Between Reality and Unreality: Guests Talk on Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Today, we're discussing the most Borgesian short-story Borges himself wrote—Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. My guests today are Varsha (from Reading by the Rainy Mountain), José (from José's Amazing Worlds), Jarrod (from The Fantasy Thinker), AP Canavan (aka, The Critical Drgaon), and Javier (from JamReads).

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to Books und Done. I'm your host, Livia J. Elliott, and today

(00:15):
we are back with a guest talk discussing another short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis
Borges. In this case, we are deep diving into the famous "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". But
before we start, let me introduce you to my guests today.
Oh, hi, I'm Jarrod. I am at the Fintasy Thinker YouTube channel. You can find me there.

(00:38):
Hi, I'm Varsha. You can find me on the YouTube channel Reading by the Rainy Mountain and
on a speculative fiction podcast called Speculative Speculations.
Hi, I'm Jose. I run the Jose's Amazing Worlds YouTube channel and also I host the occasional
Fantasy Talks Live podcast.
Hi, I'm AP and my YouTube channel is A Critical Dragon.

(01:01):
Hello, I'm Javier or Jamedi. You might know me from the site Jam Reeds and not much more.
Awesome. I am honestly very happy to have you all here. But before we start, here are
some disclaimers. First, as usual, there are spoilers in this podcast. We are only focusing
on the short story of Tron O'Quarr or Vistertius and we will not spoil other short stories

(01:26):
in the anthologies of Ficciones or Labyrinth. We may, however, reference them briefly. Second,
what you will hear is our subjective opinion about this story. You may disagree and that's
completely fine.
The thing that stood out to me was right away, he takes note of a mirror that's reflecting

(01:48):
an encyclopedia that's supposedly a laggedly reprint of another encyclopedia. He has all
these different levels of looking at something that don't exactly match up with each other,
but yet are still mirrors of each other. That seems to be kind of the running theme going
through this story that I can tell. Those fictional nations of Uk'ba seems to be also

(02:16):
like a mirror of our world or a nation he might live in. Also, Tlon is another reflection
of said places. It's a very complex connection that he makes in the story and it takes a
lot of reading through to really try to put this stuff together. But that's kind of what

(02:40):
I got out of it right off the bat.
Yeah, there are three levels of fiction. You have the country, then you have the world,
and then you have the whole universe, which are three names and people that keep adding
to it and trying to create this world for some specific reason.
There's another level of fiction, which is the story itself. A lot of this, I think,

(03:03):
ties into, or at least how I understand it. When you think about magic realism, the presentation
of an authentic reality that contains these fantastical elements, but it's presented as
real. It questions the nature of what is mundane, what is fantastical. What Borges does here
is that to the nth degree, because it's apparently not fiction. This is meant to be a non-fiction

(03:29):
entry. It's a non-fiction story, but it's fiction. It's questioning the nature of reality
and questioning how we define what is real and what is unreal.
When you start then applying things like a colonial lens, or in the modern day, if we
talked about conspiratorial thinking, and how if you get enough people together to believe

(03:52):
in the one thing, then that one thing actually becomes real because enough people believe
in it. He takes it even a step further about the physical manifestation of these things,
because sufficient number of people believed in it and believed that they would find the
thing. Therefore, they find the thing. Therefore, that is proof that the thing existed. This
circular notion of what reality is and how it is a consensus reality, and then contrasting

(04:20):
that with the beliefs of Orbeus Tertius and the people there who don't believe in nouns.
They don't believe that things actually exist. There's enormous playfulness with that very
postmodern, or modernist and then on into postmodernist deconstruction of the nature
of reality. So say, this is not a pipe, because it's a symbol of a pipe. Even the word pipe

(04:44):
isn't a pipe. It's a symbol of a symbol of a pipe. It goes on down the rabbit hole.
When Jared pointed out at the beginning, that image of the mirror, the image in the mirror
is not the thing, but we look at it and go, that is the thing. I can see it, but seeing
it, it's a reflection of a thing. But then the thing that we actually see, well, that's

(05:05):
like reflecting off something. It's this continual teasing away at the nature of what
is actually real and how we define what is real. Even the old saw about if a tree falls
in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound? There's a line in the short
story about a doorway disappeared because the beggar that used to sit in it died. Therefore,

(05:29):
the doorway was no longer perceived. Therefore, the doorway ceased to exist. So much of this
ties into our perception of what is a nation and that whole colonial thing about just defining
a people, defining a country, defining boundaries, and then the notion of a consensus reality
and the function of language to shape our reality. And through the manipulation of language

(05:53):
or the manipulation of thought, we can actually change and shape the reality. And that's why
this is an amazing story that is playing on all of these different levels because it's
a story that doesn't really have a story. It's presented as nonfiction, even though
it's fiction, and it's about the representation of a fictional country in an encyclopedia

(06:15):
pertaining to be real. And that level of reality and unreality and how they play into each
other is a recursive mirror that plays through all of it.
In terms of the reality and the unreality, something that I found interesting is that
he uses real people as a character. He uses his friends. So you have Berkeley, Buckley,

(06:36):
Princess Lucinge, for what I searched for, was a friend of his, and she was real. And
you have all of these real people who were actually involved in this. And you never know
if the conversation really happened and he's transcribing them or if he just imagined and
wrote up. And as you say, the EP that creates that part of that layer of reality versus

(06:56):
unreality. And on the other hand, there is a part in the story where you get like a description
of Throne and Noke Bar and how the people write and so on. And it said that they only
write fantasy because their language presupposes idealism. Basically, they will imagine things
into reality that actually ties into that what is real and what is not, because if they

(07:17):
can think something into reality, it's real or is it imagined?
I feel that at some point, this kind of thought that there's a need of an observator or an
entity to determine reality, I feel it's influenced by quantics physics, actually, because I ensure

(07:39):
everybody remembers the Schrodinger cut, which basically means you need an observer to collapse
the situation. And I feel this kind of realism where you need an entity that determines that
reality can be influenced by that kind of doctrine or theory.

(08:00):
Yeah, there's a part in the story that says when you count something, the counting changes
the value that you get or something to that effect. And I was like, yeah, wave function
collapse. I went down a rabbit hole with this story, as I think the rest of you also probably
did. I found some papers in which they talked about Bohm, a theoretical physicist. He came

(08:21):
up with a language called Rio mode, which resembles the language that Borges wrote about
in this story. I didn't get far enough in the paper to see what that language was, but
that was interesting that there are a lot of physics papers that are citing this story.
And that's interesting.
Well, he did have a take on math in the library of Babel with the whole lexical and everything

(08:42):
that the mirrors and the laborings, it's generally a common theme in Borges.
To circle back to a point, one of the things that I think crops up a lot in Borges' writing
is this perception of what is real, questioning what is real. And with a lot of the history
of certain parts of the world, the idea that someone can come in and go, this is now the

(09:03):
country and I have defined the boundary and this is what the reality is. But hang on,
we were here for centuries. How are you now saying that this is what a country is? How
have you defined that? When we look on a map, you see all of these borders. When you look
at a map of the world, all of these borders, but those borders don't exist except that
they do. They both don't exist and do exist. They don't exist as physical things, except

(09:24):
they do exist as physical things because we have agreed that they exist as physical.
When we think then of political ideologies and how they can shape the perception of an
event and how so much of how we understand what is happening is this sort of narrativized
version of reality. And we talk about it, oh, this is what happened. And it's a recitation
of fact, but the order in which those facts are relayed, the words that we use to describe

(09:49):
them, how we describe them, that actually changes the nature of the thing. And if we
take a completely hypothetical example, a group of protesters outside a government building,
when they enter the government building in protest, or are they storming the government
building and they are insurgent because those two sets of facts, they pertain to exactly

(10:12):
the same situation, but depending on the words that you've just used, one is an insurrection
trying to overthrow a government and the other are concerned citizens trying to get their
government to listen to wildly different reality. And so much of this hinges on language and
the imposition of definitions within language. And we see this in cultures, my known included,

(10:38):
where a colonizing force came in and went, no, that language is wrong. This is the language
you're now going to use. And so that no longer is that thing. The word for that now is tree.
That is now tree and you will refer to it as tree and it becomes tree. And so we see
how it works not only on a sort of relaying of event, but this construct actually shapes

(11:01):
the reality in which you inhabit. And the idea that the power to do this in this story
is a small group of people who have decided to do this and the outsized impact that they
have. And this idea then of a hidden secret of elite using their power, using their ability
to manipulate and then watching it ripple through time. When we see how that reflects

(11:27):
to on a much more mundane level, the part, the small group of people say in control of
a country or the people who are backing those people who are in control of the country,
we start understanding this conspiratorial mindset of which there is a basis in reality.
And that's what makes it and this story so incredible is it's playing with aspects of

(11:51):
reality to anchor it so that the more fantastical elements become more believable in exactly
the same way that we can create conspiracies that are absolutely fantastical. But because
parts of those conspiracies are actually rooted in a lived and experienced reality, it adds
legitimacy to what is being discussed. And it's so easy to see then how we fool ourselves

(12:16):
into buying into these perceptions. And once we've bought into the perception, once we've
agreed to it, then that actually shapes how we see things. Because now we start seeing
things that support our position in a sort of confirmation bias way. We dismiss evidence
against it. We look for the evidence to support it and we disregard evidence that comes against

(12:37):
it. We see that again in this story of looking for these things and then not believing that,
oh, well, they must have done this and this must be this and interpreting the information
that way.
It's like the saying goes, if you put up a little bit of truth in a lie, it becomes more
truthful. And here Borges by adding the people and using all of those elements of reality

(12:59):
is trying to make that fiction more real. And that is why when I read it, I thought
of the Da Vinci Code. I'm not sure if you read it, but it used names and things that
pull up from conspiracy theories like the Templars and all of these things that people
know the name, but know very little about them. So it created a worldwide phenomenon

(13:21):
because a lot of people started to believe that it was real. And in here, they are basically
trying to do the same thing, the characters within the story. At some point, they start
quote unquote leaking items from thrown into reality like that heavy cone that you get
at the end, just to make it seem more real, to give people clues that it actually existed.

(13:44):
It's like people use words to suit their reality in order to change reality in order to suit
their perception using language.
Yeah. But at the end of the day, bias is having bias or being biased. It's just part of what
we are, part of humanity. We will all interpret what we see or what we experience based in

(14:04):
our bias, which maybe it's both at the same time, real and unreal, right? Because it changes
the reality of what is happening.
But in this circumstance, it gets taken almost to an extreme because if we were all sitting
in the same room, we would all agree that we were sitting around a table and you're
yeah, we're all sitting around a table. But whether we see it as, oh, this is a very nice

(14:25):
table or this is an old table, that our perception of the table is going to be individual, but
at least we agree on the fact that a table exists. But this takes it that one step further
and basically posits, well, no, the table only exists because we agreed it existed.
And as soon as we've left the room, it ceases to exist. The idea of this subjective perception
of reality shaping the reality itself. Of course, there's an element of that in how

(14:49):
we see the world and how we interpret and understand the world. But this takes that
thought experiment and goes even further with it to say, well, no, reality itself is entirely
subjective, and entirely created by consciousness because it only exists if it is perceived
and through the perception, it becomes real. Which, you know, there are arguments being

(15:11):
made about the holographic universe and playing into concepts such as that, which my understanding
of it is so basic and so reductive that it's not worth talking about. But the collapsing
of waveforms in quantum theory that I don't fully understand these things, but I can see
how you can take those concepts and build on them and play with them in this sort of

(15:31):
fictional landscape. And I suppose this is part of the reason why I tend to push back
a little on people saying, oh, well, when we read what we read and how we understand
it, that's entirely subjective. And go, yes, to a point, because we still agree that those
are the words on the page. We still agree that those certain words mean certain things,
that certain acts occurred in it. There is an overlap in the subjective reading and that

(15:56):
overlap is generally generated by the text. But if we divorce that entirely and it's only
what we understand is what the text is, then we have divorced meaning from the actual text
because now meaning is entirely free floating in the person perceiving it. And it has nothing

(16:16):
to do with the actual text itself. And this sort of argument and idea that Borges is playing
with and sort of bringing it to the most absurd degree. And that's the issue. When we analyze
text, when we look at the world, when we look at information, there will be elements that
will change quite radically in certain circumstances. But ultimately, we still try to agree on a

(16:41):
baseline. And once we've divorced the baseline reality from the meaning inherent in that,
then it's now entirely a subjective understanding of that meaning. And that then is transferred
back to correct the source material. That's where we end up with politicians stating things
about alternative facts and completely and utterly denying. I never said that. You go,

(17:06):
here's a video clip of you saying it. Well, that's been taken out of context. No, we played
the whole clip. Like this is an entire statement that you made. No, but that's out of context.
That context changes the meaning of what you said. They make these statements because now
if it agrees with the position of say their base or their voting block, then yeah, they'll

(17:27):
go, oh yeah, well, I agree with that. That's just, that was a mean trick that that reporter
played and they deny the reality of the situation. That's what Borges is actually exploring.
Yeah. He seems to invite it. He seems to invite that. He even says metaphysics is a branch
of literature, of fantasy, you know, so he's, he's inviting that very contradictory type

(17:48):
of thing. Well, there is a part actually in the story that it is said that no one believes
in the reality of nouns within awkward. Basically what AP said that they will stop existing
as soon as you leave the room. Object permanence, something that we are born not having. We
have no concept of object permanence when we are born. And that's why when you ever

(18:11):
play that kid or that game with a young baby, you cover their eyes, you have disappeared.
If you move out of their vision, you have ceased to exist because they have no concept
of object permanence. If they throw something out of their pram, it has ceased to exist.
And then when you bring it back, it's like a magic trick. You have recreated the thing.
And then we learn about object permanence and we're like, oh, it's just out of eyesight.

(18:34):
Like that, that's all that it is. But you know, that's when you ask a kid hide from
me and they do that and they cover their eyes because they can't see you. Therefore you
cannot see them. This is something we just take for granted about our perception of reality
and how we see things, you know, certain visible spectrum and how we hear things, certain frequencies

(18:55):
and vibrations in the air that we interpret as sound. That ultimately these are arbitrary
lines that have been drawn that give rise to our experience. But because it's a consensus
amongst all humans, we sort of go, oh yeah, that's what this thing is. That's what reality
is.
To circle back to the idea of the mirrors that Gerald mentioned, because I do that in

(19:15):
within the story, I consider at some point that it was kind of like a mirror facing another
mirror. We have the mirror of reality sharing the idea of throne and awkward. And then that
is mirroring the reality again, because you get all these encyclopedias with the story
from it and then people start imagining it and it circles back and it's like two mirrors
reflecting at infinity each other. And it's a very interesting idea of it is said that

(19:42):
in throne you get transparent tigers and towers of blood, but it depends on whether you believe
on them if they exist or not. And that is what the people on throne as well believe.
I don't know, I thought it was a quirky spiral of what is real and what is not to the point
that it becomes real because you're thinking of it, because you're reading of it and you're

(20:03):
trying to analyse it.
But also anyone who recites a line of Shakespeare is Shakespeare. That any work written is not
signed because as you are reading it, you are creating it, therefore you are the author
of it. And we can see that almost that investigation of reader response theory, the answer to,
or at least a counter argument to new criticism that was focused on the text and nothing but

(20:28):
the text. But if the text is encoded information, the other party to that is the reader and
the reader is decoding the information. Therefore the reader is giving meaning to the text.
The text does not have inherent meaning. It only has meaning when it is interpreted by
a reader. And then we get that, it gets kind of softened and reduced and simplified to

(20:49):
oh, well, the text belongs to the reader, that I have created the meaning. Well, yes
and no. And this is the playfulness of something like that. When we think of the reading experience,
when you read about Tolkien's Middle Earth, we know it doesn't exist. Middle Earth does
not exist. But when we are reading, it kind of does in a certain way. Frodo is not a real

(21:16):
person. So why then do we feel worried for Frodo? Why do we feel worried for some? Why
do we feel upset at things that happen in the Lord of the Rings? Why do we feel sadness
when a tragic thing happens? Why do we feel happiness when a good thing happens? These,
they are not real, but we give them a level of reality in how we are imagining, how we

(21:38):
are interpreting these symbols, these abstract black symbols on a white page. We have from
that constructed a reality and then are psychologically reacting to it. How is that possible? How can
that work? That is part and parcel, I think, of one approach to understanding what Borthes

(22:01):
is actually playing with about this construction of a reality, because everything, every piece
of fiction is fantasy. Even if it is historical fiction involving historical characters in
an historical setting, it is not a documentary. It is not a recording of their life. It is
fiction. It is made up. But is it less fictiony? Because it contains, no, it is no less a fiction.

(22:25):
But for some bizarre reason, our brains trick ourselves into sort of, well, this is more
realistic. This is more believable than, oh, John Carter of Mars and the Barzoom novels.
You go, oh yeah, but that is not realistic. That is not real. Not in the same way that
Con Eagleton's books about Caesar are real. They are equally made up. They are equally

(22:49):
fictitious. But our brains trick us into thinking that there is a different level of fiction
in made up fantasy stuff. And where do we draw that line?
You make me think of something. Within bookworms or in general, there is this saying that you
get a book hungover. That you were so into a book that by the end of it, you want to

(23:09):
keep reading. And that is, I think, to some extent, an evidence of such a supposition
of reality and unreality because the characters and the story became so real to the reader
and so important as well that you want to keep reading about them. That is impossible
to believe that the story stopped.
That you falling under the sway of Talon. That is what that is.

(23:36):
Something like that. But it made me think of that. That if I had as a reader so many
feelings about a story, my feelings are still real, even if the story is fantastical.
I feel we could also relate this to the own reading experience and how the same text read
by two different persons could become two different experiences or two different tests

(24:00):
because we are giving its own layer of reality or experience because at the end, reading
is not just the words in paper, but also the circumstances we are working with because
even the same book with the same person, but in two totally different situations, you can

(24:23):
get opposite reactions just for that, which also it's interesting because maybe we can
define a reality without thinking about the context or the circumstances that are related
to it.
Yeah. And especially because every reader's own life experience will tarnish the meaning

(24:47):
or the story and create that additional layer.
Yeah. Because also it's interesting because in some communities when a story is not as
clear or there are some threads that are not tied, it's interesting how each reader creates
its own, well, not reality, but its own theory of how that thread continues. And I feel that's

(25:16):
also part of what Borges could imply with this test because at the end, Tulum exists
because these people think about it and are on the same page about the existence of this
kind of place. But without this person, in reality, there's not Tulum. It's simply a

(25:41):
concept that is devoid of meaning.
And that becomes idealism that if you imagine or believe in something, therefore it exists.
I mean, I feel it can be inspired by idealism.
And there is something at the start of the book, of the story that I wanted to bring

(26:02):
up. We have this sentence that it's roughly like a fourth wall breaking there, but it
says Borges or the main character, he was speaking with a friend, we became lengthily
engaged in a vast polemic concerning the composition of a novel in the first person, which this
one is, whose narrator will omit or this figure, the facts and indulge in various contradictions,

(26:24):
which will permit a few readers, very few readers to perceive an atrocious or banal
reality. And it's like he's saying at the same time, like, this is what I'm going to
do. I'm an unreliable narrator.
Well, and again, it's playing with it on that almost like meta-textual level. Like I said
at the beginning, this is fiction, pretending to be nonfiction, referring to the creation

(26:51):
of a fictional reality that is masquerading as a reality. And in it, there's commentary,
sly commentary on, but it's going to be an unreliable narration because you cannot trust
what you're being told. And so it's again, about this level of perception of truth, perception
of reality, what is real and what is unreal. And Borges is an absolute master of undermining

(27:17):
the certainty that quite often we like in particular types of texts, that this is something
that goes to that idea of the reader experience where, you know, when we're 12 and we read
a book and we go, oh, that book was amazing. And it had all of these really cool things
in it. And we've imagined it. And when we're 32 and we go back to it, you go, how did I

(27:38):
like this book? A lot of the stuff I remembered isn't actually there because our memories
are fallible. Our memories play tricks.
I think Gaiman once referenced, he was talking about the magic of reading and how we can
remember an amazing sword fight in a book. But if we went and actually looked up the
words on the page, it's two sentences of like, there are blades clashed, he grunted with

(28:01):
effort. But we have generated an entire scene out of that, usually because there's been
a buildup to it, a dramatic tension that has been built up. Then there's this, which is
an explosion. We imagine it in our minds and move on. But when you have unreliable narration,
when you have deliberate contradictions in a text that is questioning your perception

(28:26):
of what is actually happening and deliberately trying to undermine it, it's messing with
the reader. It's playing with that subject of reading with a subjective narrator. And
narrators, unreliable narration can be either trustworthy and untrustworthy or subjective
where they do not have all of the evidence. And therefore they cannot be fully reliable

(28:50):
or untrustworthy because they're actually lying to you. And ordinarily authors give
you clues, but they can also play into it. And they can play into that very notion of
the unreliability of any sort of personalized subjective narration, which is an absolutely
fascinating concept because it demolishes, or at least undermines our idea that the text

(29:14):
is static and that the text is a fixed thing. Because we look at it and it is printed on
the page and the words aren't going to change, but because the reader always changes and
because the information is going to be interpreted, at least some of the information is going
to be interpreted subjectively or has shades of subjectivity to it. Because we can still
agree if a character slaps another character, there's a line, that character slapped that

(29:38):
character. We would read that line and we would all agree, yes, that character slapped
that character. What meaning and feeling we attribute to it is going to be individual,
whether we are upset by this action, whether we are angered by this action, whether we
just glance over and go, yeah, but it's not a big deal. Whatever our reaction is will
be personal. But we would still agree that that character slapped that other character.

(30:03):
It's there in black and white on the page. So yes, there's a level of subjectivity to
readership and understanding, but it's not wholly subjective. And with unreliable narration,
we have to extend some level of trust in the narrator. Otherwise, why are we reading? Because
if we cannot trust a single thing, what is the point in reading it? Because we need something

(30:29):
concrete to latch onto. And of course, what he's exploring with this story and what he
posits here is, no, you don't. You don't need anything concrete because if you can
conjure this illusion and you get enough belief in the illusion, the illusion itself becomes
real. I mean, it's one of those things that I've got a natural sort of reaction against

(30:51):
is this whole reality being subjective. I find that very difficult to deal with. I think
reality is. And when people are signing tent to other people's actions, going back to AP's
point about whether people are entering a building or they are storming the building.
You know, I think, like you said, we can agree that they were outside the building and then

(31:13):
they were in the building and then you're assigning intent to it. But then that doesn't
make anyone's interpretation right and the other people wrong or vice versa. And you
got all these things, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, all that sort of stuff.
I personally like to think that reality is fixed and there are most things we should

(31:33):
all agree on. And obviously how we feel about something is obviously personal. And in terms
of the story, he's just trying to say that in a very exaggerated way, that perceptions,
that the fantasy can alter reality. And in the story, it does it to the extreme where
these objects from this fictional world start materializing in the real world. He's just

(31:57):
exaggerating everything. You know, let's not forget that the story is part of a whole collection
called Ficciones. It's all fiction. He's just exploring ideas. But the ideas he explores,
he explores even within the story when he's talking about the nature of language, this
language where there are no nouns, all these things are so hypothetical and they are so
abstract that someone like me trying to comprehend a language without nouns, I can't, even though

(32:23):
he gives a few examples, I just cannot imagine talking without using nouns. It's just a very
exaggerated exploration of ideas.
One of your points that you raised that, you know, we agree on a reality and it's maybe
people's intent is being a subject of manipulation where we are imposing an intent. But if you
and I both walked into the same hotel room and you might look at it and go, oh, this

(32:46):
hotel room's a bit shabby. And I'm looking at it going, oh, this is glorious. Now that's
based on personal experience because the hotel rooms I can afford, this hotel room that we've
walked into is absolutely amazing compared to the ones where I usually end up staying.
Whereas you're looking at it going, oh, well, I usually stay on a five star place and like
this is just below my standard. We're both looking at exactly the same room, but the

(33:07):
reality of that room is different. And that has nothing to do with intent. That's not
either one of us ascribing intent to the object of this object is doing something. It's just
its natural state of being is being interpreted subjectively. And so if we take that as how
we can subjectively perceive exactly the same reality, but in radically different ways,

(33:29):
and we then extend that to any observation we make where you and I both look at a car
and I say, that car is green. And you say, no, it's not. It's blue, but I'm perceiving
it as green because of whatever way the light is hitting it. You're perceiving it as blue.
We are at odds as to what the reality is. We would agree it's a car. We would both agree
that it's a car, but we would fundamentally disagree whether it's a blue car or a green

(33:52):
car. And that is, I think, part of what Borges is playing with. And we see a similar sort
of thing. This was an obsession of Philip K. Dix as well. And you see it in The Man
in the High Castle or The Stigmata of Palmer Eldridge. And a lot of Philip K. Dix's work
are, it's about this perception of reality and multiple layers to reality and what we

(34:16):
perceive. And the weird thing is, in some circumstances, we would agree with, oh yeah,
but it's a subjective way of looking at it. And then we would, when someone applies it
to something else, we feel that instinct of, no, no, no, but there is a reality. There
must be a reality because that's, I can touch this table. I can poke that person and hope
they don't punch me back. We experience all of those things. And yet, if some of it is

(34:39):
subjectively perceived, why is not all of it subjectively perceived? And if all of it
is subjectively perceived, how do we know the difference between what the objective
reality is and what is our subjective perception of that reality? And if we cannot tell the
difference at all, then what's the difference between a subjective perception and a subjective
thought? Because all we are is a brain in a biological machine, because we're not actually

(35:05):
seeing anything. There's a little electrical signal that is going to our brain telling
us that we are seeing something. We could be a brain in a jar. We wouldn't know. And
suddenly you start doubting the nature of reality. I think that's a lot of what Borges
is playing with. And he is one of those authors that challenges notions that we accept as

(35:27):
common sense to go, what are the underpinnings of your common sense? And you go, oh, well,
clearly it's this thing. And then you start scratching at the surface the way that he
does. He just starts scratching at the surface. And the next thing you know, you've got holes
in the table. You're dying in a hole. You're looking at the world going, everything's a
lie because he makes you die in existence. Yeah. He tells you that along the way. He

(35:50):
tells you that this is an ambiguous interpolation. He tells you that some of it is an imposter,
you know, and he continually tells you that over and over again to the point where he
gets to the end of the story. And you're wondering whether in this fictional telling, the story
that was supposed to be non-fictional in a fictional way is being invaded by reality

(36:15):
that's not so, that's unreality. He actually says unreality is a mirror reflection of reality.
And he keeps bringing that up. He makes you go down the rabbit hole of wondering. It's
funny how he does that. A question that comes up with this, when we have adaptations of
books or when we have franchises and there's a companion book, like the encyclopedia of

(36:38):
a song of ice and fire or the maps of a song of ice and fire. And we look at it and go,
oh, and that map's wrong. Why is the map wrong? Oh, well, that's not how that happened. You
go, how what happened? The thing in the fictional thing that didn't actually happen. It's fiction.
We have that reaction of, no, but in the book it said that thing, but in this book it's
now saying it differently. You've changed, but none of it is real. None of it is reality.

(37:03):
None of it is fixed. Oh no, but it's a pseudo reality. And we're into that really weird
thing about constructions and understandings of lore or canon. Something we borrow from
religions to describe the frameworks and rules of a world, canon. And we look at that, we
look at these encyclopedias, the Tolkien bestiary that outlines all of this information about

(37:26):
the creatures of Tolkien's world. And then maybe like 20 years later, some of the notes
that Tolkien published, get published. You go, well, what is real now? The thing that
has been out in this bestiary for all of this time that was based on one set of notes. What
makes that less or more authentic than the other set? Oh, well, Tolkien wrote that. Tolkien
had multiple versions for where orcs were created, how orcs were created. Which one is the authentic

(37:49):
one? Or are they all equally authentic? If they're all equally authentic, are they all
equally real? We have that construction of, we create fictional
atlases. We create fictional encyclopedias that map fictional worlds and fictional societies.
And what's the difference between that and someone from a colonial power writing the

(38:13):
entry for the encyclopedia Britannica about a conquered nation and deciding what those
people are, what their culture is and noting it down. And that I think is one of the really
powerful takeaways of this. That we can talk about it in terms of pop culture and literature,
but when we actually think of the fundamentals, the principles that are being applied and

(38:36):
we apply it to the real world of how the people that are writing down what our cultures are,
what our histories are, are the ones who are shaping that reality. Because then that is
recorded, that is now real because it's in the book. And when other people read it and
you can say, oh no, but that's not how it happened. Well, that's what the book says.

(38:58):
I can cite the book. Your memory is wrong. Oh, well, you would have that position because
you're biased. Oh, well, that's not what I read. That is actually an incredibly frightening
aspect of this malleability of reality. Because once it's written down, once it's recorded,
why did Borghuis pick an encyclopedia? Why did he pick this as a text that we go to for

(39:22):
the truth, for the information about something? And what is it describing? A fictional country
in the Middle East, in Turkey sort of area. Why that? Why pick a country that most of
his readers will not have visited? Because that's how we understand that country. The
people living there are going, how can these idiots believe this? But think of all of those

(39:45):
things that we look up on Wikipedia. And that's how we understand the situation. Because we
looked up the summary that is based on someone's notes. We can look at the, we can do proper
research, go to the actual sources and then trace those sources back. But ultimately,
what we're working along are these subjective perceptions that may have been written at
a time or in a place or by a person with a specific agenda, with a specific view of what

(40:11):
the reality is, with not just subjectivity, but ideological reasons to do the thing. And
we have no way of knowing when we read that, is it real or is it fiction? And I think that's
part of what Borghuis is doing with this short story.
I think one of the things I had difficulty with in the story as a whole was trying to

(40:35):
figure out what it's about, what the underlying connecting thread is. Because parts of it
I could map to the real world and say, okay, this bit is like that. And I think after library
of Babel, I was looking for the physics connections more than anything else. But I couldn't find
that connecting thread until we got to the postscript where he talked about the fact

(41:00):
that the history of the lawn is what is taught in schools and people have now decided that
this is the history of the world. And that was a bit that spoke to me of something that
is currently happening in at least my country, perhaps other parts of the world, where history
is being rewritten, reinterpreted and spread through WhatsApp University, as we call it.

(41:21):
So basically there's a glorification of the past or a reconstruction of the past. And
that is taught as what is real. And so I think, and then rereading all of the stuff that came
before in that context, I think really helped. And that was the primary connecting thread.
But everything all of you said helped build more on top of that. It is definitely, I think,

(41:43):
exploring. I had to look up papers to find this, but it's something that it is in support
of idealism. Others think it's a refutation of idealism. But apparently Borges takes philosophical
concepts and then explores, builds out worlds based on that. That part of it is there. But
also I think the bits that really spoke to me were the ones that connect to the world,

(42:07):
like everything that you said, AP, about the things that tend to be in our minds, even
though we think they have physical reality, like the boundaries of nations and stuff.
But also I think the rewriting of history, the construction of the glorification of a
past that potentially doesn't exist. I think those were the things that stood out to me
there.
Well, at the end of the day, that rewriting of history is very characteristic of Argentina.

(42:32):
And Borges wrote this story in 1940. Granted, it was before a lot of things happened that
further the rewriting of history. But at the same time, something that has characterized
the country. And he was publishing on his own magazine, Publicación Azur, I think.
He was banned a few times for publishing things that were politically interpreted. The first

(42:54):
story that we discussed, a house taken over from Cortázar, it was published on Borges
magazine and it was banned because it was understood to have a specific political connotation
regarding the rewriting of history. And if you look at the country in 2024, you can see
that Argentinians, we cannot agree on very specific things about history. I'm not going

(43:17):
to go deeply into that, but there is a particular success that has affected a number of people.
And that number of people is being discussed over and over because, oh, it is written in
this place, that it is, this number is written in this other place, that is this number.
And the number became an icon, it has stopped being real. And I think this story also goes

(43:37):
into that, discussing the history of Argentina in a very covert way.
On that then, could the story be interpreted as a cautionary tale of war, the power of
these conspiracies for one, for better word could do to society. And if it could be interpreted
that way, then the follow up question is, what could you do to prevent it or how could

(44:01):
you go about it?
The problem that I see is currently, again in 2024, how much information we have available.
It's very difficult to check your sources. And circling back to what AP said, if a winner
writes history, then how can we be sure that our quote unquote truthful source of information

(44:22):
is actually truthful?
Well, the very first thing is anyone who is called Victor is no longer allowed to write
history because you know, history is written by the Victors and they've done a terrible
job at it. This is a really difficult question. We live in an age with a super saturation
of stuff and we learning how to pare away what is disinformation, misinformation, partial

(44:45):
information, stuff that can be relied upon. That is becoming more and more difficult because
there is just so much and it is so complex that I honestly don't think there's very
much that we can do to forestall this. And it is only going to be exacerbated by the
emergence of generative AI. That is going to make things a thousand times worse because

(45:09):
deep fakes of videos generated with real 3D, almost like live action perfect with the right
voice that they'll make whatever script that they want to say it. We're no longer going
to be able to trust our eyes with anything that we see that's electronic. So we have
to go back then to what's being published. But with, and it is the one downside to self

(45:30):
publishing. Anyone can now self publish. So someone can go, Oh, you know, I've published
all of these things. I've published 30 books. Therefore I am an expert on them. And 30 books
that were all AI generated trash, but it's too late. They already have, I have 30 books.
And so this is going to become harder and harder to discern and to pick apart what can

(45:51):
be trusted and what can't be trusted. Conspiratorial thinking. Think of the rise of various conspiracy
theories from the early 2000s to now in the early 2000s. Yeah. There have always been
some conspiracy theories. And we kind of looked at them and went, yes, wear your tinfoil hat,
sit over there and be quiet. There's a small group of, but people genuinely believe it

(46:14):
because we are getting worse and worse at being able to discern fact from fiction. This
is a skill we are losing. And it's not just on us individually. It's also about the media
we consume news stories purporting to be news and factual that are all ideological spin,

(46:34):
say that they are factual. We are reporting the news. You go, that is no longer news,
but that is now how we are getting our news from very biased ideological sources. And
this is happening in multiple countries, not just one. It's, it's happening. Yeah. And
it's happening in universities too. You ever hear of Bob Jones University? They put out

(46:55):
specific literature that subverts actual history and they're selling it to homeschools and
other universities of like minds. And it's, it's happening all over the place, that kind
of thing. And this is why I think very small things. And we can, to give you an example
from something that is wildly unimportant, the trailer for a movie comes out and suddenly

(47:19):
you will have a bunch of YouTubers and online critics who are, this is terrible. This is
trash. This is, and the film hasn't come out yet. No one has seen the film yet. They're
not even going, I think the film will be. It's no, this film is, it has already assumed
that. And therefore they design arguments ahead of time so that when, when the thing

(47:42):
actually comes out, people go in with that mindset and therefore are looking for those
things specifically because they are primed to look for the things they find the things.
Therefore, oh, well that's why it was bad. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now that is on an incredibly small and minor scale because at the end of the day, they're
films. It's popular entertainment. That's not world ending. This we are finding with

(48:06):
news, with current events, with perceptions of other people, with history, with how we
treat one another, that these things, these narratives, these perceptions are shaping
the very reality of things in the real world. Because once we start doing that conspiratorial
mindset, once we start engaging with that, it can lead you into other aspects of our

(48:31):
lives. We find ourselves repeating phrases. If we hear them often enough, we end up repeating
them. And if we're repeating them and using them, that actually shapes how we think about
the thing. Think of, you know, back in the nineties in the UK, there was this huge thing
about, oh, political correctness. Oh, it's absolutely terrible. How dare you tell me
I'm not allowed to refer to that person as a policeman that I have to call them a police

(48:55):
officer. You go, right. What's the job? The job is police officer. The job is not gendered.
Level of bias toward female police officer over time has decreased. Why? Because we see
them as police officers who are female rather than going, oh, a policeman's the real one.
And then there's the woman police officer, the WP, the woman police constable as something

(49:17):
different, something other, something lesser. And language shapes that. Language can shape
thought. If language shapes thought and thought is how we perceive reality, language is shifting
our perception of reality. And we start to bring into life a consensus reality based
on those shared thoughts. I think we've drifted a lot from the story, but this story is investigating

(49:41):
these very. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. I think the story could be used
as a critical thinking tool to teach that very kind of thing. And, and a lot of fantasy
in general can be used as a tool to teach that kind of thing. Isn't, isn't the internet
just the encyclopedia of the law? Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. There's a vast number of

(50:04):
people working together to create alternate histories. Except it's not as consistent as
the encyclopedia of the law apparently is. It's like we have this amazing invention where
we can share our best ideas, our most creative ideas, then some of human knowledge and experience.
We can share that or no, that's not what we're going to use. There's a great line in this

(50:26):
story that kind of reflects that. And it says that you have these many men that adapt all
these diverse disciplines, but few capable of imagination and few are still capable of
subordinating imagination to a rigorous and systemic plan. And I really love that line.
And that kind of reflects your view of the internet, you know, and how it's not really
used to its potential at all. Oh, it's, it's used to its potential in that we now have

(50:52):
instantaneous spread of information of a certain type across the world. Like it is, it's utilizing
its potential, but for an end and the mean of something we don't actually want that is
not beneficial to humankind. But at the same time, look at what we are able to do. We can
have live discussions from multiple places in the world without racking up a, I think

(51:16):
I remember back in the day, like having a half hour phone call to Canada would be an
astronomical phone bill. And my mum remembers having to book a time to make the phone call
because there were a limited number of international lines. We have now moved to, we can have these
instantaneous chats that this is amazing, but that amount of information, how do we

(51:38):
know what we can trust? And we come back to this question that is part of what Forte has
explored. How do we know what we can trust? How do we know what is real? Even bigger,
what does reality mean? Is reality what we can touch? And you go, well, no, because there
are lots of things that we can't touch that we would still describe as real. So what is

(52:00):
reality? What is this thing that we are talking about? What is this concept? Because language
shapes our ability to think about it. And language is an imperfect tool to encapsulate
the human experience. It just, it cannot do it. Otherwise, mathematicians would just work
in words. They don't. They've invented an entire language for physics and different

(52:24):
branches of mathematics because it's the only way that they can accurately express the things
that they are trying to express. Because words do not do it justice. There's too much ambiguity.
There's too much flexibility. It's not rigorous enough. And when it comes to literature, to
knowledge, to how we assimilate all these things, that being aware of that mushiness,

(52:46):
that non-specificity, and we try to be as specific as possible, but there's always going
to be a softness to the information. And even if we see it with our own eyes, even if we
are the witness to something, we are seeing it from one point of view and we're not seeing
it from 360 degrees or we can't see and know everything. We have a very limited perspective

(53:10):
and window into the world. Unreliable narration, presenting some things as factual, things
that are clearly non-factual next to it, but presented in the same tone and in the same
manner and we start to blur those distinctions. Borges uses those tricks to give it authenticity,
to give it weight, where he talks about, oh, they find these artifacts. And if you notice

(53:31):
that whole experiment that they said that they performed, the one that worked was where
the person who knew it shouldn't have worked wasn't there. Therefore, it was a pure assumption
that the things would be there. That's why they find it. Or is it, was it simply that
they dug up somewhere that happened to have these things because lo and behold, we build
our cities and settlements on top of other cities and settlements. And eventually, if

(53:56):
you dig up enough river beds, you're going to find stuff because it's a river bed. These
things will happen, whether it's statistically or whether it's because of selection or as
he implies, he creates that implication because of the sequence of events. Oh, the people
who knew it shouldn't have worked were overseeing it. That's why it didn't work. But he never

(54:17):
specifically says that. But when the guy dies, the conclusion is drawn for you without being
stated. We as reader read into that. We interpret it. We go, oh, it's because that guy died
and therefore his thought that this shouldn't have worked isn't interfering with their thought
that it should. And that's why they find this stuff. And you go, that is magical thinking.
But he makes us believe that. He sets us up for that because he knows how readers react

(54:42):
to the sequence and order of information. That is the some of the brilliance about his
writing is he knows how readers interpret stuff. He is so good at manipulating that.
He's a fantastic author. And also timeless because Borges writing can be read and read
and read and reinterpreted as the time goes on and in different ages. And it will still

(55:04):
have meaning because I doubt that he actually could have imagined the internet to exist,
yet it applies perfectly. But even our construction of who Borges is, you go, depending on what
we know of his life and when he lived and our perception of when he lived and the area
in which he lived, that shapes our understanding of him. But that's not him. That's a version

(55:25):
of him at a specific point in time. And again, to go back to that, the painting of the pipe,
it's when we start mistaking the replication or the reflection or the copy of a thing for
the thing itself. We do it a lot. We make these to say, oh, it's close enough. It's
not quite the same, but it's basically the same. And at what point does it no longer

(55:48):
become the same? If you keep chipping away at that for each iteration. And that's what
he says about those items that are created. What does it be when it gets to the 12th generation,
they have somewhat faded. And you think of it as a, with a photocopier, like the first
copy you made, but then if you copy the copy and you copy the copy over and over again,
those photocopiers used to get more and more fuzzy and the letters would fade and the whole

(56:10):
thing would become grayed out because of the dust and the specs and the errors that would
get replicated and exaggerated. That's kind of what we have here about information passed
through time, a copy of a copy of a copy. And when does it cease to be even a reflection
of the real thing and become something entirely? Where is that dividing line? And we like neat,

(56:31):
precise lines. We like those, but that's not what life has. Life is not full of those lines,
those neat divisions. Life is so much more complex, but we struggle with that because
we like the box. Well, what is this writing? What is this story? It talks about a fictional
planet and this whole thing. And is this science fiction? Is it fantasy? Is it science fantasy?

(56:54):
Is it magic realism? Is it postmodern literature? Is it all of them? Is it none of them? The
thing is we want the box because the box makes it nice and neat instead of going like, this
is just a weird story and it's a brilliant story. Just read it.
The sequence where 11th iteration is somehow purer than the first, that also felt like

(57:14):
a bit of a metaphor for, I think, the races who consider themselves a pure version of
what came before, like the Aryans, we are the Aryans. Like we are somehow purer than
the people we originated from and like we collect the purest forms. That feels like
a bit of a stretch, but also it made me think of that the last iteration is purer than the

(57:36):
first one. So this one is a bit of a trivia, but we have
this curious part in which the narrator says it is conjectured that this brave new world
is the work of a secret society. And I found that interesting because when I read it in
Spanish, brave new world is written in English. I thought it could be a reference to the book

(58:00):
by Aldous Huxley and I went in to take some dates. Brave new world was published in 1932
and Lone Uqvar in 1940. So it actually adds up if we consider how slow it was publishing
back then. But do you think that this is a reference?
To me it's got to be because it's a strange conjunction of words to just be a quote, you

(58:25):
know, a brave new world is a very peculiar construction. And the fact that he's using
it in English in the original Spanish text, when I read it as well, it's turned away my
mind when went there. Now it seems obvious, maybe back in the day it probably wasn't.
It's a famous quotation from Shakespeare. Oh, brave new world that has such people in it.

(58:46):
It's my ignorance speaking, there you go. No, but that's why Huxley used it for his story
because John Savage, of course, has read the complete works of Shakespeare. That was the
only piece of literature he had and he read the works of Shakespeare over and over again.
So when he goes to the city, oh, brave new world that has such people in it. But it's
a very famous quotation from Shakespeare, from the tempest.

(59:09):
So did Borges quote Shakespeare or did he quote Huxley quoting Shakespeare?
Well, as we all know from this story, anyone who quotes Shakespeare is Shakespeare. So
he was Shakespeare when he said it.
It's the 11th iteration of Shakespeare.
And therefore the purest form of Shakespeare.

(59:30):
Well, you need to hear it in its original Klingon. I don't think it's necessary to
try and say exactly where Borges got it because he could have gotten it from Huxley's text
or he could have gotten it from Shakespeare or any number of any other places. It's the
resonance of that line. And it's presumably why it was printed in English, because it

(59:55):
is the line from Shakespeare to be recognised. And then depending on the translation, I don't
know if there's an official translation into either Portuguese or Spanish for Shakespeare's
work, if there's an official one or if there are multiple translations.
The other question that I have is, this is also a note that in Tlone, and he goes to

(01:00:17):
some extent in this, southern and northern languages are different. And that because
they have different languages, they see the world differently. In particular, the narrator
says that the literature from the southern hemisphere abounds in ideal objects. I thought
it could be a reference to how different the cultures from both hemispheres are, especially

(01:00:41):
if we consider that Argentina is in the southern hemisphere, and it had a very different view
of the world compared to Europe. The story was published in 1940, 1941, during World
War II in a country that did not participate. It didn't send troops, it only sent food supplies,
right? So it had, by definition at that time, a very different view or perception of what

(01:01:05):
was happening. The war itself took a different or had a different reality for Argentinians
because they didn't participate. And I thought it tied back to that idea of what is real
or what is not, simply because in here he seemed to be making a commentary against real
geopolitics.
I think that's a very strong reading of it. When you look at a map, why is north at the

(01:01:29):
top? Why is north top? Well, it just is.
Because we decided it, we agreed on it, that's it.
You could put north at the bottom, it's just a direction. And so if we put north at the
top, northern countries become more important because they're at the top of the dot. And
then the southern countries, the southern hemisphere, they're less important, they're
lesser, they're below. We represent this. We look at the dominance of European nations

(01:01:54):
on the rest of the world, for a lot of the world, how they colonized and changed and
it was their view of reality that was being imposed. So there was a separation between
the northern reality and the southern reality.
When you look at what happened to the countries of South America and Central America of, oh
yeah, you know, people, we are living here, this is our country, this is our life. And

(01:02:15):
then someone turning up going, yes, but I have a flag. Do you have a flag? This is now
my land.
I think that's a wonderful way to look at it because I think it ties into that notion
of it's the encyclopedia Britannica. That's the source of this knowledge. Why is it the
source of knowledge?
Although one thing that caught my attention that it isn't quite the encyclopedia Britannica,

(01:02:36):
it's the American version of the encyclopedia Britannica. And I thought I was like, oh,
is he having a dig there? I don't know. You know what I mean?
That's a brilliant point. Authenticity. What is real? What is the original? If it's exactly
the same word for word, page by page, if it is exactly the same, does it make any difference

(01:02:56):
which one it is?
But they're not exactly the same because it mentions that the American version has got
like these extra four pages or however many pages it is, which is the one that contains
all the knowledge that we had about it.
When they went to get other editions of it, they couldn't find it in the other editions
of exactly the same printing that it was this one special version that they find. And again,

(01:03:19):
I think it goes to that point because, oh yeah, I don't know if you've ever been to
any of the war museums in Normandy and they may have changed since I was there. I was
there when I was quite young. We went on a trip to France and we went into one of the
museums and they had a documentary playing and it was every 15 minutes it would change
language and it played in French, German, Spanish, American and it goes hang on a second,

(01:03:41):
French, German, Spanish, American. No, no, no, American isn't the language. It's English
would be the language. The majority of English speakers who went there would be Americans
visiting because of the beach landings and it was one of the ones that was actually quite
close to where a lot of the American troops land. So that's why it said American, the

(01:04:02):
majority of their tourists. But there was that even as a child, I was, you know, that
slightly, hang on a sec, that's wrong. It should be English. And then I'm going hang
on a sec, I'm Irish. Why am I even worried about that? And there is this sort of authority
of correctness of fact of authenticity that is sort of baked into my culture, the Anglo-Irish

(01:04:22):
sort of culture of, and it's something we struggle against, but also is part of us about
this sort of hierarchy. Jose, that was a brilliant point that it is the American edition, which
is somehow lesser. And yet if it's exactly the same, or maybe it just doesn't have the
letter U in as many words, but if it's exactly the same, why, why is there that distinction?
I actually had a different interpretation, and this is because I'm quote unquote in the

(01:04:45):
future from that story, when that story was written, but America ended up being quite
important in the eighties and the nineties in reshaping South American history. And if
we consider the Operation Condor, which at the end of the day changed the history and
the political past of two countries, I was saying like, did he check the future or what?

(01:05:07):
Because if we read now, it has a completely different meaning probably from what he was
intending back then. And that goes to the wonderful flexibility of abstract notions and how we
understand and apply them. Back in the, the, was it the 1980s, Rambo 3 came out. John Rambo
was drafted in, he goes to Afghanistan and because the Russians are there and the Russians

(01:05:28):
are the bad guys, and he hooks up with the Mujahideen to take down the Russians. And
it was this all American patriotic action movie. Fast forward a few years and the Cold
War tension to these Russia was then seen as an ally, but the Mujahideen had led to
Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda led to ISIS and the CIA being involved in the training of the Mujahideen

(01:05:50):
in order to defeat the Russians in a proxy war suddenly had spawned these other groups.
And so post 9 11 watching Rambo 3 had a completely different resonance because here was this
all American hero going in to ally with ostensibly the people responsible for 9 11. And then
fast forward another few years with the rise of Vladimir Putin and the tensions between

(01:06:15):
America and Russia escalating again. The reading of that film has changed dramatically over
time depending on the current geopolitical position. One of those ones that is so stark
when you watch it to realize how geopolitics shapes our perception of the thing. I just
I find that one a fascinating example and it ties in with what I've been blathering

(01:06:37):
on about this story, about this perception of reality being shaped and changed by our
consensus reality.
Thank you everyone for joining. This was such a terrific discussion. Let's do a round of
photos so that the listeners know where to find you.
Well thank you very much for having me again. I mean these conversations are never easy

(01:06:59):
from an intellectual point of view, Livia. I can be found on the Hosses Amazing Worlds
YouTube channel and the Fantasy Talks Live podcast. Thank you.
Thank you Livia for inviting me. This was fun. I am on the Financie Thinker YouTube
channel and I am also on Speculative Speculations podcast. Check it out.
You can find me on the YouTube channel Reading by the Rainy Mountain, the podcast Speculative

(01:07:22):
Speculations and haunting the Patreon forums. And yes, thank you so much for having me on
this conversation. This was a lot of fun.
Thank you very much. And I would like to apologize to everyone else for how much I talked. I
am so sorry. I hadn't realized how much I was rambling on, but thank you very much.
If people aren't already sick of my voice, I do have a YouTube channel, A Critical Dragon.

(01:07:43):
That said, if you like the episode, please like and subscribe and let's continue the
discussion in the comments. Also, if you want to get bite-sized deep dives, prose analysis
and other bookish discussions, then subscribe to my newsletter. The link is in the description
box. Thanks for listening and happy reading.