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[Host]: So, what I'm hearing is we're going to get an ancient Greek translation of from the New York Times. [laughter] This is the daily on Sunday, and we're going to read it. And Natalie, do you want to say ky with us?

[Natalie]: Okay.

[Host]: All right.

[Host]: One, two, three. [laughter]

[Natalie]: Should we do it again?

[Host]: Yeah. Okay. You did more. You did more of like a ket. So, should I get Okay, I'm going to do that.

[Natalie]: Okay. I will say hello and then you say your line. [laughter]

[Host]: All right, I will.

[Natalie]: Greetings. [music]

[Natalie]: This is the daily speech of the gray lady. I'm Natalie [music] Kitroof. The news from the city of five burrows on the day of Helas, the sun god.

[Host]: I was trying to sound like a news like you know I like that.

[Host]: I was trying to match Natalie's [music]

[Natalie]: Yes. [laughter]

[Natalie]: [music] Christopher Nolan's new movie, The Odyssey, is coming out in theaters this [music] Friday, and it's going to be a big cinematic event. In fact, it already is a big event. [music] Nolan's version of Homer's 30,000-year-old epic tale is generating a ton [music] of excitement, much spirited discussion, and somehow, before it's even been released, backlash. So today, [music] to prepare us all for this upcoming spectacle, I talk with two people who've produced [music] critically acclaimed and widely read interpretations of the Odyssey. Emily Wilson, who translated the Odyssey and is the very first woman to [music] do so, and Maline Miller, author of Cersei and Song of Achilles, two best-selling novels inspired by Homer's poems. It's [music] Sunday, July 12th. Emily, Meline, hello.

[Emily]: Hello.

[Meline]: Hello.

[Natalie]: I am so happy to have you both here.

[Emily]: Happy to be here.

[Meline]: Yes, definitely.

[Natalie]: This is going to be like the most exciting thing I do for a very long time. It is really [laughter] making me love my job that we get to do this together. So, we have you both gathered here in order to talk about something that really fascinates me, has fascinated me for a long time, which is the Odyssey. And we want to prepare people for this movie in a way that I think only the two of you can. But first, for people who may not remember the plot of the Odyssey, I am going to attempt a quick recap. The very very short version is that it's the story of a man, Odysseus, who is trying to get home. He fought in the Trojan War for 10 years and then he spends 10 years working his way across the beautiful but also very scary Mediterranean Sea in order to get to the island of Ithaca which he is the king of and where his wife Penelope and son Telemachus are waiting for him. It is all very dramatic because there are a bunch of suitors trying to get Penelope to betray Odysseus and marry one of them. And it is famously extremely difficult for him to actually get there to get to Ithaca. There is sex and murder along the way. There are fantastical creatures, vengeful gods, helpful gods, awesome gods. The whole point of it is that he is really smart and really resourceful and he gets home eventually, not because he's the strongest dude in the world and really good at war, but because he essentially outsmarts his enemies. Emily, I hope I did an okay job with that. very subconscious doing it in front of you. [laughter]

[Natalie]: What was it about that story that first got you that hooked you?

[Emily]: So going back to childhood, I mean my first exposure to a version of that story was when as as for many people was when I was a little kid and I got to be in a school play. I got to play Athena. I thought this is such an exciting story about goddesses and I and there were these kickass goddesses. Who doesn't love stories with gods, with giants, with the possibility of being eaten alive? That's exciting. And these questions about whether forces that are more powerful than you might be plotting and you're in the midst of these mysterious plots and you don't know where you are in the world. That to me very much resonates with the experience of childhood. And then once I was older, I got to learn Greek and Homering Greek sounds fantastic. And that also hooked me in a whole new way to how it sounds on the level of the line, the passage, the voice, the speech and the rhythms of the language. And also I was hooked on just how fascinatingly complex this the storytelling techniques of this the ostensibly very simple story are and how psychologically deep and subtle it is. That it's not just a kids adventure story. It also has so much to say about these really deep questions about grief and rage and loss and whether full recovery or going back in time is ever possible.

[Natalie]: What about you, Meline? What is your Odyssey origin story? How did you get sucked into this weird amazing world?

[Meline]: Well, my mother, who was an English major and a librarian and also loved mythology, started reading me little pieces of the Iliad and the Odyssey as bedtime stories when I was pretty young. and I fell in love with it. I wanted more and more. In particular, the thing that really grabbed me was actually Penelopey's trick. That was one of the pieces of the story that as a kid I remember loving because her trick is that the suitors are trying to kind of force her to choose one of them to marry. She's waiting for Odysseus to come home. And so she tells them, "Okay, I'll choose after I finish weaving this shroud." And then, you know, she weaves it. And then at night, she goes and unravels it. And then she weaves it and unravels it. And it's such a great trick on so many levels. It's so smart, but also she knows that they have no idea how long it takes to weave a shroud. And so it's like a great trick that like really reveals sort of the gender roles of the time as well,

[Emily]: right? These men have absolutely [laughter] no idea what shroud making entails.

[Meline]: Yeah.

[Natalie]: So I love that not only is this about a very clever and ingenious man, it's also about a very clever and ingenious woman who's his his match in every way.

[Natalie]: Okay, Emily, I want to ask about the project of translating the Odyssey because obviously we credit Homer with this story, but we know that this is something that was told over many generations. It was an oral tradition refined and shaped by different tellers, these bards. Homer kind of did the original interpretation in a way. And since then, in the modern era, there have been many translations into English. So, why did you decide to translate it again? And what was the opportunity that you saw here to do something that hadn't been done before?

[Emily]: I felt so grateful to get to spend, you know, these many, many years working on the Odyssey. It was just so fun. The opportunity I saw was partly about trying to activate elements of the original in contemporary English that I felt were not fully activated in the many translations that I tried using with my students. And one of the big elements that I felt wasn't fully activated was the meter. The fact that the original isn't just a story, it's a poem. It has rhythm. It's designed for oral performance. And so it seemed to me that I needed to use traditional poetic form. the the meter of Shakespeare and Milton in order to activate for an English listener or English reader some elements of what did Homer sound like to a fluent listener of the original.

[Natalie]: Just to be clear when you're talking about the meter, what you did with this is write it in amic pentameter and it sounds like you're saying that that rhythm, that pace was crucial to the original text and you didn't read it represented in these other translations. And I just it's so bananas that you did that. It sounds so hard. You also kept it the same number of lines as the original Homer. It just sounds very very difficult. like extremely hard. Did it take you as long as Odysseus to like get that? [laughter]

[Emily]: I could easily have used 20 years. If the if the publisher said, "Let me have 20 years," I would have used every second of it. [laughter] Yes, absolutely. Um, so the original is composed in the meter that was common traditional for epic verse in archaic Greece, which is dactilic hexameter.

[Natalie]: Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, by the way.

[Emily]: and it has that rhythm all the way through. So it has this traditional meter. I'm not the first translator to use pentameter in English, but I'm very rare in doing that in the in the in the modern era. It's something that earlier translators, early modern translators assumed that of course meter needs to be translated into meter. Whereas in the modern era, there's been this assumption that modern readers can't tolerate rhythm, which I think is false. I think modern readers can totally tolerate rhythm and in fact love it.

[Natalie]: Can you just read a little from your translation to give us a sense of that?

[Emily]: Sure. So I can read from the episode in which Adysius and his men have to pass through the street between two terrible goddesses. One of whom is a whirlpool who threatens to swallow their whole ship. And the other is a six do-headed deity who will eat up six of the men from every ship that passes by depending on which which side the ship veers towards. So we rode through the narrow straight in tears. on one side on the other shining caribdis with a dreadful gurgling noise sucked down the water. When she spewed it out, she seethed all churning like a boiling cauldron on a huge fire. The froth flew high to spatter the topmost rocks on either side. But when she swallowed back the sea, she seemed all stirred from inside, and the rock around was roaring dreadfully, and the dark blue sand below was visible. The men were seized by fear.

[Natalie]: That is amazing. I truly felt it in my heart. Meline, I assume you did, too, listening to that. I'm wondering what you thought when you first read this translation by Emily. Did it feel different to you?

[Meline]: Absolutely. I mean, I loved it. The moment that I really knew what an extraordinary piece of text this was is Kuribdus and Skila, and I remember being like, is he going to make it? And [laughter] you know, here's like I've spent years, decades of my life studying this poem. I know he makes it, [laughter]

[Meline]: but you know, I was so in the scene because of what Emily Wilson had done with with the text and with the excitement of the story that I, you know, I felt like I saw it again with new eyes. So, that is such a gift and I I love that. I feel the same way.

[Natalie]: Meline, let's talk about your work. You are a classics teacher turned novelist. She's written a number of brilliant books and short stories, including Cersei, my personal favorite, which is about one of the goddesses that Odysius encounters on his way home. She is the goddess of sorcery. And again, quick recap here, forgive me. Basically, she turns all of his men into pigs. He spends a year with her as her lover, and eventually everything gets resolved, and Odysius moves on. Overall, Cersei is a relatively minor character in the Odyssey, but clearly she's someone that you felt strongly enough about to base an entire book on. Why is that? Like, what was it about her that you were so drawn to?

[Meline]: Yes. So, one of the things that is so interesting is sort of the later versions of Cersei have really tended in a very negative direction. They've seen her as sort of the manhater and the fem fatal and, you know, the spider at the center of her web. But in the Odyssey, if you actually go back to the Odyssey, yes, she does turn Odicius's men into pigs. But she also after she and Odysius come to an understanding, invites them to stay on her island as long as they need to stay. She, you know, helps them recover from the trauma that they've been going through. She offers them a place of peace and a haven. And then when they do decide to go, she doesn't hold them at all. She says,

[Meline]: "Yes, if you must go, go." and even before they leave, she maps out their journey for them. She tells them they have to go to the underworld, tells them how to get there. When they come back from the underworld, she brings them food and warns them about the Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis. She is really the primary helper for Odysseus getting home. But at the same time, the description of her is full of paradox. She is described as speaking with human voice. That's so weird, right? She is a god, but she speaks with a human voice. This got me thinking about her isolation, rejected by the gods, feared by humans for her power, and yet the only god who speaks with a human voice, suggesting a kind of loneliness and desire for connection. That's why I was drawn to her.

[Natalie]: Okay, this is making me think of a question that is actually for both of you. But Emily, I want to ask you first. When you set about doing this translation, did you pay special attention to re-evaluating these female characters? Because in some past translations, they were depicted in very stereotypical ways, or limited by the perspective of male translators.

[Emily]: Yeah.

[Emily]: Um I mean I felt that as I already said the meter of the of the poem seemed essential to me and also the multivocality seemed essential to me. Um, then the way female characters have been labeled in the past. For instance, the enslaved women, who in past translations were often called "whores" or "sluts", whereas in Homer's Greek they are just referred to as "maids" or "girls" (dmoiai). The introduction of these derogatory terms is entirely the moral projection of later translators. I wanted my translation to restore the reality of the Greek text without the moralizing lens of Victorian or modern translators. Like the presentation of Penelope, she is not just a loyal waiting woman, she has complex psychological struggles, her skepticism, her resilience, which should not be obscured.

[Meline]: I agree with Emily. Reimagining female characters is not "tampering" with the original, but trying to see what was already there, stripping away the accumulated gender bias of later eras. For instance in Circe, everything I did was based on clues provided by Homer. This is really about the truth of literary creation.

[Emily]: is how true and sort of fully fleshed the vision that the writer has is. I love writing close to the text personally, but I also like overturning it and arguing with it.

[Natalie]: What what what did it mean for you to speak like a human?

[Meline]: Well, for me, I started thinking about first what it meant to speak like a god, which is that in the ancient stories when gods speak to humans, often times their voices are booming, full of authority, or carry a sort of otherworldly detachment. And human speech is emotional, limited, trembling, carrying the awareness of mortality and the desire for connection. Circe, though a god, has a voice like a human, which means she can feel human pain, she can talk with Odysseus not just as a superior god, but as someone who understands the mortal condition.

[Host]: Yes, [laughter] I got to get rid of that.

[Natalie]: I wonder how you engage with people who in good faith say and feel that you stray too far from the words and the meaning of the text in home.

[Emily]: I mean, honestly, I would dispute the idea that these that the misogynistic trolls or the trolls of various kinds are actually obsessed with the Odyssey.

[Emily]: That's all that's never what happens, right? It's all just online performativity, about modern notions about masculinity and greatness and and actually what

[Natalie]: Okay. If we set aside the not obsessives, what about the people like what do you say to the people who do read the text, who do care about it and take issue?

[Emily]: I think it's quite odd even I mean even with the less truly kind of people I think it's quite odd to think that one book or what one translation erases the other.

[Emily]: In a way, it's it's like, you know, wanting there to be only one production of King Lear ever and that's it. No other productions, no other ideas, you know

[Meline]: which is great. Yes. No need to get angry about it. [laughter] It's fine. Glad I'm happy for you that you had that. So from the outside, I think something

[Emily]: Yes. And I I think it's incredibly exciting to read and I I always find it a magical moment when I read an ancient text and I see a piece of of myself there.

[Chris Wood]: Hi there, I'm Chris Wood, audio [music] engineer on the daily. That means that I put the finishing touches on the show, make everything sound a little bit

[Chris Wood]: [music] The Daily is only possible because it involves people all over the world and that [music] includes the whole fleet of New York Times journalists who give

[Natalie]: Maline, what about the complexity of his duality? You know, he's the smartest guy in the room, but he's also the most ruthless. He's murderous and he's a conspirator. You know, your depiction of Odicius in this story and Cersei really leans into the idea that he's a shifty, shady guy. He comes across in that novel as a pretty dangerous and untrustworthy person.

[Meline]: I think he's very complicated. And I I think that, you know, the Odyssey is just one view of him and it's sort of his epic. So he gets to take centerstage, showing his heroic side. But if we look at him from other people's perspectives, like those he deceived, or gods like Circe who are independent of him, those qualities of his - ruthlessness, being full of lies, extreme selfishness - become very striking. He's a guy who can spin a whole web of lies right to your face without blinking.

[Natalie]: And you're like, "We know what you're talking [laughter] about."

[Meline]: Right. So, you're talking too as well, right? Because he's saying it right to his face.

[Emily]: Exactly. That kind of guy, [laughter]

[Meline]: right? [gasps] And so I love I love that tension where you know it can be really you can be get out of some really tough situations if you're a a you know

[Emily]: But none of the heroes are good people. That's not the point of hero. Right.

[Meline]: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. The ancient idea of hero and modern idea are very different.

[Emily]: Very different. [laughter] Yes. But he's so much fun to write as as a character. And I got to write him both ways. I got to write him from the perspective

[Meline]: Super [laughter] fun. Yes.

[Emily]: Yes.

[Natalie]: Okay. So now I want to move on to his wife Penelope [snorts] who's going to be played by Anne Hathaway in the movie. Maline, you've said that Penelope is

[Meline]: I mean, I would even say maybe she surp She's the one who puts sets the final test. I don't Is it okay to do spoilers? I don't know.

[Natalie]: You can do spoilers. [laughter] We're allowing spoilers for texts that are 3,000 years old.

[Meline]: Okay, great. Awesome. So uh at the very end she as she is sort of making extra sure that this is really Odysius and she's not getting conned there's this

[Meline]: it's this incredible moment where even then, even though there's been all this proof and all these moments that she still is, you know, she's like him. She

[Natalie]: Talk about that, Emily.

[Emily]: Yeah. So, I mean, I think Meline's absolutely right, though, I think we do get some insight into what does it feel like to be Penelopey. For instance, in book 19 she tells this stranger, who is Odysseus in disguise, about her dream where an eagle comes and kills her twenty geese. The dream clearly suggests that Odysseus is going to return and kill the suitors. But what's not explained is why is she crying inside the dream for the geese. This hints at her complex psychology: maybe in some way, the presence of the suitors was a way to stave off her loneliness. And when Odysseus says it's easy to understand this dream, Odysseus is going to come back soon. [snorts] She says in that famous second speech, the gates of dreams are two: one of ivory, and one of horn. The horn dreams are true, but ivory ones are false. This shows her deep skepticism and intellectual autonomy.

[Meline]: And that was part of what I it was really fun to get to do. And this is, you know, what a novel can do because Penelopey shows up in my novel. to get to have her inner life, to show she's not just a domestic ornament, but has her own wisdom and strength.

[Natalie]: Mhm. Okay, let's do a quicker 101 on their son, Tmicus. I have to confess, he is not my favorite character in this book. He's played by Tom Holland in the movie.

[Emily]: I also Natalie struggled to connect with Tmicus. [laughter] Um in in the poem the first the first four books are devoted to showing how helpless and overwhelmed he is.

[Natalie]: I was worried I was alone and

[Emily]: you're definitely see that in students all the time. Yes.

[Emily]: Yes. And I think you know now now I have but I think that what what helped me connect with him was was sort of two things. One of which is me bringing my perspective as a mother. How do you grow up to be a man when your father is this mythic giant of Odysseus? The first four books are really devoted to how difficult his experience is.

[Emily]: He's an only child, right?

[Meline]: He's an only child. And as somebody with both no brothers and no father, all he has is the suitors of his mom who are bullying him all the time. He has no male role models until Athena comes disguised as Mentor. It is actually a very touching story about growing up in the shadow of an absent father.

[Natalie]: Right. Right. Okay, let's do a lightning round on Athena and other gods that we need to know about. What do we need to know about Athena played by Zenia (Zendaya) in this movie?

[Emily]: right? And of course, diehard, you know, pro-Greek anti-Trojan. She's been on the Greek side the whole way. And so, this is, you know, her favorite coming home journey.

[Emily]: Another god that we should cite is Poseidon, who's in the Odyssey, it's it's Athena versus Poseidon. It's the the goddess who builds ships versus the god of the wild sea who wants to destroy ships. Odysseus blinded Poseidon's cyclops son Polyphemus, so Poseidon cursed him to prevent him from getting home.

[Natalie]: And that curse is a big part of why everything is so terrible for him all the time.

[Emily]: Exactly. [music] All right, with that, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about how you both feel about this movie. We'll be right back.

[Natalie]: So, this movie comes out Friday, meaning you both will very soon be able to see this text that you have treasured for so long, get probably its biggest theatrical treatment yet. How are you feeling? Are you excited, anxious?

[Emily]: I'm pumped. I think it's going to be exciting. I mean, it's going to be exciting that so many people who may have thought, oh, ancient literature is boring, will now engage with it through Nolan's movie. It will bring it to life.

[Meline]: Right. You know, as a teacher, I love the idea that people are going to be hotly debating whether or not, you know, Odysius should have been this way or that way, or if he's a good guy.

[Natalie]: I want to do a quick poll from the experts here. How did you guys feel about the casting that we know about in this movie? Like, you have to have had some thoughts about who's playing Odysseus.

[Emily]: I mean, I don't think he was Christopher Nolan's first pick. He wouldn't have been my first pick, but [laughter] I I think he'll do a great job. He if he can bring out that complexity of the character.

[Natalie]: There you go. And Meline, what do you think of the other castings?

[Meline]: I'm just excited. I mean, these are all incredibly talented actors that that have been gathered here. So, I just, you know, I'm excited to see what they do.

[Natalie]: Okay. Amidst all the anticipation of this movie, there has also been some criticism already of the casting choices that's already happened. The costumes, the controversy.

[Emily]: And starting with the ancients, I mean there were as soon as these poems existed, they really coalesced from multiple different versions likely or different retellings.

[Meline]: Yes, people reacting to them. Right.

[Emily]: Absolutely. And lampooning them, right? And making them ridiculous.

[Meline]: The gods look look bad in this poem. We shouldn't be performing [laughter] that one.

[Natalie]: Maybe maybe the critics are also part of a long lineage.

[Emily]: Maybe they're part of a long lineage. Exactly.

[Meline]: Of course. Of course. Part of the tradition of retelling and adaptation is that you are trying to make the story stand on its own in a new way. And so, you know, the question is not is it faithful in X way and Y way. It's that does it does it sit as a whole and move you? You know, does it does it mean something?

[Natalie]: Okay. I want to ask a sensitive question here. Do you two have any worries about this Hollywood version of the story as two people who know it so well? Are there nuances you feel worried may not be captured? Are you kind of anxious that Nolan might mess it up?

[Emily]: Uh, you can't hurt Homer.

[Meline]: You can't hurt. [laughter] Totally. Yes.

[Emily]: Homer's invulnerable. Yeah. Exactly.

[Natalie]: [laughter]

[Emily]: It's fine. Whatever. I mean, whatever things Nolan does that might be different from what either of us would do if we had the IMAX camera, that's that's fine. That's his right to do that. Um, I mean, I I have questions about how is Nolan going to center the story in ways that might be very different from what the poem is is doing. But I also in some ways look forward to that because I think that's going to be so generative to think about and discuss with students.

[Natalie]: But say what you mean by that specifically.

[Emily]: So, for instance, I mean, I think it's very likely that um that this is going to be presented as the story of a husband who's very much in love and is returning to his soulmate as opposed to here's a hero who's generating glory for himself through this quest. I also think it's from the casting that we've seen so far, we haven't been told anything about a actor playing Eurycleia (Yora), the enslaved elderly nursemaid who who famously washes Adysius's leg and recognizes the scar on his leg because of course the enslaved women in the household know the bodies of their enslavers in ways that even his wife doesn't know his body on that level. She Eurycleia has been taking care of him ever since he was a little baby.

[Natalie]: She

[Meline]: So when he comes home, she recognizes him.

[Emily]: She recognizes him when when she's washing his feet as a gesture of hospitality. She's washing the feet and reaches up the leg and recognizes the scar that he got when he was hunting on his first trip.

[Natalie]: I think that's an amazing sequence and she's an amazing character. Um, I think it would be a shame if the norms of Hollywood meant an older woman actor isn't going to get a part in that, you know, to to play Eurycleia. I also wonder about the degree to which the the whole apparatus of the enslaved members of the household. Will that be fully fleshed out in the land version or will it just be

[Emily]: maybe one enslaved character? I think Eumaeus (umis) has been announced but maybe there won't be as much richness in terms of the social world of the enslaved members of the household as there is in the original poem. What would be lost for for you if that wasn't explored in depth the the role of all of the people that are enslaved and serve these elite members of society. I think it's it's crucial in the original in terms of what does the poem say about um nostos about homecoming and about the fact that it's such an exclusive privilege to get to have a homecoming journey and to have a house at all. Um the swine herd says if only my owner would come back because he he might one day give me a house of my own. And that we have this really clear sense that the enslaved members of the household don't actually want to belong to someone else's house. They want a house of their own, but they don't get a homecoming journey because they belong to someone else's homecoming journey. And of course, his journey is not glorious and his house is not glorious unless it's full of people who haven't chosen to be there.

[Natalie]: And Meline, what about your beloved Cersei? Are you going to be [laughter] watching those scenes with great apprehension?

[Meline]: No. I mean, anytime I'm watching an adaptation of the Odyssey, I want more of the women. Calypso [clears throat] gets to have her monologue and, you know, she kind of gets to put a little bit more of her perspective out there, but so many of the women are just kept as as these sort of mysterious figures who come in and help or obstruct and that's just how they function in the Odyssey. So, I'm just going to be yearning for more of their stories, [laughter] as I always do.

[Natalie]: You know that. You You already know it.

[Meline]: I'm I'm at peace. I'm at peace.

[Natalie]: Yeah, [laughter] you're resigned to it.

[Natalie]: Okay. I want to end by asking what you're hoping that people take away from experiencing this movie. Like, is there a moment or a line or a lesson in it that you think applies uniquely to the world that we're living in now and that if you could do it yourself, you would leave people with if this was your movie?

[Emily]: I mean, I think one of the big themes of the Odyssey that very much resonates with our time is the importance of welcoming the stranger into your house, right? I mean, that the whole poem is about hospitality and about the fact that the suitors of Adysius have abused his hospitality by going into his house and hitting on his wife without without being invited to do so. um is all about the violations of hospitality and then the dangers of what happens when hospitality is violated and when when people don't recognize that the poor and strangers are blessed by Zeus.

[Natalie]: I loved that

[Meline]: yes

[Natalie]: part of your translation and I also got that honestly Meline from reading your work just this idea that you have to be a good host. I say this not just as a podcast host, but as a human being. This idea that when somebody shows up at your door, you know, you should offer them what you have and listen to them.

[Meline]: That just felt um like a kind of wonderful thing to keep in mind always.

[Emily]: Yes.

[Meline]: Yes. Because and you know the other half of that is because you don't know when it's going to be you. You know that that we all need to do this. This is sort of this ex great exchange that we all have to take part in.

[Emily]: Yes. No one belongs everywhere, right? And the poem really teaches you that.

[Meline]: Yeah. [music]

[Natalie]: Well, I want to thank you both for coming on the show, Emily and Meline. It has been a true pleasure. [music]

[Emily]: It was a great pleasure for me. Thank you so much. It's always nice to talk to you, Meline.

[Meline]: Yes. It's always great to speak with you and thank you so much for having us. You were a great host. Thank you. I hope I hope we were okay biting guests because in fact you were wonderful guests.

[Natalie]: You were not suitors. You were wonderful [laughter] guest.

[Meline]: Okay, good. [music]

[Natalie]: Today's episode was produced by Luke Vanderplug with help from Tina Antilini. [music] It was edited by Wendy Door with help from Paige Cowat and engineered by Sophia Lanman. Production assistance [music] and fact-checking by Dalia Hadad. It contains music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Rowan Neimisto, and Alicia [music] Baup. Special thanks to Amy Pearl. That's it for the daily hide. [music] I'm Natalie Kitroof. See you tomorrow.

[Narrator]: [music] Say hello to a new kind of AI assistant. With Alexa Plus, staying informed is just the start. It tracks prices and alerts you when they drop, helps you plan around your actual schedule and budget, and remembers what you've told it, so every conversation picks up where the last one left off, no matter where you're chatting. For people who like to stay ahead, it's the assistant that keeps up. Free with Prime.