Radio Interviews

Troy, Ithaca and Iceland

Interview phone-in and podcast with Robert Bittlestone, James Diggle and John Underhill

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. You can listen live on the web or tune in on 96.0 & 95.7 FM

The award winning BBC weekly radio programme, The Naked Scientists, reaches a potential audience of 6 million listeners across the east of England, and also has an international following on the web. Each week, listeners of all ages and backgrounds tune in on a Sunday evening to hear creator Dr. Chris Smith, together with his entertaining sidekicks, interview renowned scientists and researchers from all over the world and take science questions on any subject live from the listening public.

"This month in divested archaeology we cover the sites that just happened to turn up in the legends of Homer. We find out about the man who discovered Troy, Heinrich Schliemann, and uncover the most recent finds from the site. We also speak to the team currently searching for Odysseus' Ithaca and it sounds like they're close! Also, does Britain owe its farming to the French? And in Backyard Archaeology we find out why hedges might be the best place to find a Viking."

Download the recorded programme (8Mb MP3)

Link to the BBC podcast (includes other material).

The Real Ithaca and the Secrets of the Odyssey

Live interview and audience phone-in with Robert Bittlestone, James Diggle and John Underhill

BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. You can listen live on the web or tune in on 96.0 & 95.7 FM

The award winning BBC weekly radio programme, The Naked Scientists, reaches a potential audience of 6 million listeners across the east of England, and also has an international following on the web. Each week, listeners of all ages and backgrounds tune in on a Sunday evening to hear creator Dr. Chris Smith, together with his entertaining sidekicks, interview renowned scientists and researchers from all over the world and take science questions on any subject live from the listening public.

"This week on the Naked Scientists we’re putting on our togas on and venturing back in time to find out how modern science can help us to answer ancient questions. We’re on the lookout for Homer’s mythical (or is it?) island of Ithaca, with Robert Bittlestone, John Underhill and James Diggle – co-authors of the book Odysseus Unbound...

When ancient Greek author Homer wrote the Odyssey, his epic poem of hero Odysseus’ return from the Trojan war to his palace on the island of Ithaca, he described a place that bears little resemblance to Ithaki, the island widely believed to be the actual location of the story. Today’s Ithaca is mountainous, not the low-lying place described in the poem. And where are the other islands mentioned in the Odyssey? This puzzle has baffled scholars and historians for two thousand years, but thanks to modern science, Robert Bittlestone and his colleagues believes they may have solved the mystery.

What if Homer was right all along – but geological forces have been at work in the meantime, changing the landscape from the Ithaca of ancient times to the island we see today? The area is one of the most geologically active places in the world, where the African continental plate hits the Eurasian plate. The earth shakes nearly every month, and earthquakes are well known. Could this activity have changed Ithaki so dramatically over just a few thousand years?

We’ll be joined by Professor John Underhill from the University of Edinburgh, who has led an international team of geologists on a modern day quest to investigate the Ithaca puzzle. His latest results are promising, but do they prove anything? And also in the studio will be James Diggle, Professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, to help us make sense of Homer’s words."

Listen to the recorded programme

Read the transcript

Link to the BBC podcast (includes other material).

Interview with Bill Buschel of Hellenic Public Radio, Graffiti 19:10 - 19:45 EST

NEW YORK - Graffiti is a bimonthly program dedicated to the arts. Over the years, Bill Buschel - a storyteller himself - has proven his talent in detecting and interviewing interesting musicians, composers, artists, film-makers, translators, poets, actors, playwrights, authors and storytellers. This interview with Robert Bittlestone and John Underhill was recorded by telephone on October 3 and by the kind permission of its parent organisation, the Greek American Educational Public Information System (GAEPIS), the interview soundtrack has now been provided on this website. Our thanks are due to Bill for conducting the interview and to sound engineer Panagiotis for providing this recording (41 minutes).

Listen live at 7.10 pm on Thursday Oct 11, or after that date Save and listen (right-click, 38Mb)

The Mystery of Ithaca - BBC Radio 4 Material World, 16:30

Presenter Quentin Cooper interviews John Underhill to discover how the mystery of Odysseus's island home, Ithaca, may soon be solved by geologists setting out to drill into the modern Greek island of Cephalonia – which they suggest was once two separate islands before earthquakes and landslides filled in the gap.

Homer’s Odyssey is the story of its hero’s eleven year quest to find his home island of Ithaca. If it’s a true story, it happened about 500 years before Homer composed his poem. Ever since then people have argued where the real island is. Now one theory places it on a peninsula of modern Cephalonia – once separated, it’s supposed, by a narrow channel of water. In two weeks' time a team of geologists will be heading there to see how old the bridge of rock between the two parts is, and whether it could have been built by earthquake-induced landslides. The leader of that team, Edinburgh’s Professor John Underhill joins Quentin Cooper and Durham University classicist Dr Barbara Graziosi to describe the theory and how their explorations will test it.

(14 minutes) Right click and save before listening

Drilling 'boosts Homeric theory' - BBC News

"The Mediterranean island of Kefalonia was probably once two separate islands, new geophysical studies suggest. A British-led team is amassing evidence that indicates Kefalonia's western peninsula, Paliki, was only recently joined to the main landmass. The team believes a huge in-fall of rock in the last 3,000 years may have built a land-bridge between the two. If correct, the researchers say, it would support their view that Paliki was the real site for Homer's Ithaca. The location was supposedly home to Odysseus, whose mythical 10-year journey back from the Trojan War was chronicled in the Greek poet's epic tale The Odyssey. New results from a test borehole and other survey work in the region lend support to the Paliki hypothesis, the team claims. The Thinia isthmus is some 6km long and 180m at its highest "Unlike many historical speculations, our answer to the age-old mystery of Ithaca's location makes a specific prediction that can be scientifically tested by geological techniques," said Robert Bittlestone, the businessman who first made the contention in a book published in 2005." Click here for the BBC article

Interview with Robin Lustig on BBC Radio 4 - The World Tonight

"If you've ever taken a holiday on the Greek island of Ithaca you may well have thought you were following in the steps of Odysseus, the ancient Greek hero immortalised by the poet Homer. Not so, according to a British businessman and amateur archaeologist Robert Bittlestone, who's convinced that Homer's Ithaca was somewhere else entirely...(4 minutes). Right click and save before listening.

Interview with Audrey Carville on BBC World Service - Europe Today

"It's one of the founding stories of Western civilisation - the epic journey home to Ithaca by Odysseus following his victory in the Trojan War. It has long been argued whether Homer's tale is pure myth. Well now a British businessman has set out to prove that the Greek hero's homeland does exist. He says that it does, but it's not where people thought it was. Robert Bittlestone is with me now (4 minutes). Right click and save before listening.

Ithaca: the geological challenge

John Underhill is interviewed on the Nights programme of Radio New Zealand.

"All along this project I have been setting out a working hypothesis for testing the proposal, without anticipating the results either way...The drilling took place last month: we drilled a borehole on a hillside on the west of Cephalonia. We're now investigating the cutting samples from the borehole and those tests are ongoing and should give us some results by January" (18 minutes). Right click and save before listening.

Drill hole begins Homeric quest

"A UK-led team is challenging cherished ideas on Greek mythology by proposing an alternative site for Ithaca...Geologists are this week sinking a borehole on nearby Kefalonia in an attempt to test whether its western peninsula of Paliki is the real site. The scientists hope to find evidence that the peninsula once stood proud, separated from Kefalonia by a narrow, navigable marine channel. It is only within the last 2,500- 3,000 years - and long after Homer's time - that the channel has been filled in, the team contends. 'We can't prove the story of the Odyssey is true, but we can test whether Homer got his geography right', said Edinburgh University geologist Professor John Underhill, who is supervising the drilling operation." Click here for the BBC article (English); Spanish; Hungarian.

Interview with Bill Buschel of Hellenic Public Radio

NEW YORK - This interview was recorded on May 16 in the Astoria studios of Hellenic Public Radio and broadcast to the New York metropolitan area shortly afterwards. By kind permission of its parent organisation, the Greek American Educational Public Information System (GAEPIS), the interview soundtrack has now been provided to this website. As well as the interview itself it features a rousing Greek song aptly entitled "Ithaki". Our thanks are due to interviewer Bill Buschel, station administrator Ioanna Giannopoulos and sound engineer Gregory Polymenakos for conducting the interview and providing this recording (35 minutes). Right click and save before listening.

Interview on Athens International Radio 'Talk of the Town' with Alexia Amvrazi

How is the academic world reacting to the publication of Odysseus Unbound? What are the next steps involved in testing the book's proposals? What work is taking place in Cephalonia this summer? This interview was recorded and broadcast by Athens International Radio on May 22 and we are grateful to Alexia Amvrazi and her team for making it available on this website (12 minutes). Right click and save before listening

News broadcast, Radio Jackie

How did Homer earn his living? Build-up to tonight's seminars at King's College (1 minute). Right click and save before listening.

Interview on Athens International Radio 'Talk of the Town' with Alexia Amvrazi

What prompted the discovery and what will happen next? (15 minutes). Right click and save before listening

Interview on London Greek Radio with Sophia Economides

How has the academic world reacted and what is the view in Athens? (7 minutes) Right click and save before listening

Interview on Focus 580 with David Inge, Radio WILL NPR Chicago

National Public Radio in Chicago asks whether the Homeric puzzle is now solved (50 minutes). Right click and save before listening

Interview with Nick Girdler, Radio Solent

BBC's local radio station for the south of England grapples with the Homeric enigma (13 minutes). Right click and save before listening

Interview with Martin Fletcher, Radio Jackie

South-west London's local radio station tunes into the Bronze Age (1 minute). Right click and save before listening

BBC Radio Ulster - Arts Extra - Interview

(4 minutes) Right click and save before listening

BBC Greek.com

Radio coverage of today's announcement

BBC Radio 4 Six O'Clock News

Broadcast at 18:00 after the 12:30 embargo (2 minutes) Right click and save before listening

BBC Radio 4 Today Programme

Broadcast at 06:55 prior to 12:30 embargo (3 minutes) Right click and save before listening