7 promo-code Eric. Now, Mike, election integrity. The president gave a speech, I don't know, it was about a week ago or whatever it was. The mainstream media immediately had to poo-poo everything he said, had to discount it. And I know for a fact,

there are many people in the mainstream media, they're genuinely confused. I mean, there's some bad actors, like really wicked people. But there are a lot of people out there. They just are so concerned. infused on this issue of election integrity. I thank God, we have a president that is shining a light on it. What can you tell us about where we are now with election integrity? Well, here's where it is, everybody. We all know we've got to get in these machines, 132 countries abandon. We are one of the

few countries in the world that have the worst elections in history, and we need to get to pay for ballots and count it. We have a hard time passing something so simple that you need to be a citizen to vote that Save America Act. So important, everybody. But when he came out and declassified all this stuff that they were sitting on, this stuff, I had a lot of this stuff over the last five years that saw it at Lindel TV, an 800-page historical library. You guys can go there, LindelTV.com, check it out.

But more importantly for me is most of the stuff that came out was on Smartmatic. And that particular company, that's still, you know, everyone knows my one big lawsuit with Dominion was dropped, that I won the $5 million challenge. That was overturned. The truth comes out everybody. Eventually it gets there. And with Smartmatic, I have a case still sitting here in Minneapolis, but all that came out, the genesis of all this in Venezuela, it's all been declassified. So nobody can argue anymore going, well, that's just hearsay. That's just subjective. But Eric, as you know, these horrible reporters and these outlets, and including your Fox News, of the words, They bury stuff and they don't want to talk about our election platforms.

It's beyond belief. The one time in history, everybody, I was talking to MSNBC. I think they call it MSN now or some crazy thing. And I got them on the phone yesterday. I said, why wouldn't one of you guys want to be the heroes of the world and go question these voting machine? Go to Smartmatic. Go to them and say, what's your comments on this?

What's your comments on all this guy declassified stuff that your guilty is all get out? And it just blows my mind, Eric, that other people, I've approached them. Of course, they're not going to say to, you know, do anything to me or say anything to me because I've got it all on them. But for a journalist to approach him from one of these huge legend, older media companies, establishment media, go there and say, hey, you know, maybe there is something here. You know, it just came out. Why don't, what do you guys have to say about this? And why are we, why are we, why is our media protecting three or four voting machine companies?

It doesn't make sense. You know, and this is our, Obama deemed our elections critical infrastructure. The president will not let up on this. And what gets confused, Eric, is everyone's going, oh, the president just overturned the 2020 election. You guys, he's already in power. He wants to save our country. for the future going forward.

But you've got to look what's happened in the past in order to fix the future. That's business. Well, listen, when people say, when people say, I want to smack them when they say, we don't want to relitigate the 2020 election. It's kind of like, oh, yeah, your family was raped and murdered. But you know what? Let it go. Let's move forward.

Ladies and gentlemen, if our votes were stolen, if it's even half true, if it's 10% true, if you're any kind of a human being, you need to care about that. You need to care about fixing that. If you don't, you are part of the problem. And the left wing mainstream media, they clearly do not care. They don't want justice. They don't want clarity. They don't want transparency.

I mean, honestly, I have to say, I'm old enough to be surprised by this. I would think in the past, the mainstream media, maybe they were left wing, but they were never like they are today. They have become absolutely crazy. They simply don't care about the truth. But I'll tell you what, Mike, there has to be some rogue reporter, whether it's at ABC or NBC or CNN, some rogue reporter that wants to make a name for himself or herself who wants to look into this. Because this is the scandal of our time. If America, which is based on people electing their representatives, that's the whole idea of self-government.

If that is undermined, there's no bigger story than that. So God bless you for being a champion of this. And I know you'll be vindicated. You're being vindicated already. Eric, I want to say add to that, you know, people say, well, Mike, there's still, the machines are here and you're running for government and so on. And they're not all gone. We have, you know, we have pockets where we have the best counting systems in the world now that my teams have developed.

But I want to tell everybody this, here's where we're at that in five years now. We have followed this, everybody. we have broke through the biggest cover-up. That's already a win. We broke through the biggest cover-up of the biggest potential crime the world had ever seen, which would have been taking the United States without firing a shot. We broke through that. When our voice back in January 7th and 8th of 2021, 2021, after January 6th,

1.2 million Americans were de-platformed off all these, Suckabuckabuck's Facebook, Jack Dorsey's crooked Twitter, Vimeo YouTube. The president lost 100 million followers, a sitting president. So our voice was squished down to nothing. But look where it's at. We did not let them kill our voice, everybody, and now it's huge. We've got 14 different social media platforms. Everybody's doing their podcast and shows like your great show, Eric.

And people get their information from everywhere now, not just three outlets that can brainwash us, and cover things up like they've done for decades, in my opinion. Well, this is, again, there's so many people. And in writing, I always have to bring it back to my book Revolution because it's in my mind. I've spent the last two years thinking about it. But nothing's really changed. You always have plenty people that don't give a damn about right and wrong and truth. They're just happy to sit on the fence and let other people fight the fight.

And then there are plenty people that will side with the enemy. They will side with the enemy. they don't care. But if there are enough people who care about what is right and good and true, if those people are willing to fight and have courage and be inspired by people like you, Mike Lindell, we will not lose because truth and justice and transparency and liberty and self-government, these are God's ideas. These are God's causes. And if we ally ourselves with God's causes, God will be with us. We just have to act in a way that's worthy of earning the favor of God, who gave us the idea of liberty and self-government and truth and justice.

So these things are important. Mike, I want to remind people again, folks, we rarely do this on this program. But if you have any chance to go to MyPillow.com and use the code, Eric, we're not blow in smoke about the sale. Mike has been so de-platformed and so pushed out of a lot of these box stores that he thought, okay, here's what we'll do. We'll pass the savings onto you. So instead I'll let the box stores get their big cut.

We pass on the savings directly to you. So the prices are tremendous. You go to mypillow.com. Use the code, Eric, you'll see for yourself. And Mike, again, I got to tell you, you know, I always joke around about this stuff. But I remember when you came on my Christmas special five years ago, and you talked about actually,

I mean, again, it sounds like something people would make up as a skit. you actually realized, as many Americans did, you said, you said, something is wrong with our towels. Like it's kind of basic, right? It's not like something's wrong with my software. It's our towels. They have a job is to towel us off. And they're sort of not working. They feel in the store, they feel all velvety and wonderful, but they don't suck up the moisture. You got to the bottom of it and you figured out what they were doing and you created towels that actually towel. you off. They do their job. I can attest to this. Your towels are the only ones that I'll use at this point. And anytime another towel sneaks in, you know, to our bathroom, I say, what is this?

It's not working. Why is it not working? Because it's really a mic below town. If you look at everybody and here's our six piece towel sets that are on sale, print, only with promo code Eric 39.98 for the whole set. But I'll tell you real quick on that, everybody. I, you know, when I'm growing up, But towels, they dried you. And all of a sudden, I'm going, wow, these are like slimy. They felt like lotiony. And the vinyl, it wouldn't be, it would beat up. So I checked into it.

And it was from the year 2006, there was government, it was called GAID, government agreements we had with places like China and India and Pakistan, where all of a sudden all these towels could come into our country with no unregulator, no tear up, no nothing. And so they all got very competitive in the retail level. and they added stuff like fabric softeners and oils so it would feel good at the store but to get it home and go what is this it's supposed to be a towel in my commercial i say you could line a swimming pool with this i actually poured water on commercial and filled up the towel you can't make this up it's very similar it's like polyester it's like awful yeah very similar i say to like you're in a in a restaurant you put the napkin on your lap where you go to wipe it and just pushes the water up so what i did is i i found tech now that was out there. I kind of hold this company.

I did my due don't. She took six months to develop. Towers that actually dry you. They feel good. They absorb. They work. But doesn't this sound like a joke? Towers that actually work.

It's like a pencil. Wait a minute. That actually writes. We've discovered pencils that actually write and hammers that actually nail. It's so crazy because there's nothing simpler than a towel. But I just want to say this, Mike, because I find it funny and delightful that you really did this. your towels actually work.

And the people all across America using these awful towels, they are, they're kind of slimy, and they're sort of like it's like a polyester towel. They don't work. So go to mypillow.com, use the code Eric. We're just about out of time. Mike, two minutes left or less.

Final thoughts on running for governor. What would you like to tell my audience? Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to thank him for using that promo code Eric at My Pillow. I mean, we, I could not have ram for governor if My Pillow wasn't secure. The most attack company, my employees, I care about my employee and company. You guys support them, support them, support them. I said, I'm over here going 100% all in for governor.

It was a game changer last week. Great things are finally happening. The evidence got all declassified were vindicated there. All them lawsuits against me and my pillow and stuff. We're down to maybe one, I believe, with the machine companies. And then you have the president endorsing me for governors. You have all these great things going on. And I can't think everyone enough that I see. Just keep the faith and keep the hope. And remember, we're living God's grace right now. God's given us grace for such a time as this. The best time in history to be alive, everybody's do your part. Be courageous because courage is contagious. Amen. God bless you. Mike. Thank you. I want to tell my audience again, folks, if you want to help the country, sounds like I'm making it up, but follow the logic. If you want to

help the country. You've got to help Mike Lindell. You're also helping this program. But please go to mypillow.com. Use the code Eric. We've got to support Mike and his company because we want Mike to be the next governor of Minnesota. Can you imagine how the mainstream media would go out of their minds if that were to happen? We pray that it happens. Mike, we love you. We just revere you you and honor you. You have been such a hero. I know you are the real deal. I spend enough time with you over the years. And I just, I thank God for you. So folks, please do go to Mypillow.com.

You can also go to MyStore.com. Most of my books are available there at great prices. Please use the code, Eric, mystore.com, my pillow.com. Don't forget, there are now mattresses available. Ladies and gentlemen, you need mattresses. And free shipping on your entire order today. You guys do it right now. Free shipping on your entire.

So free shipping, imagine what the shipping would be on mattresses and all this stuff. So MyPillow.com used the code, Eric. Mike Lindell, God bless you, my friend. God bless America. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My Pillow's second annual mega sale is finally here.

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all. Order right now and we'll ship your order absolutely free. Hey there, folks. If you've been paying any attention to me, you know that I'm Greek. That's right, Greek. Metaxus is Greek. If you've been paying any more attention to me, you know that my family's from Kefalonia, Cephalonia, which is actually Homer's Ithaca. We don't need to get into that. right now. But I take the Odyssey very seriously. I read it for the first time many, many years ago. And when I saw that Christopher Nolan had made a film about it, I thought, nah, I think I'll miss it. But a friend invited us to some exclusive screening here in New York City. So Suzanne and I went. And my advice to you, or let me put it this way, it is well worth missing. That's my view.

well, miss it if you can't miss it. There's some good stuff in it, but that's my advice. My guest right now is Lisa Libes, and she is many things. First of all, welcome Lisa to this program. Well, thank you so much for having me here. Well, I've been following you for a while on Instagram and just excited about a lot of what you're doing and writing about, how do you describe yourself? I mean, you know, to, or if you don't mind, describe yourself to my audience because I don't want to do any harm to the synopsis.

Sure, sure. So I am a social media content creator in the sort of literature space. So my background is an English and comparative literature. And, you know, I started my social media page over on Instagram to sort of fight some of the woke stuff that's going on in. literature and ended up, you know, getting an audience for so many literature lovers who want to learn about literature, but are so fed up with sort of the ideological capture. I also run a substack called pens and poison and what I'm not doing, content creation. I am a writer.

Well, pens and poison, that's where I found you. And we have some things in common, separated, of course, by a number of decades. I was an English major at Yale in the 80s, which had already. gone woke. I mean, the word woke didn't exist back then, but it was all about deconstruction. You couldn't enjoy the literature, qua literature. It was just not something anybody was interested in, was saying, hey, how great this is. It had to be, you know, you had to see it through some unpleasant lens. And it's really such a pity. So, but I, I have followed your stuff. And I kind of thought it would be fun to talk to you about the Odyssey film that just came out. I've been talking about it.

And I don't hate it. There's some good things, but generally speaking, I thought it was at least a tremendous missed opportunity because it's such a great piece of literature. But what you wrote about it on your substack, I thought really interesting about the subversion of the idea of pride. So I don't know if you want to start with that idea. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think I agree with you. I didn't think it was a terrible film. I think, you know, Matt Walsh, I think posted yesterday.

oh, you know, it's a DEI piece of crab, that sort of thing. I don't maybe agree with that 100%, but I do think, again, missed opportunity. So the thing with Homer's Odysseus is that his whole conflict is about pride, right? The thing that sets the story into motion is that Odysseus is up against this Cyclops Polyphemus. This is kind of one of the first flashbacks we get early on in the epic. And when he's up against the Cyclops, he says, he tells the Cyclops that, you know, nobody is attacking you because that then promises Cyclops to scream out to his friends. Nobody is attacking me. And then they let Odysseus in his men go.

We have to make clear. It's supposed to be funny. It's funny. Homer 3,000 plus whatever years ago is writing something very funny that the stupid Cyclops has been blinded and he wants to know who has done this to me. And clever Wiley Odysseus says, Kanenas, the Greek word, no one. Tell them no one has done. That's my name.

Canina. So it's a joke on the Cyclops. It's funny. It's interesting. And it leads to other stuff. But that was the first thing when I was watching the film. I thought, what happened to that whole thing in the film? Like it was just cut out. The Cyclops doesn't say one word. There's other problems. Like he's not even clever Odysseus is supposed to think about how can we defeat the Cyclops. That's not in the film. It just kind of happens. Like it's just weird. Anyway, go ahead. Right. Right. And I think the reason that that, you know, when you, adopt any sort of piece of literature, it's going to leave out some parts. But leaving out that part in particular, what that does is it actually, it's a big character reveal. And, you know, we don't

get a lot of this sort of internal monologue in ancient Greek epics the same way that, you know, we think of in literature today. But we know that Odysseus is prideful because when he's leaving the Cyclops' cave, they already can escape, you know, they're safe, they can go. But he decides, I need to tell the Cyclops that, you know, my name is Odysseus, and I'm the Saccharacterious. And I'm the Saccharacterious. And I'm the sacker of cities. And he sort of pompously faces the Cyclops and says this. And that then gives a crucial detail of now the Cyclops knows Odysseus's name. Now he's going to go pray to Poseidon and tell him. Who is his father? Just in case you want to know, in case you're scoring at home, the Cyclops' father is Poseidon. So Cyclops is ticked. And he knows Odysseus is the one who

blinded me. So he goes to Poseidon and he wants revenge. Right. He wants revenge. And then essentially all of Odysseus' sufferings for the rest of the journey are set in motion because of this moment of grandeur where he felt the need to tell the Cyclops' name. So that, I think, is a really revealing moment where we need to know that Odysseus has this pride, and we also need to know what sets all of this into motion. Nolan sort of paints it as Odysseus has, you know, desecrated Troy, he's angered the gods. And that's really a little bit different. from what Homer is doing. Again, this was a culture that was very much fixated on this idea of glory and heroism.

And if you study any of the ancient Greek epics, you know that there was no shame for going to war, right? Everything was about, you know, being the best warrior in this idea of Arate, which is kind of honor, right? So that, I think, is fundamentally embedded in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. And what Nolan does is essentially say, while the war was bad and he gives Odysseus this sort of PTSD-like trauma. And at one point, I think in the film they even call him like a war veteran. So immediately you start to insert this almost like Vietnam War language into a film about Greek culture. And it sort of subverts what Greek culture is actually about because you don't have an Odysseus filled with regret.

There is a little bit of nuance in the text. There's a moment in the text where, Odysseus says, or when he starts crying, starts being a little bit teary-eyed right after he's told, you know, the story of the sack of Troy. But he's not regretful. He's a human with emotions and he's still a very prideful man. And I think what Nolan has done is essentially craft him into this, again, war tour veteran by the time he gets, spoiler alert in the film, by the time he gets home to Penelope. He, you know, he's bursting out in tears. He's saying, you know, we shouldn't have fought the Trojan War. work. It was all for nothing. And I think that is the element of... He's like a modern beta male. He's Matt Damon. He is Matt Damon. Do you understand?

Christopher Nolan has turned this great hero. I take this personally as a Greek. The great Odysseys, he's turned him into Matt Damon, like a Hollywood guy kind of apologizing for his masculinity. All masculinity is toxic. It leads to war. We need to be guilty because we went to war. And even the idea of like we've, you know, broken the sacred contract with the gods or whatever. That's complete nonsense. The gods in the pagan world, there is wicked as anybody. They're as prideful and awful. So this idea that he's done this terrible thing, it's, I mean, I guess the, all you can really say is it's made up.

He's, Chris Van Olin has kind of created a whole different. Everything is different. Yeah. So I actually have an interesting theory about why that. Might have been the case. Obviously, number one is he's trying to appeal to the sort of liberal, woke, sensitive audience. You have that. But the other thing that I found really interesting, and I wrote about this in my essay is that there's this translation. It's the Emily Wilson translation that Homer used, or sorry, not Homer, that Nolan used to adapt Homer. And Emily Wilson hates masculinity. She hates Odysseus. She's one of these sort of, you know, liberal feminist academics. I was reading her introduction to. her translation the other day, and she calls Odysseus a colonizer, a colonial invader. She calls him a soldier with a traumatic past. So already you have Emily Wilson's world.

You inserted into this translation. And I've been sort of trying to teach myself ancient Greek to do a little bit of analysis here. But I was looking at the passage where he describes his conquest at Troy. And this is, I have the Fagel's translation here. This is sort of the acclaimed translation from the 90s. And the difference between how Emily Wilson describes the conquest of Troy and the way that Vagal's described it is completely different. She downplays all the glory. She essentially paints the Trojan War as this sort of unnecessary bloodshed.

She inserts this sort of modern sensibility. And she calls the Trojan War kind of an act of dreadful violence, which is not really in Homer's text. at all. So already you have Emily Wilson's anti-war sensibilities inserted into the translation that Nolan read. So my theory... I'm just guessing that she's kind of like, you know, shoehorned a pro-Palestinian narrative into Homer. Yeah. That sounds like what she's talking about. I said that in my, in my review, actually, that it seems... Did you? I read the review and I didn't remember that, but maybe that's where I got it from. But it follows logically, right? Like, It's like, these are the good guys, these are the bad guys.

But how pathetic. I interviewed Emily Wilson on my radio program, whenever that came out eight years ago or something like that. And I, of course, didn't pick up on any of this. I was sloppy and just excited. There's a new translation of The Odyssey. I knew her dad's work, N.T. Wilson. And I thought, oh, this will be fun. But to hear you talk about this in your essay on your substack benzene poison, I'm amazed, really.

There's a level of intellectual dishonesty. I mean, it's a weird thing. If you want to interpret something or talk about it in a certain way, that's your prerogative. But it's wild to translate a work and to twist things in the translation. I find that, you know, crossing a line. Yeah. And, you know, I think she tells you in her introduction exactly what she's doing. So I think you do have to read the introduction to understand how she's sort of reinterpreting Odysseus.

Even in the very first line, you know, the very first line of a Greek epic is really, really important to kind of understanding the story and setting the story. and setting the story into motion. You have the first line, she translates this word polytropos as complicated. And polytropolis, other translators, have given sort of cunning or resourceful, and she just gives complicated. And she said in a guardian interview

that the reason she does this is because she doesn't think that Odysseus merits a positive description of himself right at the outset. So she's consciously coming in with these biases. she's toning down his heroism. Again, she takes cunning and she makes it into complicated, which again gives already Odysseus a little bit of a negative characterization right from the outset.

And I think that is the Odysseus that Nolan was going off of. And I sort of don't even want to blame Nolan because he had this very skewed translation of the text versus I think if he had read one of the older ones, maybe we would have gotten a different Odysseus on the big screen. If you're spending a quarter of a billion dollars, maybe you could read more than one translation, Christopher. I mean, really? You know, I mean, everyone in the academy right now is sort of talking about, you know, this Emily Wilson's Odyssey is the best new thing.

And, you know, my alma mater, Columbia, they have this, you know, great books course that they do every year. And, you know, they've been reading the Odyssey since essentially the 1920s. And they swapped out the translation they've always been using for Emily Wilson. So now they all read Emily Wilson. And so I think it's just the dominant translation that's now used in the academy and English-speaking context. And I think, you know, I'm sure Nolan had some sort of advisor from one of these universities who told them, you know. I was going to say, it's woke enough. It's woke enough for, you know, modern English departments, which is kind of saying a lot, isn't it?

Yep. Yep. Exactly. So it's, you know, at some, at a lot of points, she just inserts this kind of feminist sensibility. I mean, even the cover, you have three women on the cover, which, you know, which, you. you know, just tells you a little bit of what she's going to do with this particular text. And, you know, I'm no, I'm no ancient Greek expert by any means, but just from, you know, kind of studying for a couple of months, taking a look at different translations. I also took a look at Chapman's Homer, which is sort of the first full English translation that John Keats famously wrote about in another poem. And it's so filled with glory. The language is just over the top in terms of heroism. And I think that's such an important part of Greek culture, especially because, you know,

the Greeks were always wrestling with this idea of hubris, right, which is sort of pride taken to the extreme. And so many of their myths and stories center around the idea of hubris. And so you know that as a culture, they were very concerned with glory and heroism. And they were also asking the question of what happens when we take this value that we have as a society to, So I think that to completely erase that element from the film is just, it just creates a completely different world from the one that we know and love in The Odyssey. Well, Lisa, we have to have you back to continue this conversation, but also to talk about other works of literature. I'm just glad to introduce you to my audience and to get to know

you a little bit because yours is an important voice out there. So tell people how they can find you again. What's the easiest way for them to find you? Yeah, so I am at pens and poison. org, which is my substock, and I am biggest right now on Instagram. So you can find me at Pens and Poison on Instagram

where I post some video content. And also my website, which is lizalibes.com. And it's pronounced Lisa Lebes. That's right. See, now, how would anyone know that? unless you told them. Lisa Libes. That's

and you're a New Yorker. That's right. That's right. So we actually recently moved out of New York, but I still consider myself a New Yorker. Okay. But can you say what part of the world you're in these days? We just recently moved to Chicago, actually, but I do want to come back.

Well, we'll let you come back. We'll let you come back. But I'm just so glad that we got to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much. And to be continued, Lisa Libes. Thank you. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time.

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