One of the most famous heroes of the ancient world tried to dodge the draft by feigning madness with a plow, a donkey, an ox, and a field sown with salt. This episode builds a biography of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, from the rumor that his real father was the trickster Sisyphus and his naming by the thief Autolycus, through his recruitment of Achilles on Skyros, the framing and execution of Palamedes, his rhetorical destruction of Ajax in the contest for Achilles' armor, and the Trojan Horse.

The second half reads the Odyssey as a test of leadership and ego: the piracy against the Cicones, the blinding of Polyphemus and the boast that brought down Poseidon's curse, the bag of winds, Circe, the underworld, seven years with Calypso, the slaughter of the suitors and the maids, and Penelope's test of the olive-tree bed. It ends with the lost Tel ...