Release Day Review Revisited: Atlantis Mini-Series

I did have every intention of releasing this review before the New Year, but every time I set aside to write it, I needed the time to recoup. The last few weeks have been a little intense at my day job, and the holidays notoriously suck when you can’t see your family. Compound that with my anxiety over the storm Buffalo was hit with over Christmas - there was no emotional space to sit and do much of my own producing of content.

I always listen to podcasts, though.

The original release day review of the Atlantis series of Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! was in January of 2022, so let’s revisit this mini-series a year later. Full circles? Maybe. Sounds like a conspiracy.

Conspiracies have both everything and nothing to do with Atlantis, funnily enough.

The “lost city of Atlantis” feels like a myth, and leads a double life in the modern day, masquerading as a conspiracy in tandem with its mythological status. This great, ancient city that most have some degree of understanding of. Animated movies, documentaries, books, and beyond talk about Atlantis as a real possibility. Especially when you consider that Pompeii was once thought to have been a myth. Look what we found there!

Liv Albert takes this and cracks it open to reveal the truth of Atlantis. Through her own research and interviews with various experts, this series is a wonderful exploration of something that isn’t even a myth. It was a thought exercise.

Starting in episode CL, published January 11th, 2022, Liv approaches Atlantis from the beginning and from her own perspective. She wanted to do this mini-series because she thought it was a myth and through her research, found what Atlantis wasn’t, but also what Atlantis is.

Overall  I found this mini-series compelling, fascinating, and funny. There is some general “humanity sucks” despair in there, but when you’re talking about something that people have turned into a white supremacy touchstone: yeah. You’re going to have those moments. Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! Has always been one of those podcasts that I think are for people who are curious about mythology without being experts. I myself dip in and out of episodes depending on my mood and how much “work listening” I have to go on. Episodes alternate between monologues from our host, interviews with experts, and then also conversations with friends. The fact that there are multiple types of conversations happening across the series makes the content easier to handle because it’s relatively intense to learn about all the webs that have been woven around the concept of Atlantis.

Episodes are longer, around the 45-90 minute range. This isn’t one of those podcasts that are studio-level polished from big production companies, but it is more than passable when considering quality, ad insertion, and other typical production gripes. As I think about including episode length on these considerations, I really think a podcast that is tackling intimidating topics that normally sit in an ivory tower should sit around this length.

Some might consider it boring, but if you do then you’re absolutely listening to the wrong subject matter. I’m not the biggest fan of single-narrator podcasts of any type as a personal flavor thing, but I found that even the episodes where we only have Liv’s voice explaining Plato’s Dialogue are engaging. Liv’s style of talking like you could know what she’s talking about, but she won’t judge you if you don’t. There’s a fun respect for the audience that I think this podcast overall nails as a show about things that aren’t always easy to parse through, mythology or this small foray into philosophy.

To me, there’s nothing like getting people together to talk about something that they are passionate about. Liv not only does this with herself as the passionate one but also finds experts that have a great hold on how to talk about Atlantis - not just in the sense of what Atlantis was when Plato made it up, but also about what it is to the world now. The facts behind both of these facets of this story are fascinating. Overall the series is three parts Liv explanation and two parts Conversations, with two fun bonus episodes talking about Atlantis in contemporary media. That’s a fancy way of saying, yes. Liv has episodes on the Disney movie and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to chew on as well.  

I’m excited to say that there’s also a new series coming out this month, hopefully in the same research-heavy vein as the Atlantis series. I’m looking forward to it, and generally all the podcasts this new year has in store.

To listen to this Atlantis series, you can find all the episodes neatly sorted Here.

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