Live From Mount Olympus (PodCast) - 2022-2024
Illustration: JAK (Season 4: Prometheus 2024)
This richly imagined audio drama is produced by the Onassis Foundation, co-produced by the Brooklyn theater ensemble The TEAM, and distributed by PRX. Peabody Award-winning showrunner Julie Burstein created the series, which is directed by Tony Award-winner Rachel Chavkin ("Lempika," "Hadestown"), Zhailon Levingston (“Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” "Chicken and Biscuits"), and Keenan Tyler Oliphant (“Hadestown,” “The Broken Ear Setlist”). Tony and Grammy winner André De Shields is Hermes, host of this “GodsPod” filled with tales of monsters, gods, and heroes.
Season 1:
“Perseus” (2021) presents the perilous quest of Perseus to save his mother from the clutches of an evil king. Over the course of his adventures, our young hero encounters terrifying monsters, powerful gods, and a brave girl who changes his life forever.
Season 2:
“Demeter and Persephone” (2022), the young goddess Persephone is eager to strike out on her own for the first time but is quickly pulled into the underworld and must find her power in the darkness. Her mother, Demeter, fights to bring her back to the sunlight, and nothing can grow. Can the Olympians stop fighting before humanity starves?
Young Persephone longs for the chance to do more than paint the flowers as she trails behind her mother, Demeter, the goddess who makes everything grow. When Persephone breaks free to join her friends Artemis and Athena for a picnic, she is suddenly stolen away to the underworld, full of powerful gods and misunderstood monsters. On her own for the first time, Persephone struggles to find her way in the world below. Demeter tears apart the world above to bring her daughter back to the sunlight, and nothing grows. And when nothing grows, humans starve. Will the gods resolve their conflicts so humanity can survive?
Season 3:
“Atalanta” (2023) brings to life the dramatic story of Atalanta, a girl raised by bears and taught by the goddesses Artemis and Athena. When Atalanta meets the greatest heroes in all of Greece, who are none too happy to hunt alongside a girl, she astonishes them all.
Ancient Greek myths tell tales of many heroes – but only one of them is female. Atalanta is abandoned at birth in the deep forest, where all expect her to perish. Instead, she’s adopted by a mama bear, who raises her as her own. As Atalanta grows, she knows she is loved but senses that she is different – she doesn’t look like her brother and sister, she runs on two legs faster than they can on four, she has no fur of her own. But if she’s not a bear, then what is she?
Artemis teaches the bear girl how to hunt, Athena teaches her the finer points of human society, and Atalanta becomes a skilled archer, ready for adventure. She joins the greatest heroes in Greece (who are furious about having a girl in their midst) to hunt a wild boar ravaging Calydon. Atalanta surprises them all.
Confronted by so many people who urge her to do what they want, Atalanta has to fight to forge her own path, and to figure out who she is and where she belongs.
Once upon a time, myths helped us understand how the world works and how we find our place within it. They still do.
Season 4:
You’d think being able to see the future would be a gift – but Prometheus’s visions are never completely clear, and he quickly learns that not everyone wants to see what lies ahead. When he glimpses a coming war that will threaten the whole world, Prometheus knows he must forge an unlikely alliance with the young Olympian Zeus. But their friendship is tested when they find they have very different ideas about how to restore a shattered world.
“Prometheus” (2024), we follow the journey of the young Titan Prometheus, who can see the future, though his visions are never completely clear. When he glimpses a coming war that threatens the whole world, Prometheus knows he must forge an unlikely alliance with the young Olympian Zeus. However, their friendship is tested when they find they have very different ideas about how to restore a shattered world.