About this episode Explore how ancient gods, myths, and legends would fare if they suddenly appeared in today's world. Each episode presents a straight-faced, news-report style narrative that brings these legendary figures into modern society, highlighting their impact and relevance. Listeners will enjoy a fresh, humorous perspective on timeless stories, gaining insights into cultural myths while pondering how these mythical entities might influence our contemporary lives.
0:00 At three-fifteen this morning, Eastern Daylight Time, the entire global supply of copper was sold and then immediately repurchased in the span of a single nanosecond.0:13 The price for the transaction was one silver coin of ancient Athenian design.0:20 Last week, your correspondent reported on the emerging pattern of mythic figures disrupting modern affairs; it now appears one has taken an interest in global commerce.0:34 Only yesterday, market analysts were remarking on the unusual calm.0:39 Commentators from the firm Federated Hermes described a “puzzling disconnect” between rising geopolitical risk and exceptionally low market volatility.0:52 It was, they noted, as if the markets were holding their breath.0:57 We now know for what they were waiting.1:01 The first sign of trouble, beyond the impossible copper trade, came from the high-frequency trading desks.1:09 Algorithmic systems, designed for cold, mathematical logic, began executing trades based on what can only be described as whimsy.1:20 One fund’s entire portfolio was liquidated and reinvested into companies whose names contained exactly seven letters.1:30 Another began buying and selling airline stocks based on the migratory patterns of swallows over the Mediterranean.1:40 The transactions were nonsensical, ruinous, and yet, they were all successfully clearing.1:47 The chaos then spread to the cryptocurrency exchanges.1:51 A previously unknown digital token, whose symbol is a simple caduceus, began to fluctuate with breathtaking speed.2:01 Its value, traders soon discovered, was pegged not to supply or demand, but to the interpretation of ancient Greek proverbs posted on public forums.2:13 When one user wrote, “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in,” the token’s value soared.2:25 When another posted, “The Fates lead the willing and drag the unwilling,” it crashed to nearly zero.2:34 Regulatory bodies are, to put it mildly, paralyzed.2:38 An official at the Securities and Exchange Commission, speaking on condition of anonymity, stated that his agency was facing, quote, “a liquidity event sourced from a mythological dimension.” Throughout the morning, technicians searched for the origin of the attack.3:00 They found no hacker, no rogue state, no faulty line of code.3:05 What they found, embedded in the metadata of every single aberrant transaction, was a digital signature.3:14 An impossibly small, fleeting image of a sandal… with wings.3:19 The name, pieced together from fragmented data packets, was HERMES.3:24 As of this broadcast, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is no longer being measured in points, but in stadia.3:33 The price of gold is listed on the London exchange simply as “a fair offer to the messenger.” Financial experts have ceased offering predictions.3:45 What is there to predict, when the market is no longer a system of rules, but the playground of a GOD?3:54 This is no longer a bull or a bear market.3:57 It is something far older.4:00 Your correspondent has learned that traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange have stopped watching their terminals.4:10 They are now, instead, watching the sky.
