Viracocha, the supreme creator deity of the pre-Inca and Inca world, is a god who rises from Lake Titicaca in total darkness, commands the sun and stars into motion, and then walks the earth disguised as a beggar. This episode reconstructs his mythological biography, from his disastrous first attempt at humanity made from giant stones, wiped out by the sixty-day flood known as the Unu Pachakuti, to his second, more careful creation and the civilizing journeys of his sons across the Andes.

The conversation then turns to what happens after the creator walks out across the Pacific with a promise to return. It untangles the disputed etymology of names like Tiqsi Wiraqucha and Kon-Tiki Viracocha, visits the giant bearded face on Cerro Pinkuylluna above Ollantaytambo, and examines how sixteenth-century Spanish chroniclers recast the weeping creat ...