Happy Valentine's Day listeners! To celebrate, grab your favorite smutty romance book and your map of questionable origins as we explore the chaotically-fun film, Romancing the Stone. Joining the conversation is the wonderful Raven Todd DaSilva, who helps us to uncover the film's questionable romance and even more questionable archaeology. We uncover the tragic history of the film's screenwriter, it's intriguing relationship with the Indiana Jones franchise, and how archaeology and travel may lead to self-actualization(?). If nothing else, just know that Kathleen Turner walked in ruined pumps so that Sandra Bullock could run in a sparkly-pink jumpsuit.

If you want to learn more about Raven and her work, be sure to visit her website www.digitwithraven.com and follow her on social media under the handle @digitwithraven. If you want to get your hands on her excellent book The Other Ancient Civilisations: Decoding Archaeology’s Less Celebrated Cultures, you can do so here or at most major online booksellers.

How can men find their way to war but not find their way to a good podcast? Like suitors around Penelope's megaron, we assemble our biggest survey panel ever to court Uberto Pasolini's latest re-imagining of Homer's Odyssey (or the back half at least): The Return (2024). Joining us are guesting hall-of-famers Joel Christensen and Amy Pistone, as well as super-special new suitor, Joe Goodkin. We talk about reception and storytelling, whether it's better sometimes to forget than to remember, and Ralph Fiennes' naked bod. Put on your best beggar disguise, string you bow and get ready to grapple with the horror of war in this stealth sequel to The English Patient (2 English 2 Patient).

You can can find more from Amy on her website and on social media, Joel via Sententiae Antiquae (@sentantiq), and listen to Joe's folk opera, The Blues of Achilles.

Grab your witches hats and your godly boons as we delve into the Underworld once again with Hades II. Keep in mind that while the game is still in early access, spoilers abound (including a big one for Final Fantasy VII)! Helping us out with this gaming katabasis is the wonderful Meg Sullivan of History N' Games. We talk about some of our favorite characters and themes from the game thus far, as well as our predictions for where the story may go in the future.

To learn more about Meg, check out her YouTube channel and website https://historyngames.com/. You can also follow Meg on Bluesky under the handle @celticqueenmeg.bsky.social.

If you want to see some of our own gameplay and exploration of Hades II, check out our recorded livestreams on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@MoviesWeDig/streams.

It's not a "door to heaven," it's Stargate (1994), dweeb! We travel a million light years from home to uncover this peak 90's find with good friend of the show David S. Anderson. We talk gods, aliens, archaeology, dunking on your colleagues' translations and curiously paradoxical attitudes towards arming children. Is this movie the harbinger of modern ancient aliens conspiracies or just a warm up for Independence Day? Also, don't you just miss the days when a child wandering an archaeological site could just wander off with an ancient artifact?

Where to begin? (No really, what date is this film even taking place in?) Ridley Scott returns us to his vision of ancient Rome that was laid out over twenty years ago. While we do see a lot of new faces in the Eternal City, the overall story is wrapped up in its mythologizing of the original. Joining the crew is a very special guest (and Maximus/mentor figure to two of your hosts), Dr. Glenn Storey to discuss this Hollywood take on the Roman Empire. From ships and sharks in the Colosseum to a slightly morbid excerpt from Vergil written on a child's bedroom wall, there are quite a few moments that give us pause. Looking beyond the little inaccuracies that feel designed to troll ancient scholars (Persians vs. Trojans at the Battle of Salamis?), we focus on what the film is trying to reflect about our own modern society. And what we see is a lot scarier than the CGI baboons.

Are you back Indy? We are at least as we uncover the fifth (and final?) installment of the America's favorite archaeologist: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Joining us is super special guest Bill Farley, who helps us unpack a whole range of topics including the Antikythera mechanism, Processualism, Operation Paperclip, digital de-aging technology and the dangers of living in the past (don't do it kids). Listen now or relive the Siege of Syracuse for all eternity.

You can see more from Bill on his Youtube channel Archaeology Tube.

They're digging in the right place? We take another look at the most famous archaeologist of all as we revisit the first three Indiana Jones movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Temple of Doom (1984) and The Last Crusade (1989). Joined by super special guest, author and archaeologist David West Reynolds, we look back on our own experiences with Indy, enormous impact on the public perception of archaeology and what these films, namely Raiders, gets remarkably correct about the field.

You can follow David West Reynolds on Facebook, Instagram as well as through his work on projects with Lucasfilm, the Explorer's Club and his new kickstarter, Chasing Raiders.

In this episode we utilize our amazing artistic abilities to *checks notes* stop time(?) and discuss Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, a modern retelling/allegory of the Catilinarian Conspiracy that took place during the late Roman Republic. Here to help analyze this fever-dream of a film is Dr. Hannah Čulík-Baird, Associate Professor of Classics at UCLA, co-editor of Res Difficiles, and last but not least, a self proclaimed “unrepentant Adam Driver stan”. Join us in our attempt to make sense of a film that fights all attempts to do so.

Is it bad? Probably. Is it brilliant? Probably not. Does the random QR code actually provide insightful information? We may never know.

Be sure to read Hannah's insightful take on the film via her blog o pietas animi and follow her on social media under the handle @opietasanimi.