WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.600 Welcome to the deep dive. Today is Sunday, March 00:00:02.600 --> 00:00:07.019 29, 2026. And I'm really excited you're joining 00:00:07.019 --> 00:00:09.099 us today because we have a fascinating one. Oh, 00:00:09.119 --> 00:00:11.320 absolutely. This is this is one of those topics 00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:13.500 that just completely changes how you see the 00:00:13.500 --> 00:00:15.980 world. It really does, because, you know, we 00:00:15.980 --> 00:00:19.100 talk about. the internet today using all these 00:00:19.100 --> 00:00:21.539 very physical spatial metaphors, right? Yeah, 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:25.359 like calling it a web. Exactly, a web. Or, you 00:00:25.359 --> 00:00:27.519 know, we talk about storing our whole lives in 00:00:27.519 --> 00:00:30.579 the cloud. Or navigating an information superhighway. 00:00:30.760 --> 00:00:32.780 Right, because human beings fundamentally need 00:00:32.780 --> 00:00:35.020 a map for the infinite. I mean, we can't really 00:00:35.020 --> 00:00:37.679 comprehend endless branching information without, 00:00:37.679 --> 00:00:39.759 you know, giving it a shape. Right, a boundary. 00:00:40.280 --> 00:00:43.320 But what if... And this is the crazy part. What 00:00:43.320 --> 00:00:45.960 if the blueprint for that exact mental architecture, 00:00:46.259 --> 00:00:48.439 like the concept of endless virtual realities 00:00:48.439 --> 00:00:51.020 and branching networks, what if all that was 00:00:51.020 --> 00:00:53.640 drawn up decades before the first computer screen 00:00:53.640 --> 00:00:55.780 ever turned on? Yeah, before the hardware even 00:00:55.780 --> 00:00:58.840 existed. Exactly. Mapped out by a guy working 00:00:58.840 --> 00:01:02.200 in a municipal basement in Argentina in the 1940s. 00:01:03.079 --> 00:01:06.459 So today, our mission on this deep dive is to 00:01:06.459 --> 00:01:09.680 explore the life and the mind of the legendary 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:12.659 Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. It's just 00:01:12.659 --> 00:01:15.019 a phenomenal life to examine because we're looking 00:01:15.019 --> 00:01:18.140 at someone who essentially bridged the 19th century 00:01:18.140 --> 00:01:21.900 world of swords and soldiers with our 21st century 00:01:21.900 --> 00:01:24.280 world of digital infinity. And he did almost 00:01:24.280 --> 00:01:26.099 all of it while working as a librarian. Which 00:01:26.099 --> 00:01:29.040 is just the best detail. It really is. And our 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:31.519 main source for this, where we're pulling a lot 00:01:31.519 --> 00:01:35.640 of this incredibly rich detail from, is a very 00:01:35.640 --> 00:01:39.180 comprehensive biographical and literary profile, 00:01:39.239 --> 00:01:41.079 basically, his main Wikipedia article, which 00:01:41.079 --> 00:01:43.260 is just fantastic. It's a great distillation 00:01:43.260 --> 00:01:46.040 of his life. OK, let's unpack this. To understand 00:01:46.040 --> 00:01:49.340 the literal worlds that Borges built, we have 00:01:49.340 --> 00:01:51.379 to look at where he started. Right, the foundational 00:01:51.379 --> 00:01:54.200 soil of his mind. Exactly. So he's born in 1899 00:01:54.200 --> 00:01:57.260 in Buenos Aires. And right from the jump, his 00:01:57.260 --> 00:01:59.819 brain is wired for like multiple realities. Yeah, 00:01:59.939 --> 00:02:02.180 he grew up completely bilingual. Right, speaking 00:02:02.180 --> 00:02:04.260 Spanish and English, to the point where he was 00:02:04.260 --> 00:02:06.680 actually reading Shakespeare in English by the 00:02:06.680 --> 00:02:09.479 time he was 12 years old. Which is wild. It is. 00:02:10.020 --> 00:02:12.520 But the real center of his universe wasn't the 00:02:12.520 --> 00:02:15.379 city outside. I mean, Borges later said that 00:02:15.379 --> 00:02:17.639 if he had to name the chief event of his entire 00:02:17.639 --> 00:02:21.060 life, it was his father's library. Yeah, that 00:02:21.060 --> 00:02:24.020 library is basically the foundation of his entire 00:02:24.020 --> 00:02:27.240 psychology. How so? Well, his father, Jorge Guillermo 00:02:27.240 --> 00:02:29.680 Borges, was a lawyer and a psychology teacher. 00:02:30.039 --> 00:02:33.099 But more importantly, he was a man who desperately 00:02:33.099 --> 00:02:35.300 wanted to be a successful writer. Ah, right. 00:02:35.500 --> 00:02:38.419 The unfulfilled dream. Exactly. He even published 00:02:38.419 --> 00:02:42.159 a novel in 1921, but it completely failed to 00:02:42.159 --> 00:02:43.919 leave a mark. It just didn't do anything. So 00:02:43.919 --> 00:02:46.680 Borges grows up kind of internalizing that failure, 00:02:47.060 --> 00:02:49.000 right? Yeah, heavily. Because he comes from this 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:52.939 lineage. of military heroes on his mother's side, 00:02:53.460 --> 00:02:55.560 literal men of action who fought in the Argentine 00:02:55.560 --> 00:02:57.680 War of Independence. Right, the guys on the horses 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:00.979 with the swords. Exactly. But Borges himself 00:03:00.979 --> 00:03:04.400 was physically fragile. He had terrible eyesight, 00:03:04.439 --> 00:03:07.139 even from a really young age. So he felt this 00:03:07.139 --> 00:03:10.979 profound, almost shameful destiny. Yeah, he wrote 00:03:10.979 --> 00:03:13.039 about feeling like he was supposed to fulfill 00:03:13.039 --> 00:03:16.560 his father's thwarted literary ambitions because 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:19.039 he was just you know, a bookish kind of person 00:03:19.039 --> 00:03:21.919 and not a man of action. Right. And for the first 00:03:21.919 --> 00:03:24.060 part of his life, he's following a pretty conventional 00:03:24.060 --> 00:03:26.539 path for a brilliant intellectual. He travels 00:03:26.539 --> 00:03:28.860 Europe, absorbs philosophy in Switzerland and 00:03:28.860 --> 00:03:31.740 Spain, moves back to Buenos Aires and becomes 00:03:31.740 --> 00:03:34.240 an avant -garde poet. Yeah, writing verses about 00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:36.159 the streets of his city. And it was good work, 00:03:36.259 --> 00:03:38.300 but... It wasn't the reality -bending genius 00:03:38.300 --> 00:03:41.400 we associate with him today. Exactly. That Borches, 00:03:41.560 --> 00:03:43.759 the guy who mapped the infinite, didn't truly 00:03:43.759 --> 00:03:47.060 emerge until this massive catastrophic sequence 00:03:47.060 --> 00:03:50.039 of events in 1938. The inciting incident. Yeah. 00:03:50.259 --> 00:03:52.900 So first his father dies, and then... Just weeks 00:03:52.900 --> 00:03:55.580 later, on Christmas Eve, Borsche suffers a severe 00:03:55.580 --> 00:03:57.599 head injury. Yeah, he basically hits his head 00:03:57.599 --> 00:04:00.180 on a freshly painted open window frame. Right, 00:04:00.300 --> 00:04:02.560 and the wound gets severely infected. He develops 00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:06.280 sepsis. Which, in 1938, was often a death sentence. 00:04:06.319 --> 00:04:09.419 It really was. He is hovering on the absolute 00:04:09.419 --> 00:04:12.659 brink of death, hallucinating, running a massive 00:04:12.659 --> 00:04:16.300 fever, just completely unmoored from reality 00:04:16.300 --> 00:04:19.319 for weeks. It's almost like his brain was broken 00:04:19.319 --> 00:04:22.339 down to its base component. Yes. I always think 00:04:22.339 --> 00:04:25.139 of it like rebooting a computer that's completely 00:04:25.139 --> 00:04:27.259 crashed, and when it finally turns back on, you 00:04:27.259 --> 00:04:30.759 find it's mysteriously upgraded to this incredibly 00:04:30.759 --> 00:04:34.389 advanced, almost alien op - That's a great analogy. 00:04:34.730 --> 00:04:37.250 Because, I mean, how did that trauma shift his 00:04:37.250 --> 00:04:40.370 writing? He goes from typical poetry to this 00:04:40.370 --> 00:04:43.269 profound, mind -bending fiction. Well, when he 00:04:43.269 --> 00:04:45.730 finally recovers miraculously, he's terrified. 00:04:45.930 --> 00:04:47.829 You have to remember, he's a man whose entire 00:04:47.829 --> 00:04:49.850 worth is wrapped up in his intellect. Right. 00:04:50.009 --> 00:04:52.509 So he's terrified. The fever has literally broken 00:04:52.509 --> 00:04:55.310 his brain. He needs to test himself. But he doesn't 00:04:55.310 --> 00:04:57.949 write a poem or an essay. No, he writes a story. 00:04:57.949 --> 00:04:59.930 Right. A piece called Pierre Menard, Author of 00:04:59.930 --> 00:05:02.850 the Quixote. And this story is completely absurd, 00:05:03.250 --> 00:05:05.370 but it's brilliant. Just to give you a quick 00:05:05.370 --> 00:05:07.269 summary, if you haven't read it, it's about a 00:05:07.269 --> 00:05:10.970 fictional 20th century French author who decides 00:05:10.970 --> 00:05:13.889 he's going to rewrite Miguel de Cervantes' Don 00:05:13.889 --> 00:05:16.769 Quixote word for word. But not copy it. Right. 00:05:16.949 --> 00:05:20.009 not copy it. He's going to live a life so specific 00:05:20.009 --> 00:05:22.829 and immerse himself in so much history that he 00:05:22.829 --> 00:05:25.930 will naturally, spontaneously invent the exact 00:05:25.930 --> 00:05:29.209 same words that Cervantes wrote 300 years earlier. 00:05:29.370 --> 00:05:32.589 It's an incredible exploration of context if 00:05:32.589 --> 00:05:35.110 we connect this to the bigger picture. Borges 00:05:35.110 --> 00:05:38.110 is arguing through this fictional reviewer that 00:05:38.110 --> 00:05:40.850 even if the words are identical, a 20th century 00:05:40.850 --> 00:05:43.290 Frenchman writing Don Quixote creates a fundamentally 00:05:43.290 --> 00:05:45.740 different much richer book. Because the context 00:05:45.740 --> 00:05:47.639 of history completely changes the meaning of 00:05:47.639 --> 00:05:50.040 those exact same words. Exactly. And this marks 00:05:50.040 --> 00:05:52.100 a definitive shift toward a style that critics 00:05:52.100 --> 00:05:55.360 call irreality. Wait, let's pause on that term. 00:05:55.500 --> 00:05:57.220 What does irreality actually look like on the 00:05:57.220 --> 00:05:58.759 page? Are we just talking about fantasy, like, 00:05:58.759 --> 00:06:01.079 you know, wizards and dragons and magic? No, 00:06:01.160 --> 00:06:04.540 no, not exactly. It's not high fantasy. Irreality 00:06:04.540 --> 00:06:07.660 is more like taking a philosophical or mathematical 00:06:07.660 --> 00:06:11.000 concept and treating it as a literal, physical 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:13.220 reality. Okay, so give me an example. Like, instead 00:06:13.220 --> 00:06:15.699 of a magical land, he writes about a world where 00:06:15.699 --> 00:06:18.959 the concept of time is physically altered. Or 00:06:18.959 --> 00:06:21.459 he writes about an encyclopedia from a completely 00:06:21.459 --> 00:06:24.800 fictional planet that somehow, like... bleeds 00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:27.000 into our reality and actually starts changing 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.779 our history. Wow. Yeah, he stopped using traditional 00:06:29.779 --> 00:06:31.899 narrative plots. He started using philosophy, 00:06:32.439 --> 00:06:35.019 other books, and pure imagination as his primary 00:06:35.019 --> 00:06:38.680 sources of real lived experience. So for Borges, 00:06:39.019 --> 00:06:41.779 a concept you read in a book is just as physically 00:06:41.779 --> 00:06:44.000 real as the chair you're sitting on. Exactly. 00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:46.560 So he installs this new operating system in his 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:48.639 brain and he starts building his labyrinths. 00:06:49.100 --> 00:06:51.339 If you pick up a Borge's collection, you're going 00:06:51.339 --> 00:06:54.300 to hit these recurring motifs constantly. Infinity, 00:06:54.660 --> 00:06:57.720 mazes, mirrors, fake writers. The classics. Right. 00:06:58.120 --> 00:07:00.779 But the absolute masterpiece that bridges his 00:07:00.779 --> 00:07:04.180 1940s reality to our modern digital lives is 00:07:04.180 --> 00:07:06.779 a story he published in 1941. The Garden of Fracking 00:07:06.779 --> 00:07:10.689 Paths. Yes. The Garden of Forking Paths. It is 00:07:10.689 --> 00:07:13.230 just a stunning piece of architecture. I mean, 00:07:13.329 --> 00:07:15.610 on the surface, it reads like a standard spy 00:07:15.610 --> 00:07:18.069 thriller. Right. The protagonist, Dr. Yusin, 00:07:18.550 --> 00:07:21.430 is a Chinese professor living in England, but 00:07:21.430 --> 00:07:23.689 he's secretly spying for Germany during World 00:07:23.689 --> 00:07:26.110 War One. And his cover is blown. He's on the 00:07:26.110 --> 00:07:28.449 run, trying to pass a vital secret message to 00:07:28.449 --> 00:07:31.790 Berlin before he's killed. But the spy plot is 00:07:31.790 --> 00:07:34.819 really just a Trojan horse. Because Yu Sun ends 00:07:34.819 --> 00:07:36.699 up at the house of a man who's been studying 00:07:36.699 --> 00:07:40.139 the life of Yu Sun's own ancestor. Right, an 00:07:40.139 --> 00:07:42.720 ancestor who was famous for trying to do two 00:07:42.720 --> 00:07:46.379 massive things. Write an infinite novel and build 00:07:46.379 --> 00:07:48.860 an infinite physical maze. And no one could ever 00:07:48.860 --> 00:07:51.040 find the physical maze. And the book he left 00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:54.040 behind was just considered this chaotic, contradictory 00:07:54.040 --> 00:07:56.959 mess. Until the Man Yu Sun visits explains the 00:07:56.959 --> 00:08:00.079 secret. The book is the maze. The ancestor didn't 00:08:00.079 --> 00:08:02.360 build a physical labyrinth out of hedges or stone. 00:08:02.480 --> 00:08:05.500 He built a labyrinth of time. And this is the 00:08:05.500 --> 00:08:07.519 part that just completely blows my mind. The 00:08:07.519 --> 00:08:09.439 novel the ancestor wrote is one where whenever 00:08:09.439 --> 00:08:11.519 a character is faced with a choice, they don't 00:08:11.519 --> 00:08:13.399 just choose one path and move the plot forward. 00:08:13.819 --> 00:08:15.639 Right. They don't just go left or right. No. 00:08:16.100 --> 00:08:19.579 All possible choices occur simultaneously. If 00:08:19.579 --> 00:08:22.480 a character can open a door or walk away, the 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:25.019 narrative splits. In one chapter, they open it. 00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:27.279 In another, they walk away. And those chapters 00:08:27.279 --> 00:08:29.920 branch out into infinite parallel universes that 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:31.959 sometimes converge again. What's fascinating 00:08:31.959 --> 00:08:35.559 here is that by writing that, Borges essentially 00:08:35.559 --> 00:08:38.120 invented the concept of the hypertext novel. 00:08:38.279 --> 00:08:40.899 He described a theory of the universe based on 00:08:40.899 --> 00:08:43.840 a network of diverging, converging, and parallel 00:08:43.840 --> 00:08:46.620 times decades before the internet. OK, I have 00:08:46.620 --> 00:08:48.850 to push back here a little bit. Sure. Did he 00:08:48.850 --> 00:08:51.049 really invent hypertext? I mean, it's an incredibly 00:08:51.049 --> 00:08:53.409 cool choose -your -own -adventure concept. But 00:08:53.409 --> 00:08:56.330 isn't it a massive stretch to say a guy with 00:08:56.330 --> 00:08:59.870 a typewriter in the 40s invented the architecture 00:08:59.870 --> 00:09:02.269 of the internet and digital media? I get why 00:09:02.269 --> 00:09:04.049 you'd say that, but it sounds like a stretch 00:09:04.049 --> 00:09:06.350 until you look at who actually built the digital 00:09:06.350 --> 00:09:09.289 era. OK. The non -linear structure of that story 00:09:09.289 --> 00:09:12.009 directly influenced the pioneers of modern science 00:09:12.009 --> 00:09:14.529 fiction and digital theory. I mean, William Gibson, 00:09:14.809 --> 00:09:17.759 the cyberpunk pioneer who literally coined the 00:09:17.759 --> 00:09:21.279 term cyberspace. Yeah, Gibson explicitly said 00:09:21.279 --> 00:09:23.960 that reading Borschtis as a young man was like 00:09:23.960 --> 00:09:27.000 installing software that exponentially increased 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:30.340 his bandwidth. That's a great quote. It is. Authors 00:09:30.340 --> 00:09:32.960 like Philip K. Dick and Gene Wolf cite him as 00:09:32.960 --> 00:09:35.779 a foundational text. Borschtis handed them the 00:09:35.779 --> 00:09:38.500 conceptual blueprint for branching networks and 00:09:38.500 --> 00:09:41.000 parallel processing long before the hardware 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:43.490 existed to actually build it. Okay, that makes 00:09:43.490 --> 00:09:46.129 total sense. He provided the philosophy, and 00:09:46.129 --> 00:09:48.230 the engineers later provided the silics. Exactly. 00:09:48.690 --> 00:09:50.570 But to me, the most relatable part of his whole 00:09:50.570 --> 00:09:52.889 approach was his attitude toward actually writing 00:09:52.889 --> 00:09:55.490 these massive ideas down. Because Borscht just 00:09:55.490 --> 00:09:58.690 notoriously claimed that writing a 500 -page 00:09:58.690 --> 00:10:01.769 book just to explain a single concept was, and 00:10:01.769 --> 00:10:04.850 I quote, a laborious madness. Yeah, he hated 00:10:04.850 --> 00:10:06.690 Fuller. Right. He said it was much better to 00:10:06.690 --> 00:10:08.929 just pretend the book already existed and simply 00:10:08.929 --> 00:10:11.169 write a 10 -page review or a summary of it. Yeah, 00:10:11.330 --> 00:10:13.889 he called it a lazy pleasure. He was heavily 00:10:13.889 --> 00:10:16.230 influenced by the 19th century writer Thomas 00:10:16.230 --> 00:10:19.090 Carlyle, who wrote a book called Sartor Resartus, 00:10:19.350 --> 00:10:21.549 which was essentially a long review of a fake 00:10:21.549 --> 00:10:23.889 German philosopher. And Boris took that idea 00:10:23.889 --> 00:10:26.879 and just perfected it. He built his global fame 00:10:26.879 --> 00:10:30.620 on literary forgeries, writing dense, incredibly 00:10:30.620 --> 00:10:33.360 serious scholarly essays, reviewing books that 00:10:33.360 --> 00:10:35.820 were entirely made up. And he calls it laziness. 00:10:36.259 --> 00:10:38.340 But I mean, for anyone listening today who feels 00:10:38.340 --> 00:10:41.379 completely overwhelmed by the constant fire hose 00:10:41.379 --> 00:10:44.519 of information on the Internet, what Borges did 00:10:44.519 --> 00:10:47.139 was the ultimate life hack for a learner. Absolutely. 00:10:47.279 --> 00:10:49.980 He realized we don't have time for 500 pages 00:10:49.980 --> 00:10:52.399 of filler and character exposition just to get 00:10:52.399 --> 00:10:55.490 to a cool idea. Yeah. He was distilling a massive 00:10:55.490 --> 00:10:58.750 non -existent book down to its purest five -minute 00:10:58.750 --> 00:11:01.789 essence. That's not lazy at all. That is supreme 00:11:01.789 --> 00:11:04.070 efficiency. It's an incredibly modern approach 00:11:04.070 --> 00:11:06.129 to data. He was stripping away the mechanics 00:11:06.129 --> 00:11:09.309 of traditional narrative to deliver a pure, concentrated, 00:11:09.470 --> 00:11:11.970 philosophical payload. You get the mind -bending 00:11:11.970 --> 00:11:13.850 concept without wading through the packaging. 00:11:14.009 --> 00:11:15.789 But, you know, the great tragic irony of his 00:11:15.789 --> 00:11:18.389 life is that just as his literary vision was 00:11:18.389 --> 00:11:20.789 expanding to encompass these infinite universes 00:11:20.789 --> 00:11:23.610 and endless bandwidth, His physical vision began 00:11:23.610 --> 00:11:26.409 to fail him. Yeah. It was a progressive inherited 00:11:26.409 --> 00:11:28.570 condition. His father had suffered from it, and 00:11:28.570 --> 00:11:30.509 Boris's knew it was coming for him too. Just 00:11:30.509 --> 00:11:33.710 a ticking clock. Exactly. It slowly destroyed 00:11:33.710 --> 00:11:36.470 his eyesight over decades, until by his late 00:11:36.470 --> 00:11:40.169 50s, he was completely blind. And he never learned 00:11:40.169 --> 00:11:42.269 to read Braille. And the timing of this is almost 00:11:42.269 --> 00:11:45.269 too cruel to be real. Here's where it gets really 00:11:45.269 --> 00:11:49.960 interesting. In 1955, right as he is losing the 00:11:49.960 --> 00:11:52.840 very last of his sight, when the world has basically 00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:55.620 become just a blur of light and shadow, he is 00:11:55.620 --> 00:11:57.899 appointed the director of the Argentine National 00:11:57.899 --> 00:12:00.559 Library. It's an incredible historical moment. 00:12:00.919 --> 00:12:03.039 He is officially given command of a building 00:12:03.039 --> 00:12:07.500 containing 900 ,000 books. 900 ,000 books. Precisely 00:12:07.500 --> 00:12:09.980 when he can no longer read a single word on the 00:12:09.980 --> 00:12:12.740 page. That is just... It's devastating. I mean, 00:12:12.779 --> 00:12:15.159 it's like finally being handed the keys to a 00:12:15.159 --> 00:12:17.340 warehouse full of Ferraris on the exact day you 00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:19.740 lose your driver's license. How do you even process 00:12:19.740 --> 00:12:22.139 that kind of cosmic joke? Well, Borsch has processed 00:12:22.139 --> 00:12:24.440 it through art. He didn't react with bitterness. 00:12:24.559 --> 00:12:26.980 He reacted with awe at the symmetry of it all. 00:12:27.179 --> 00:12:29.940 He wrote his famous poem of the gifts where he 00:12:29.940 --> 00:12:33.279 says, No one should read self pity or approach 00:12:33.279 --> 00:12:36.039 into the statement of the majesty of God, who 00:12:36.039 --> 00:12:38.940 with such splendid irony at one touch granted 00:12:38.940 --> 00:12:43.019 me books and night. Splendid irony. Just incredible. 00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:46.240 To have your entire universe be reading and to 00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:49.080 lose the ability to read just as you are crowned 00:12:49.080 --> 00:12:52.100 king of the library. Yeah. How did he physically 00:12:52.100 --> 00:12:54.720 function as a writer after that? He had to completely 00:12:54.720 --> 00:12:57.059 change his mechanics. Because he couldn't see 00:12:57.059 --> 00:12:59.759 the page to edit prose anymore, he focused much 00:12:59.759 --> 00:13:01.980 more heavily on poetry. Oh, because he could 00:13:01.980 --> 00:13:04.220 memorize it. Exactly. He could compose lines 00:13:04.220 --> 00:13:07.279 in his head, revise them internally, and memorize 00:13:07.279 --> 00:13:09.759 entire stanzas as he walked the streets of Buenos 00:13:09.759 --> 00:13:12.019 Aires. Wow. And when it came to writing things 00:13:12.019 --> 00:13:14.220 down or reading, he relied incredibly heavily 00:13:14.220 --> 00:13:17.159 on his mother, Leonore, who lived to be 99 years 00:13:17.159 --> 00:13:19.419 old. That's amazing. And later, he relied on 00:13:19.419 --> 00:13:21.879 Maria Kodama, who became his literary assistant 00:13:21.879 --> 00:13:24.279 and eventually his wife. They became his eyes, 00:13:24.379 --> 00:13:27.840 his readers, and his So he is literally dictating 00:13:27.840 --> 00:13:29.779 his infinite labyrinths to the people around 00:13:29.779 --> 00:13:32.980 him. Yes. And on a deeper level, the blindness 00:13:32.980 --> 00:13:36.779 actually sharpened his interior world. He once 00:13:36.779 --> 00:13:39.379 observed that for the blind, every thought becomes 00:13:39.379 --> 00:13:41.399 a tool. Because you're living entirely inside 00:13:41.399 --> 00:13:44.120 your head. Exactly. Deprived of physical sight, 00:13:44.330 --> 00:13:46.970 his forced inwardness perfectly aligned with 00:13:46.970 --> 00:13:50.029 his lifelong themes. When you can't see the walls 00:13:50.029 --> 00:13:52.990 of the room you're in, the concept of an infinite 00:13:52.990 --> 00:13:55.450 boundless space isn't just a metaphor anymore. 00:13:55.929 --> 00:13:58.909 It becomes your daily physical reality. That 00:13:58.909 --> 00:14:01.610 gives me chills, but the thing about being trapped 00:14:01.610 --> 00:14:03.970 in your own mind constructing these perfect infinite 00:14:03.970 --> 00:14:06.929 libraries is that eventually the real world is 00:14:06.929 --> 00:14:08.889 going to knock on the door. Always does. And 00:14:08.889 --> 00:14:11.190 in mid 20th century Argentina, the real world 00:14:11.190 --> 00:14:13.610 was incredibly volatile. He couldn't just live 00:14:13.610 --> 00:14:16.309 in the clouds. No, he couldn't. And his political 00:14:16.309 --> 00:14:20.169 life is a fascinating complex area. Now, Borges 00:14:20.169 --> 00:14:22.230 famously claimed he wanted to keep his opinions 00:14:22.230 --> 00:14:24.809 in. watertight compartments, completely separate 00:14:24.809 --> 00:14:26.409 from his fiction. You wanted the stories to be 00:14:26.409 --> 00:14:29.250 pure. Right, untouched by the daily news. But 00:14:29.250 --> 00:14:31.710 reality constantly intruded and those compartments 00:14:31.710 --> 00:14:33.870 leaked. OK, before we dive into this, I need 00:14:33.870 --> 00:14:36.509 to put a quick disclaimer out there. Because 00:14:36.509 --> 00:14:40.250 we are about to discuss some very polarized, 00:14:40.269 --> 00:14:43.110 volatile political history. Yeah, it gets intense. 00:14:43.250 --> 00:14:45.669 So just to be completely clear to you listening. 00:14:46.029 --> 00:14:49.429 Our goal here is absolutely not to take sides 00:14:49.429 --> 00:14:52.649 or endorse Borge's political views. We are simply 00:14:52.649 --> 00:14:55.649 going to impartially report his beliefs and actions 00:14:55.649 --> 00:14:58.690 exactly as they appear in the source material, 00:14:58.929 --> 00:15:01.149 whether they lean left, right or center. Very 00:15:01.149 --> 00:15:03.049 important point, because looking at his life, 00:15:03.330 --> 00:15:06.029 his politics were incredibly complex and often 00:15:06.029 --> 00:15:08.889 shifted based on a core underlying philosophy. 00:15:08.970 --> 00:15:11.389 So let's look at how that played out in the 40s. 00:15:11.629 --> 00:15:14.350 Juan Peron comes to power in Argentina in 1946. 00:15:14.629 --> 00:15:17.039 Right. Borges had been very vocal in his support 00:15:17.039 --> 00:15:20.039 of the Allies during World War II, which clashed 00:15:20.039 --> 00:15:23.320 with the ruling party's more ambiguous, sometimes 00:15:23.320 --> 00:15:25.799 axi -sympathetic stance. Yeah, there was friction 00:15:25.799 --> 00:15:29.080 there. Definitely. So as a deliberate, calculated 00:15:29.080 --> 00:15:31.600 insult to an intellectual, the government removes 00:15:31.600 --> 00:15:33.659 Borges from his library job. And this is where 00:15:33.659 --> 00:15:36.679 they promote him, right? Yeah. They promote him 00:15:36.679 --> 00:15:39.039 to be the municipal inspector of poultry and 00:15:39.039 --> 00:15:41.559 rabbits at the local public market. Inspecting 00:15:41.559 --> 00:15:44.330 chickens and rabbits. It's just a classic authoritarian 00:15:44.330 --> 00:15:46.110 move designed to humiliate him and put him in 00:15:46.110 --> 00:15:49.090 his place. Right. But Borsch's refused to play 00:15:49.090 --> 00:15:52.210 along. He resigned immediately and quickly became 00:15:52.210 --> 00:15:54.649 one of the intellectual leaders of the anti -piranist 00:15:54.649 --> 00:15:57.009 opposition. He started lecturing and speaking 00:15:57.009 --> 00:16:00.029 out against what he saw as authoritarian overreach. 00:16:00.169 --> 00:16:02.049 And this wasn't his first time clashing with 00:16:02.049 --> 00:16:04.669 authoritarianism. In the 30s and 40s, he was 00:16:04.669 --> 00:16:08.090 a fierce outspoken critic of fascism and Nazi 00:16:08.090 --> 00:16:12.129 ideology. Absolutely. In 1934, Argentine ultra 00:16:12.129 --> 00:16:15.129 -nationalists actually accused Borges of secretly 00:16:15.129 --> 00:16:17.570 being Jewish, basically implying he wasn't a 00:16:17.570 --> 00:16:20.029 true Argentine. And his response was brilliant. 00:16:20.210 --> 00:16:22.850 It was. He fired back with his biting essay called 00:16:22.850 --> 00:16:26.940 Yo Judeo. I, a Jew, where he basically said he 00:16:26.940 --> 00:16:29.019 would be immensely proud to have Jewish heritage. 00:16:29.320 --> 00:16:31.960 And he completely mocked the pseudoscience of 00:16:31.960 --> 00:16:34.820 racial purity. He also explored the dark psychology 00:16:34.820 --> 00:16:38.340 of fascism in his fiction. In 1946, he published 00:16:38.340 --> 00:16:40.639 a story called Deutche's Requiem. What's that 00:16:40.639 --> 00:16:42.940 one about? It's written from the perspective 00:16:42.940 --> 00:16:46.250 of an unrepentant Nazi war criminal who's facing 00:16:46.250 --> 00:16:49.570 execution. And Borchus wasn't defending the Nazi. 00:16:49.789 --> 00:16:52.190 He was trying to dissect the tragic archetype 00:16:52.190 --> 00:16:55.590 of a person whose ideology demands violence. 00:16:55.870 --> 00:16:58.230 Getting inside the mindset. Right. The character 00:16:58.230 --> 00:17:00.730 in the story actually welcomes his own defeat 00:17:00.730 --> 00:17:03.269 in execution because to him, the fact that he's 00:17:03.269 --> 00:17:06.269 being destroyed by superior force proves his 00:17:06.269 --> 00:17:08.369 underlying worldview. Which is that violence 00:17:08.369 --> 00:17:10.950 and power are the only things that matter. Exactly. 00:17:11.450 --> 00:17:13.980 Borchus was showing how fascism essentially becomes 00:17:13.980 --> 00:17:16.660 a death cult. Wow. But he was equally opposed 00:17:16.660 --> 00:17:19.240 to communism too. Very much so. He described 00:17:19.240 --> 00:17:21.880 himself, borrowing a term from his father, as 00:17:21.880 --> 00:17:25.299 a Spenserian anarchist. He believed that the 00:17:25.299 --> 00:17:27.599 individual should be strong and the state should 00:17:27.599 --> 00:17:30.619 be weak to the point of near invisibility. So 00:17:30.619 --> 00:17:33.180 he couldn't generate any enthusiasm for political 00:17:33.180 --> 00:17:35.900 systems that placed the state above the individual, 00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:37.559 whether they were on the far right or the far 00:17:37.559 --> 00:17:40.240 left? Which brings us to perhaps his most controversial 00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:43.720 era. In the 1970s, Argentina was engulfed in 00:17:43.720 --> 00:17:46.579 chaos, and Borges initially expressed support 00:17:46.579 --> 00:17:49.640 for the right -wing military junta. Yeah. He 00:17:49.640 --> 00:17:52.480 viewed them, at first, as a necessary force for 00:17:52.480 --> 00:17:55.000 restoring order to a society that he felt was 00:17:55.000 --> 00:17:57.859 just completely falling apart. But as the horrific 00:17:57.859 --> 00:18:01.200 realities of the Dirty War emerged, the forced 00:18:01.200 --> 00:18:03.960 disappearances of thousands of citizens, the 00:18:03.960 --> 00:18:07.250 torture, the systematic state terror, Borges 00:18:07.250 --> 00:18:10.430 was profoundly scandalized. He realized what 00:18:10.430 --> 00:18:13.049 he had supported. Exactly. And he didn't just 00:18:13.049 --> 00:18:15.150 quietly change his mind either. He actively turned 00:18:15.150 --> 00:18:17.329 against the regime. He stopped publishing in 00:18:17.329 --> 00:18:19.250 a major newspaper in protest. And remarkably, 00:18:19.369 --> 00:18:22.890 he actually attended the 1985 trials of the military 00:18:22.890 --> 00:18:25.390 junta as an observer. Right. He wrote that failing 00:18:25.390 --> 00:18:27.470 to condemn those crimes would make the entire 00:18:27.470 --> 00:18:29.750 country an accomplice to them. So by the end 00:18:29.750 --> 00:18:32.210 of his life, he had returned to a firm, renewed 00:18:32.210 --> 00:18:34.720 faith in democracy. So if you look at all these 00:18:34.720 --> 00:18:37.400 political shifts from opposing Peron to opposing 00:18:37.400 --> 00:18:40.200 fascists to supporting and then condemning the 00:18:40.200 --> 00:18:43.619 junta. So what does this all mean? How did a 00:18:43.619 --> 00:18:46.740 man who wrote about infinite imaginary worlds 00:18:46.740 --> 00:18:50.119 navigate such a dangerous polarized reality? 00:18:50.299 --> 00:18:52.339 This raises an important question about what 00:18:52.339 --> 00:18:55.440 actually drove him. For Borges, the ultimate 00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:59.000 enemy across all his political eras was the suppression 00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:02.299 of independent thought. I mean, why did a man 00:19:02.299 --> 00:19:06.019 who loved infinite possibilities hate authoritarianism? 00:19:06.579 --> 00:19:09.599 Because authoritarian regimes demand a single, 00:19:10.059 --> 00:19:11.680 unchangeable narrative. They demand a straight 00:19:11.680 --> 00:19:14.049 line? And he was the architect of the forking 00:19:14.049 --> 00:19:16.190 path. Exactly. He had a brilliant quote where 00:19:16.190 --> 00:19:18.289 he noted that dictatorships breed oppression 00:19:18.289 --> 00:19:20.890 and cruelty, but more loathsome still is the 00:19:20.890 --> 00:19:24.119 fact that they breed idiocy. Breed idiocy. Regimes 00:19:24.119 --> 00:19:26.519 of absolute power supply people with ready -made 00:19:26.519 --> 00:19:28.799 opinions, passwords, and slogans. They hand you 00:19:28.799 --> 00:19:31.019 a script so you don't have to do the hard, uncomfortable 00:19:31.019 --> 00:19:33.519 work of thinking for yourself. That is such a 00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:35.900 chilling and vital observation, especially today. 00:19:36.319 --> 00:19:39.980 The warning that systems of power, or even algorithms 00:19:39.980 --> 00:19:42.140 on our phones, want to hand you a ready -made 00:19:42.140 --> 00:19:44.359 opinion so you never have to think, that feels 00:19:44.359 --> 00:19:47.200 incredibly urgent in an era of mass digital propaganda. 00:19:47.450 --> 00:19:50.890 It really does. His life, despite its contradictions 00:19:50.890 --> 00:19:53.809 and its blind spots, is a testament to the absolute 00:19:53.809 --> 00:19:57.210 necessity of critical independent thought. He 00:19:57.210 --> 00:19:59.710 demanded that we read actively, that we question 00:19:59.710 --> 00:20:02.210 the text, and that we question the world around 00:20:02.210 --> 00:20:05.130 us. And the world eventually recognized that 00:20:05.130 --> 00:20:07.990 genius. I mean, for a long time, Borges was a 00:20:07.990 --> 00:20:10.009 secret known only to the Argentine avant -garde. 00:20:10.190 --> 00:20:13.180 And maybe if you translating admirers in France. 00:20:13.279 --> 00:20:16.319 Yeah, he was a writers writer. But in the 1960s, 00:20:16.440 --> 00:20:19.329 he achieved massive international renown. In 00:20:19.329 --> 00:20:22.609 1961, he shared the very first International 00:20:22.609 --> 00:20:25.430 Four Mentor Prize with Samuel Beckett, and that 00:20:25.430 --> 00:20:27.970 just catapulted him into the global spotlight. 00:20:28.230 --> 00:20:30.589 Suddenly he's touring the United States, lecturing 00:20:30.589 --> 00:20:33.309 at Harvard, and collaborating with translators 00:20:33.309 --> 00:20:35.829 who brought his multi -layered, intricate Spanish 00:20:35.829 --> 00:20:38.089 prose into beautiful English. He was celebrated 00:20:38.089 --> 00:20:40.410 by the greatest writers of the 20th century as 00:20:40.410 --> 00:20:42.789 an absolute master of the craft. But despite 00:20:42.789 --> 00:20:45.569 all of that, despite literally mapping out the 00:20:45.569 --> 00:20:47.950 philosophical architecture of the modern digital 00:20:47.950 --> 00:20:51.220 era, he never won the Nobel Prize in literature. 00:20:51.380 --> 00:20:53.819 Which is wild. He was nominated over 30 times. 00:20:54.220 --> 00:20:56.640 Over 30 times. It actually became a running joke 00:20:56.640 --> 00:20:59.920 for him. He used to say, not granting me the 00:20:59.920 --> 00:21:02.140 Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition. 00:21:02.319 --> 00:21:04.539 Since I was born, they have not been granting 00:21:04.539 --> 00:21:06.339 it to me. That's a great sense of humor about 00:21:06.339 --> 00:21:09.380 it. Yeah. There is endless speculation about 00:21:09.380 --> 00:21:12.160 why he didn't win. Some say his conservative 00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:15.539 political views during the 70s or a controversial 00:21:15.539 --> 00:21:17.740 award he accepted from the Pinochet regime in 00:21:17.740 --> 00:21:20.279 Chile kept the committee from granting it. Yeah, 00:21:20.380 --> 00:21:23.019 that makes sense. But in a strange way, it fits 00:21:23.019 --> 00:21:26.400 his narrative perfectly. The ultimate prize always 00:21:26.400 --> 00:21:28.900 remaining just out of reach. It's like a missing 00:21:28.900 --> 00:21:31.700 book in his infinite library. It really is. It 00:21:31.700 --> 00:21:34.529 leaves his story slightly open -ended. And, you 00:21:34.529 --> 00:21:37.210 know, to wrap up this deep dive today, we want 00:21:37.210 --> 00:21:39.450 to leave you with one final puzzle from the mind 00:21:39.450 --> 00:21:42.670 of Borges to apply to your own life. The Borgesian 00:21:42.670 --> 00:21:44.970 conundrum. Exactly. It's a philosophical concept 00:21:44.970 --> 00:21:47.390 that actually bears his name. It comes from an 00:21:47.390 --> 00:21:49.910 essay he wrote called Kafka and his precursors. 00:21:50.049 --> 00:21:52.089 Right, where Borges was looking at writers who 00:21:52.089 --> 00:21:54.950 lived long before Franz Kafka, but whose work 00:21:54.950 --> 00:21:58.069 somehow seemed to have a Kafkaesque vibe to it. 00:21:58.269 --> 00:22:00.549 And Borges argues something totally counterintuitive 00:22:00.549 --> 00:22:03.250 here. We usually think that the past creates 00:22:03.250 --> 00:22:05.970 the present, right? Like A leads to B. Cause 00:22:05.970 --> 00:22:08.490 and effect. Right. But Borsch has argued that 00:22:08.490 --> 00:22:11.450 a true genius actually creates her own precursors. 00:22:11.910 --> 00:22:14.130 If Kafka had never been born and never written 00:22:14.130 --> 00:22:16.809 his books, we wouldn't read those older texts 00:22:16.809 --> 00:22:18.730 same way. We wouldn't see the hidden patterns. 00:22:19.130 --> 00:22:21.829 The modern genius literally changes our conception 00:22:21.829 --> 00:22:25.230 of the past. The present reaches back and rewrites 00:22:25.230 --> 00:22:27.970 the meaning of history. So here is our final 00:22:27.970 --> 00:22:30.559 thought for you to mull over today. Take that 00:22:30.559 --> 00:22:32.759 Borgisian conundrum and apply it to yourself. 00:22:33.539 --> 00:22:35.759 Do we write the story of our lives as we move 00:22:35.759 --> 00:22:38.420 forward? Or does the story write us in reverse? 00:22:38.539 --> 00:22:41.579 Oh, that's good. Do the chaotic, confusing, seemingly 00:22:41.579 --> 00:22:44.559 random events of your past only make sense, only 00:22:44.559 --> 00:22:46.779 have a cohesive shape because of the specific 00:22:46.779 --> 00:22:49.339 person you have become today? If you fundamentally 00:22:49.339 --> 00:22:52.339 changed who you were tomorrow, would your entire 00:22:52.339 --> 00:22:54.880 past change its meaning along with you? It's 00:22:54.880 --> 00:22:57.460 the ultimate forking path. The map isn't just 00:22:57.460 --> 00:22:59.859 guiding us forward, it's constantly redrawing 00:22:59.859 --> 00:23:02.180 where we came from. Just like mapping the internet 00:23:02.180 --> 00:23:04.740 before the first screen was ever turned on. Thank 00:23:04.740 --> 00:23:06.579 you so much for joining us on this deep dive 00:23:06.579 --> 00:23:08.839 into the labyrinth. Keep questioning the maze 00:23:08.839 --> 00:23:10.140 and we'll see you next time.