Lisa Bitel, episode 203

I cold emailed Dr. Lisa Bitel because she’s the head of the religion department as USC and I wanted to interview a religious person. As I was writing her, I realized that a religious scholar was as likely, and probably way less likely, than the average person to be religious. I was right about that but she did recommend a few scholarly religious people so hopefully we’ll have them on soon as well.

I really liked this episode because I did not understand the book. It’s written in an unfamiliar style and it’s from a culture that bears little resemblance to our own or to any that I’ve ever heard of.

Our conversation was basically Dr. Bitel explaining some of the anachronisms of the 7th Century Irish epics to me and walking me through the story.

One or the main characters is named Queen Madb. In Gaelic, transliterated Gaelic anyway, this is pronounced Mave. So I wrote this poem to help me remember how to pronounce it…

The Surfing Irishman

A nadb named dabd did misbehadbHe stole another surfers wadbYou’d think that he could be forgadb
But poor old Dadb is in his gradb.