“I think that’s one of the reasons the Greek myths survived,” said Yong. “Certainly not because of their initial moral message—or lack of one in some cases. It was because they stimulated the imagination. Later philosophers, writers, and artists were able to achieve greatness by evolving those myths into something far greater than just the bare words with which they started. Maybe the earliest versions were the result of primitive people trying to make sense of a universe that made no sense to them—and their efforts make little sense to us. What those myths produced, though, was more, so much more.”
“I’m still a little skeptical about that,” said Yasmin. “It feels to me like, because someone ages ago pronounced the myths classics, we have to keep thrashing around to find some way of justi
