The Odyssey is a 2026 epic action fantasy film written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Produced by Nolan and his wife Emma Thomas, it is an adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek epic poem Odyssey. Its ensemble cast includes Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Samantha Morton, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron. In the film, Odysseus (Damon), the Greek king of Ithaca, undergoes a long and perilous journey home after the Trojan War and encounters mythical beings as he attempts to reunite with his wife Penelope (Hathaway). Nolan began writing the script in March 2024 and secured the project by October.
This free event includes open mic, which means participants can also recite.
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Poetry is like a pulse running through history, shaping revolutions, kindling love, and exposing the rawest human truths. Some poets whispered change; others roared it. These poets and their verses outlived empires as their voices refused to fade. Find out the minds behind the world’s most enduring poetry.
Few figures loom as large as Homer. His epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, laid the foundation of Western literature. These [epic] war stories, fate, and heroism influenced countless works, from Shakespeare to Hollywood. Though his life remains a mystery, his words have echoed for nearly three millennia....
ODYSSEY
The Goddess Athena, Greece
Then the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, answered him: “Therefore of a truth will I frankly tell thee all. [180] I declare that I am Mentes, the son of wise Anchialus, and I am lord over the oar-loving Taphians. And now have I put in here, as thou seest, with ship and crew, while sailing over the wine-dark sea to men of strange speech, on my way to Temese for copper; and I bear with me shining iron. [185] My ship lies yonder beside the fields away from the city, in the harbor of Rheithron, under woody Neion. Friends of one another do we declare ourselves to be, even as our fathers were, friends from of old. Nay, if thou wilt, go and ask the old warrior Laertes, who, they say, [190] comes no more to the city, but afar in the fields suffers woes attended by an aged woman as his handmaid...” Homer, Odyssey, Book 1, Line 178
Eight centuries later, Rumi’s words still enchant hearts worldwide. A mystic, poet, and philosopher, his poems—especially "Masnavi"—explore love in its divine and human forms. His poetry, full of longing and ecstasy, speaks across cultures and religions. He is also one of the most widely read poets today....
MASNAVI
Can translations capture Rumi?
At the hour of the morning-drink a beloved said to her lover by way of trial, “O such-and-such son of such-and-such, I wonder, do you love me or yourself more? Tell the truth, O man of sorrows.”
He replied, “I have become so naughted in thee that I am full of thee from head to foot. Of my existence there is nothing (left) in me but the name: in my being there is naught but thee, O thou whose wishes are gratified. By that means I have become thus naughted, like vinegar, in thee (who are) an ocean of honey.”
Filled with sunniness?
As the stone that is entirely turned into pure ruby: it is filled with the qualities of the sun. That stony nature does not remain in it: back and front, it is filled with sunniness
Afterwards, if it love itself, that (self-love) is love of the sun, O youth; And if it love the sun with (all) its soul, ‘tis undoubtedly love of itself. Whether the pure ruby loves itself or whether it loves the sun, There is really no difference in these two loves: both sides (aspects) are naught but the radiance of the sunrise. Until it (the stone) has become a ruby, it is an enemy to itself, because... Masnavi of Rumi
Shakespeare (The Bard)
Shakespeare’s mastery of language reshaped literature forever. His sonnets brim with passion, despair, wit, and unrelenting curiosity left a lasting mark. As the most quoted writer in history, his influence extends beyond poetry—his storytelling also shaped modern drama. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and others have immortalized his name. More
SONNET 130
Willy, I'm not that hot.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
Poetry in the Afternoon (Third Thursdays) at the SPARC Centre Gallery, featuring South Pasadena Poet Laureate and popular YA (young adult) author Ron Koertge as well as Peace Activist Mandy Kahn (prs org). There is also an OPEN MIC for participants to sign up to perform. Subject matter is open but will cover the sensitive subject of sex. Free. Refreshments served, part of the Fremont Playhouse, rear gallery. RSVP:
How 'The Simpsons' animation evolved over 30 years
(Insider) On May 23, 2021, the 32nd season finale of The Simpsons aired on Fox TV, finishing off a landmark season where the show celebrated its 700th episode. The series has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a segment on The Tracey Ullman Show. On air for 32 years by 2021 and still counting, it's become the longest-running scripted series on prime time, the longest-running American animated series, and the longest-running American sitcom.
Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart, and Maggie have evolved a lot over the course of three decades — in the style, movement, and details in character designs, all the way down to pupil size.
This episode of "Movies Insider" turns to David Silverman and Al Jean, two of the main minds behind the show since Day 1, to find out how the show's animation evolved from the rough-around-the-edges style of cartoonist Matt Groening's early sketches to the crisp, clean look of the show in its 32nd season. #TheSimpsons #Animation #MoviesInsider
Bart's Birthday Party (The SimpsonsSeries Finale)
(Scrooge200) A fake Simpsons series finale involves everyone in Springfield moving on, but Bart is hesitant to change it. Featuring John Cena and Danny Devito. From the Season 36 premiere, "Bart's Birthday."
The Simpsons drops surprise series finale
(Johnny 2 Cellos) For the Season 36 premiere, The Simpsons has done something unprecedented. They aired a surprise series (not season) finale. Well, sort of.
As somebody who grew up obsessed with The Simpsons, it’s cool to say that the show is going through something of a renaissance. Since Matt Selman took over as showrunner in Season 33, the show (created by Mat Groening) has started to feel fresher like it has a renewed energy.
But I think beyond that, the thing that’s really made me excited about the show again is the ways it’s been willing to experiment. And tonight’s premiere, "Bart’s Birthday," is the perfect example of that new energy.
The Simpsons is bringing something fresh to the table, embracing the show’s obscenely long and storied history to throw itself a premature series finale event. It’s one that celebrates The Simpsons in a way that an actual series finale would never be able to. So let’s talk about The Simpsons season premiere/series finale.
Edited by Joe Murphy @nazchoz798. Music:
Johnny 2 Cellos. Theme Music - Norman Marston
Johnny 2 Cellos Theme Remix- @BlackTyeChi. Video Used:
The Simpsons (1989-2024).
Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted.
"Fair Use" guidelines: copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Insider (review), May 22, 2021; Matt Groening's The Simpsons (Fox TV) via Scrooge 200; Johnny 2 Cellos, Sept. 30, 2024; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly
Special: The Odyssey and The Iliad, why these epic verses still matter today
GUEST: Author and translator Emily Wilson is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance and Early Modern Scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow.
In addition to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, she has also translated and published Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca.
The Epic Verses Pack $320
contains:
The Iliad (new translation by Emily Wilson) and
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation [not to be confused with the Rubber Yacht of Jaimie Cohen] from the Persian by Juan Cole.
The Iliad (new translation) is an epic Greek poem that recounts the ten-year Trojan War and explores themes of pride, honor, and the human condition.
Prof. Wilson’s Iliad gives readers a complete Homer for our generation and the first ever English translation by a woman.
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation from the Persian is a manuscript of Persian verses attributed to Omar Khayyam, a 12th-century Persian mathematician and philosopher.
The famous book contains pithy observations on complex subjects such as love, death, and the existence of God and an afterlife.
📜 Explore the profound transformation of an ancient deity into the God we know today in How Yahweh Became God.
Join MythVision on an intellectual journey led by renowned biblical scholar and archeologist, Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Ph.D.
🔍This captivating YouTube documentary delves deeply into the groundbreaking research and lifelong dedication of Dr. Stavrakopoulou. With expertise and passion, she unravels the mysteries of religious evolution and the divine transformation of Yahweh.
📚 From dusty archeological sites to sacred texts and ancient inscriptions, Dr. Stavrakopoulou's work illuminates the evolution of Yahweh from a regional tribal deity to the central figure of monotheism.
🌍 But this documentary goes beyond historical exploration; it's a window into the intersection of faith, culture, and human history. Dr. Stavrakopoulou's fearless pursuit of truth challenges our understanding of the divine and reshapes the narrative of our spiritual heritage.
🎓As an esteemed educator [and atheist], she has inspired countless minds, fostering a new generation of critical thinkers who question conventional wisdom and seek a deeper understanding of our shared religious legacy.
🌟 Join this enlightening journey that celebrates the life and groundbreaking contributions of Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou.
Subscribe and hit the notification bell to embark on this intellectual odyssey.
🔗 Stay connected with updates on the release date of How Yahweh Became God: The Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou Story.
Prepare to be inspired and enlightened to explore the mysteries of religious evolution through the eyes of a true pioneer in the world of biblical scholarship.
📌Catch this thought-provoking documentary that will change the way history, faith, and the divine are viewed in the West to uncover the extraordinary story of "How Yahweh Became God."
Inescapable evidence the Gospels used Homer [Ancient Greek literature] to create their Bible narratives - Dr. Dennis R. MacDonald
(MythVision Podcast) Oct. 13, 2021: There is "inescapable" evidence the Christian Gospels used Homer to create their narratives, claims Dr. Dennis R. MacDonald. The gospel authors used the Eurycleia of Ithaca narrative of recognizing her master to tell about a woman anointing Jesus' feet with oil. Edited by @drkippdavis.
Bart Ehrman, a New York Times best-selling historian of early Christianity, takes on two of the most gripping questions of human existence: Where did the ideas of "heaven" and "hell" come from, and why do they endure?
What happens when we die? A recent Pew Research poll showed 72 percent of Americans believe in a literal heaven, 58 percent in a literal hell.
Most people who hold these beliefs are Christians who ASSUME they are age-old teachings of the Bible.
But eternal rewards and eternal punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament (the pre-Roman Empire version of the Bible) and are not what Jesus or his disciples taught.
Sacred Jewish lit based on older Sumerian texts
So where did the ideas come from? In clear and compelling terms, Prof. Bart Ehrman recounts the long history of the afterlife, ranging from the pre-JewishSumerianEpic of Gilgamesh up to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers.
Ehrman discusses ancient guided tours of heaven and hell, in which a living person observes the sublime blessings of heaven for those who are saved and the horrifying torments of hell for the damned.
Some of these accounts take the form of near-death experiences, the oldest on record, with intriguing similarities to those reported today.
One of Ehrman’s startling conclusions is that there never was a single Greek, Jewish, or Christian understanding of the afterlife. What there was were numerous competing views.
Moreover, these views did not come from nowhere; they were intimately connected with the social, cultural, and historical worlds out of which they emerged.
Only later, in the early Christian centuries, did they develop into the notions of eternal bliss or eternal damnation widely accepted today.
As a historian and professor of religious studies, Ehrman does not [and obviously cannot since he is no mystic with direct experience of the beyond like meditators gain] provide a definitive answer to the question of what happens after death.
In Heaven and Hell, he does the next best thing: By helping us reflect on where our ideas of the afterlife come from, he assures us that even if there may be something to hope for when we die, there is certainly nothing to fear.More + AUDIO
Jesus was nailed to a tree in one story, a cross in another. This tree in Colombia is inspiring the faithful to greater faith and pilgrimages to see it like a visage of the Virgin Mary or Mother Miriam.
Is life only an illusion -- sometimes a disappointing delusion and sometimes a euphoric one?
The Buddha gave five similes to describe all existence. What is "all existence"? It is not out there but in here, the "Five Groups" that constitute all conditioned existence. The only "world" we apprehend is what we perceive, feel, cognize, and are aware of on some level or other, which is much more than we're usually conscious of at any moment.
Consciousness (awareness) depends on five "heaps" (skandhas) of things. Each is called a "heap" because it is a stack of replaceable components. For this the Buddha gave the simile of a magic trick.
There's feeling. Things have a tone: pleasant, unpleasant, neutral be it sensual (in the body) or supersensual (in the mind). Feeling is only a process. It is composed of many momentary flashes of felt experience. For this the Buddha gave the simile of a water bubble.
There's perception. It is only a process, a series of similar but different moments of perception. For this the Buddha gave the simile of a shimmering mirage.
There are mental formations such as volitions (intentions, impulses, motivated acts of will) in the mind. These fabrications are only a process. For this the Buddha gave the simile of a banana tree trunk, which like an onion has many layers and not core or heartwood.
There's consciousness. It is only a process, not a thing. When looked at very closely, it is a stream of "mind moments" (cittas). They "know" the object in the perceptual field and fall away. Before falling, which happens in a submoment, they pass on their information to the next nearly identical but different moment -- so that it all seems like one constant "knowing" but is actually a series of discrete moments of knowing.
Therefore, what seems static, as when staring at a screen, is actually a flickering. It is not a thing but photons emerging from a light source, arranged in pixels that look like miniscule bricks but are mere points on a grid.
There are the qualities of form, of the body, whether subtle or coarse. The body, this body, any body is composed of matter. Matter has four qualities. This sensual body is a series of minute "particles" (kalapas). They arise, turn, and fall away in a flash, an instant, a fraction of an instant. For this the Buddha gave the simile of a lump of foam moving down a river that when coming looks like something but when examined is not at all what it seemed like.
This realization and teaching of the Buddha was the basis of the Ancient Greek "atomic theory," the concept that everything was composed of irreducible atoms or bricks. Their theory came out of Buddhist physics and psychology, the lived experience of meditators recorded in the "Ultimate Doctrine" or Abhidharma. It is not a theory in these instructional manuals, which teach how to directly perceive this. These things are personally verifiable.
The upshot is that what seems compact and persisting, substantial, and potentially fulfilling is actually not compact but composite in nature, not substantial but unreal (like a picture of meal compared to a meal), and not satisfying but disappointing. What seem compact is actually empty -- that is to say, not existing apart from its components, not capable of arising independently but utterly dependent on supports (causes and conditions).
(DT) Top 10 Optical Illusions To Blow Your Mind. Seeing is believing, but we can't always believe.
Modern example
When I first see it, it looks real! But when I look closely, it nothing but little blocks.
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Creepy Lego creations can get gory.
Imagine a thing of great complexity, with parts, dimension, shadow, and definite structure. You approach it, and all that's there is an endless series of boring, lightweight Lego blocks, tiny "bricks" arranged and functioning in a certain way.
It's not anything at all, at least not anything it seems to be!
It's not nothing. It's something. But what is it if it's not what it appears to be? It surely is not what it appears to be! That is why it is said to be "illusory." It's empty. It's nothing to get hung about but not nothing at all.
Moreover, the building blocks in the "thing" (say a couple or a car) are disintegrating, not static but falling off and being replaced. Its shape more or less persists for a time. Because each brick gets replaced with a near identical brick (which looks identical but is not the same one), it looks like the same thing over time. But technically it's different. It's not identical but changing.
It's neither the same nor different. How? The shape is more or less retained for a while, but all the blocks are continuously being replaced.
The thing is like a static movie image on a screen. It's not moving much (from the macro point of view), but a movie image is nothing but movement of photons (expressing color and contrast because of varying frequencies and intensities). It's not at all what it seems (when looked at from the micro point of view).
It looks real, yet it's just a painted picture of a thing, static but moving, dead but animated, never alive but headed for the end of the reel at which time it will seem to go out. Out where? Nowhere. It never really was.
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Why is Wisdom Quarterly blue?Blue is smart, very smart. Blue is the world's favorite color. Half are wearing it now. But in the natural world, blue is uncommon -- from foods to animals. Only two vertebrates out of 64,000 in the world have blue pigments. The sky and water are NOT blue; that is only an optical illusion. The Buddha had blue eyes (as blue as the Afghan Buddhist stone lapis lazuli). Blue eyes are NOT blue but pale brown. (So much for an Aryan/alien difference).
Blue is so elusive, many ancient languages had no word for it or were slow to come up with one (see next story), like the Ancient Greek of Homer. Blue doesn't really exist in our world but only hovers on its edges. So it is ironic that we all live on a moist pale blue planet. Watch
Why isn't the sky blue? RadioLab.org (Story 211213) edited by Wisdom Quarterly
What is the color of honey and "faces pale with fear"?
If you're the world-famous Ancient Greek writer Homer -- one of the most influential poets in history -- that color is
green. And the sea is "wine-dark," just like oxen...though sheep are
violet. Which all sounds, well, really off.
Radiolab Producer Tim Howard introduces linguist Guy Deutscher
and the story of William Gladstone (a British prime minister back in
the 1800s, who was a huge Homer-phile). Gladstone conducted an exhaustive
study of every color reference in the great Grecian epics The Odyssey and The Iliad.
It's true: "Blue" eyes are actually pale brown!
He found something startling: no blue! Howard pays a visit to the New
York Public Library, where a book of German philosophy from the late
19th Century helps reveal a pattern: across all cultures, words for
colors appear in stages...and blue always comes last.
Jules Davidoff,
professor of neuropsychology at the University of London, helps make
sense of the way different people see different colors in the same
place.
Then Guy Deutscher tells how he experimented on his daughter
Alma when she was just starting to learn the colors of the world around,
and above, her. More
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What is the color of honey and "faces pale with fear"?
