Now with fancy new intro music (credits go to the guest, and to Dionysus for the inspiration)!

Damon is joined once again by Zihan Mei of The Reeds to talk about Euripides' classic tragedy, The Bacchae. Dionysus has arrived in Thebes intent on punishing the inhabitants, specifically the king Pentheus and his family, for not recognizing his divinity. He drives the women of Thebes into ecstatic frenzy, and they leave the city to enact Dionysian rituals in the mountains. Understandably upset with this, Pentheus antagonizes the disguised Dionysus, and gets his brutal comeuppance by the end. 

Mei wrote his senior thesis at St. John's on this play, and so he and Damon begin by discussing what it was about this text that he found intriguing. Topics include the paradoxical nature of Dionysus, why Pentheus fails to recognize the god, Nietzsche's take on Euripides, and more.