Homer’s Odyssey, a 12,000-line, nearly 3,000-year-old epic poem, is one of the foundational texts of Western literature. (It’s also one of the oldest surviving sequels!)
It has inspired a list of movies as varied as Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.
But there haven’t been very many straight screen adaptations of its full story.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is just the second full-length feature film adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey ever made. It is 173 minutes long. It reportedly cost $250 million to make. And it is currently the No. 1 movie in the world, having grossed $666.7 million in just 12 days in theaters.
This hour, rock star classicist and translator Emily Wilson joins us to talk Homer, Nolan, and everything in between.
Plus: We impanel a full Nose to parse and dissect the movie as only the Nose can.
GUESTS:
- James Hanley: Co-founder of Cinestudio at Trinity College
- Shawn Murray: A stand-up comedian, writer, and the host of the Fantasy Filmball podcast
- Irene Papoulis: Taught writing for a long time at Trinity College
- Emily Wilson: A classicist who has published verse translations of Homer, Seneca, Sophocles, and Euripides; her new book, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature, is out in September, 2026, in the United States
- Bill Yousman: Professor of media studies at Sacred Heart University
Music featured (in order):
- Disco Ulysses – Vulfpeck
- Tales of Brave Ulysses – Cream
- Take the Long Way Home – Supertramp
- Zeus’s Law – Ludwig Göransson
- Ithaca – Ludwig Göransson
- When I’m Home – James Blake, Travis Scott, Ludwig Göransson
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Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.
