Perseus is claimed as the ancestor of the Persian Empire, immortalized in a constellation that produces a meteor shower every August, and named by Herman Melville in Moby-Dick as the world's first whaler. This episode reconstructs his chronological biography from sources like Apollodorus and etymological research, beginning with the Delphic prophecy that King Acrisius of Argos would be killed by his grandson, the bronze tower built to imprison his daughter Danae, Zeus's arrival as a shower of gold, and the wooden chest that carried mother and infant to the island of Seriphos.

The conversation explains the Greek concept of miasma and why a chest served as a loophole against blood guilt, then follows King Polydectes's banquet trap that locks Perseus into a vow to fetch Medusa's head. It details the divine gear from Hermes and Athena, the exto ...