AI Summary
5 min readChristopher Nolan’s Odyssey smuggles a radical moral claim into a blockbuster epic. The film’s Zeus does not issue the ancient Greek command to show hospitality to strangers in case they are gods in disguise. Instead, he delivers a rule that echoes Leviticus and the Golden Rule: treat the beggar and the stranger as you would want to be treated. This is not a small adaptation. It is, as Wesley Morris argues in this episode, Nolan’s central trick—a Trojan horse that inserts Judeo-Christian ethics into the heart of Homer, precisely at a moment when the modern right has declared such ethics contemptible.
The trickster and the age of chaos
Morris draws on Lewis Hyde’s book Trickster Makes This World to frame the episode’s argument. The trickster archetype—Loki, Coyote, Hermes, Odysseus himself—serves a necessary function for any culture. Tricksters disrupt customs, violate taboos, and make visible what is hidden. They inject disorder into order, and that disorder can be regenerative or ruinous. Coyote brings fire. Raven brings the sun. Loki brings Armageddon. The tension is permanent: too much order produces paralysis, but too much chaos invites collapse.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction** - Wesley Morris introduces himself and his podcast Cannonball before pivoting to his analysis of Christopher Nolan's *The Odyssey*.
- 2 (01:00) **The Trickster Archetype Defined** - Morris introduces Odysseus as a classical trickster and explains the archetype's cultural function, drawing on Lewis Hyde's book *Trickster Makes This World*.
- 3 (03:42) **The Trickster's Dual Nature: Regenerative or Ruinous** - Morris explains that tricksters are both necessary and dangerous for cultures, using examples from mythology.
- 4 (04:16) **The Age of Tricksters: The Modern Right** - Morris identifies Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and others as the dominant trickster personalities of our era.
- 5 (05:48) **Nolan's Central Trick: Smuggling Judeo-Christian Ethics into the Odyssey** - Morris reveals how Nolan rewrote Zeus's law to echo the Golden Rule, transforming the epic's moral framework.
- 6 (07:16) **The Modern Right's Rejection of the Golden Rule** - Morris argues the Trump administration glorifies cruelty and rejects the ethic of compassion and reciprocity.
- 7 (08:48) **The Trojan Horse: Hero or Villain?** - Morris examines how Nolan reframes Odysseus's trick at Troy as a soul in need of redemption rather than a heroic act.
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Show Notes
'The Odyssey' is the political movie of the decade.
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You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html
This column read was produced by Marie Cascione, Claire Gordon and Emma Kehlbeck. Fact-checking by Jack McCordick and Rollin Hu. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. Cinematography by Kyle Kelley. Video editing by Jan Kobal. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, and Marina King. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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