Is it August already? This is my last episode as host of Tell Me Muse, and I’m so excited to bring to you Charlène Frigon-Beaupré, our host for Season 2, which starts in September. We chat about her experience at McGill, plans for the podcast, and what Classics means to both of us. Cue the introspective music, and off we go!

Does there exist an authority in interpreting the Classics? Who gets the final say on what messages ancient authors really intended to convey? Throughout the growth of classical scholarship, different groups have claimed ownership of the mantle to continue the Graeco-Roman legacy, but when all work is done through interpretation, who's to say that one reading is more authentic than another? And what happens when some groups decide to use the Classics to discriminate and denigrate another? Join me and my guest Daniel Whittle on a journey through these questions about how to achieve authenticity in interpretation. We focus on the writings of formerly enslaved African-Americans in the 18th-19th c., who communicated their experiences through Classical tropes, stories, and characters, and found not only comfort but also a way to dispel racist ideology around who could become a proprietor of the classical tradition.

What does a popular politician, a noble girl, and a petty thief in early Republican Rome have in common? According to our sources, they were all killed by their fathers with "just cause," reasons which, as it turns out, are less than persuasive to modern ears. My guest this month is Janan Perkins, an MA student at UC Boulder studying all sorts of catastrophes in the Ancient Mediterranean world. She'll take us through the writings of four ancient historians, who document different cases of a father killing his child without suffering any consequences, and will lay out the difficulties that each source presents, because let's just say that when Livy sat down to write, a good story was not the only thing he wished to pen. So, grab a drink, grab a pencil, and get ready to learn about how to get away with murder: the Roman edition.