Show Notes
The origins of the phrase "needle in a haystack" can be traced back to ancient Greece, where a similar phrase was used in a fable by the storyteller Aesop. In the fable, a man drops his axe into a river and, unable to retrieve it, starts crying. The god Hermes appears and offers to help, but the man tells him that the river is too deep and the water too murky to find the axe. Hermes then throws a stone into the river, causing the water to splash and clear up, and the man is able to see his axe and retrieve it. The moral of the story is that a difficult task can often be accomplished with a little outside help.
