For thousands of years one of humanity's most revered religious figures was a liar, a thief and a shape-shifting rule breaker. This deep dive uses Lewis Hyde's definition of the trickster as a boundary crosser to explore why every society, from ancient Greece to the modern internet, needs a figure who steps over its moral, social and physical walls so that stagnant systems can be rebuilt on healthier foundations.

We look at Hermes stealing Apollo's cattle on the day he was born and passing his cunning down to Odysseus, Loki becoming a mare to birth Sleipnir, and survival fables like Anansi, Br'er Rabbit and the Monkey King. The episode explains why Native American sacred clowns hold that you cannot pray until you have laughed, how Old Man Coyote can be both supreme creator and petty jerk, and how the archetype migrated into fairy tale peasa ...