( ENSPIRE Travel ) The Talented and Unforgettable Actor is Producing a New Podcast About Greek Culture and History
ENSPIRE Contributor: Martin Draus
The famous and incredibly talented actor Thaao Penghlis has announced a new podcast titled “The Lost Treasures”. This podcast is a passion project for Penghlis, coming from his proud Greek background and his interest in Greek history. The life of Heinrich Schliemann and his fascinating studies of the great poet Homer are explored throughout the podcast. The four-episode podcast uses immersive audio for the first three story chapters and a fourth chapter about Penghlis’s drive and inspiration towards making the podcast.
Thaao Penghlis was raised in the Sydney Suburb of Surry Hills, Australia with many other Greek immigrants. He lived a very peaceful life but had aspirations of achieving something far greater. One day in his 20s, Penghlis visited a psychic who told him he would move to New York and become an actor. He laughed it off at first but gave it a shot and took an apprenticeship from an artist to move to New York. It was from there that Penghlis’s career grew and turned a dream into a reality.
During his early years in Australia, Penghlis grew a keen interest in his culture’s history. “I had this insatiable desire to explore mysterious places as gateways to my spiritual awakening, finding the answers, why I felt empty and unfulfilled in my youth?” But Penghlis never imagined that landing in America in his early 20s would set the stage for a thrilling lifetime of exploration. “And so, I traveled to Troy in Turkey and began many years of embracing Schliemann’s world of discovery and walking through the ancient past of Mycenae where the Trojan War began.
Greek culture has been with Penghlis since birth, speaking Greek well before he could speak English. His heritage goes back to the 14th Century in Constantinople, with its magnificent history and the birth of Democracy. “It’s in my blood and that brings out my great passion for discovery.” Later in his career, Penghlis was lucky enough to receive permission from the cultural minister of Greece to explore his palace in Athens and the Gennadius Library. Penghlis studied sixty thousand documents, diaries, and newspaper clippings that were donated by the Greek minister’s family in the 1930s.
Thaao Penghlis decided to make this podcast after devoting years of his life to studying his fascinating culture. “Why not share it through a podcast that had been 20 years in the making?” Penghlis believes people should be educated by other cultures, how they’ve lived, and their customs which wipes away ignorance, expands knowledge, and brings in acceptance. His reason for the podcast is noble, and he truly believes that it will greatly inform and benefit his audience to listen.
The production of Penghlis’s podcast was a very long journey for him. It took him a year to write the 4 stages of the trilogy after he had explored Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, then inserting the sound effects took another year. But the idea from inception has existed for 5 years. “The idea materialized while overlooking the ruins of Troy and imagining the war between the Greeks and the Trojans fought in the Troad, once called Hissarlik.” Penghlis visited the Berlin Museum to see the replicas of the Trojan hoard as the originals had been stolen by the Russians when the Allies had invaded at the end of WW2.
Penghlis wants his podcast to impact people through the strength and power of its stories and tales. “I hope that people understand and discover one of history’s great myths that have survived for centuries, brought back to life from a speechless past.” He wants people to know that Gods of men like Heinrich Schliemann walked this earth and left us with unbelievable heroic tales that inspire the imagination.
Even though Thaao Penghlis’s podcast is nearly done, his adventures into history are far from over as he plans on exploring more facets of Greek culture and history. “Especially the Ottoman occupation of Greece for 350 years and what that did to the Greek character, it became a whispered past.” Penghlis has visited Egypt 14 times and has found many tales of discoveries waiting to be revealed as well.
Thaao Penghlis is a very hardworking and passionate man. It took a lot of hard work and research to make his podcast but he accomplished it. His time exploring Greek literature is not at an end as there is always far more to learn and Penghlis has the determination to do it. His effort is very inspirational to other people of proud heritage and history who wish to explore theirs as well.
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