WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.339 Imagine writing this like 500 page, incredibly 00:00:04.339 --> 00:00:07.660 dense academic treatise on medieval semiotics. 00:00:07.879 --> 00:00:10.400 Right. Just spending your entire day decoding 00:00:10.400 --> 00:00:13.039 the underlying architecture of human communication. 00:00:13.300 --> 00:00:15.699 Exactly. Just deep in the academic weeds. And 00:00:15.699 --> 00:00:18.859 then somehow the exact same brain produces a 00:00:18.859 --> 00:00:21.579 page turning historical murder mystery. A mystery 00:00:21.579 --> 00:00:23.579 that, you know, casually becomes a Hollywood 00:00:23.579 --> 00:00:26.160 blockbuster starring Sean Connery. Right. Which 00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:29.019 is just wild to think about. Today, we're exploring 00:00:29.320 --> 00:00:32.079 literally the only man in history to pull that 00:00:32.079 --> 00:00:35.420 off. Yep. The one and only Umberto Eco. We are 00:00:35.420 --> 00:00:39.000 unpacking the mind, the life, and just the completely 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:41.539 extraordinary legacy of this guy. And to you, 00:00:41.659 --> 00:00:43.539 the learner listening right now, you are, as 00:00:43.539 --> 00:00:46.100 always, the crucial third member of this conversation. 00:00:46.359 --> 00:00:48.159 We really are thrilled to have you here. And 00:00:48.159 --> 00:00:50.520 we've compiled a pretty fascinating stack of 00:00:50.520 --> 00:00:52.579 source material for this deep dive. We really 00:00:52.579 --> 00:00:54.640 have. What are we looking at today? What we'll 00:00:54.640 --> 00:00:58.289 be drawing from his early 1960s essays where 00:00:58.289 --> 00:01:01.130 he actually analyzes Italian television, which 00:01:01.130 --> 00:01:03.450 is super interesting, plus translations of his 00:01:03.450 --> 00:01:06.049 final university lectures. We also have critical 00:01:06.049 --> 00:01:10.890 analyses of his global fiction and his pretty 00:01:10.890 --> 00:01:13.010 stark warnings about the digital age. So it's 00:01:13.010 --> 00:01:15.709 a huge span of time. Exactly. Our mission today 00:01:15.709 --> 00:01:19.549 is basically to trace Eco's evolution from a 00:01:19.549 --> 00:01:22.370 child heavily indoctrinated in fascist Italy 00:01:22.370 --> 00:01:25.510 all the way to a towering public intellectual. 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:30.260 A guy who decoded everything from Thomas Aquinas 00:01:30.260 --> 00:01:33.560 to American comic books? Right. And even modern 00:01:33.560 --> 00:01:35.879 social media algorithms before he died. OK, let's 00:01:35.879 --> 00:01:38.260 impact this. Because to understand a man who 00:01:38.260 --> 00:01:41.000 spent his entire life completely obsessed with 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:43.480 how humans create and interpret meaning. You 00:01:43.480 --> 00:01:45.120 really have to start with the environment that 00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:47.040 shaped his reality in the first place. Exactly. 00:01:47.239 --> 00:01:49.760 If a state can completely construct your reality 00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:52.700 using symbols, how do you even begin to dismantle 00:01:52.700 --> 00:01:55.379 that? It's a huge question. So Eco was born in 00:01:55.379 --> 00:01:57.780 1932 in the city of Alessandria. Which is in 00:01:57.780 --> 00:01:59.299 the Piedmont region of northern Italy, right? 00:01:59.340 --> 00:02:02.540 Yeah, exactly. Which puts his formative years 00:02:02.540 --> 00:02:05.859 squarely in the grip of Mussolini's fascist regime. 00:02:05.959 --> 00:02:07.980 He was completely submerged in it from day one. 00:02:08.199 --> 00:02:12.060 Oh, absolutely. The spread of that ideology dictated 00:02:12.060 --> 00:02:15.840 the entire semiotic landscape of his childhood. 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:17.840 He wasn't just casually observing it either, 00:02:17.960 --> 00:02:19.960 right? He was participating. Very actively. I 00:02:19.960 --> 00:02:22.460 mean, at age 10, he actually won the first provincial 00:02:22.460 --> 00:02:25.780 award of Ludi juveniles. Wow. For what exactly? 00:02:25.800 --> 00:02:28.479 For an essay. He was responding to this very 00:02:28.479 --> 00:02:31.719 specific state -sponsored writing prompt. It 00:02:31.719 --> 00:02:34.939 was, should we die for the glory of Mussolini 00:02:34.939 --> 00:02:38.080 and the immortal destiny of Italy? That is intense 00:02:38.080 --> 00:02:40.199 for a 10 -year -old. Right. And young Oberdo 00:02:40.199 --> 00:02:43.379 responded with a resounding yes. I mean, of course 00:02:43.379 --> 00:02:46.139 he did. He absorbed the dominant narrative because, 00:02:46.340 --> 00:02:48.259 structurally speaking, that was literally the 00:02:48.259 --> 00:02:50.419 only narrative that existed for him. There was 00:02:50.419 --> 00:02:53.099 no alternative. I like to imagine his early childhood 00:02:53.099 --> 00:02:56.500 as being raised inside this incredibly rigid 00:02:56.500 --> 00:02:58.759 single -player video game. Oh, that's a good 00:02:58.759 --> 00:03:00.740 way to look at it. Right. Like, the state had 00:03:00.740 --> 00:03:03.020 just pre -programmed all the rules of reality. 00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:05.460 They coded the boundaries, who the heroes were, 00:03:05.460 --> 00:03:08.280 the villains, and... and what words were even 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:10.199 allowed to mean. Yeah, the map was fully drawn 00:03:10.199 --> 00:03:13.659 for him. But then, 1945 happens. During World 00:03:13.659 --> 00:03:16.479 War II, his family had moved to the small village 00:03:16.479 --> 00:03:18.800 in the Piedmontese mountainside. And when that 00:03:18.800 --> 00:03:21.060 village is liberated, it's like someone suddenly 00:03:21.060 --> 00:03:24.259 hands this kid a connection to the entire open 00:03:24.259 --> 00:03:26.599 internet. That's a great analogy. This structural 00:03:26.599 --> 00:03:29.889 rupture of his worldview was just a... It was 00:03:29.889 --> 00:03:32.729 absolute. The borders of his reality completely 00:03:32.729 --> 00:03:35.110 shattered. Literally overnight. Suddenly he's 00:03:35.110 --> 00:03:37.250 exposed to the European resistance. He's meeting 00:03:37.250 --> 00:03:39.210 people who had actively fought the regime. He 00:03:39.210 --> 00:03:42.590 was literally trained to praise. Right. And then 00:03:42.590 --> 00:03:44.509 he learns about the horrific realities of the 00:03:44.509 --> 00:03:47.169 Holocaust. Exactly. Which exposed the, you know, 00:03:47.229 --> 00:03:49.569 the lethal endpoint of the rhetoric he'd grown 00:03:49.569 --> 00:03:51.669 up reciting. And then on a completely different, 00:03:52.129 --> 00:03:54.509 like almost surreal cultural level, the liberation 00:03:54.509 --> 00:03:56.909 brings American comic books into his hands for 00:03:56.909 --> 00:03:59.810 the first time. Which is just such a cr - What's 00:03:59.810 --> 00:04:02.710 fascinating here is that surviving this exact 00:04:02.710 --> 00:04:05.770 ideological whiplash is precisely what drove 00:04:05.770 --> 00:04:09.650 Eco to study how messages control us. Yeah, going 00:04:09.650 --> 00:04:12.569 from strict militaristic propaganda to Captain 00:04:12.569 --> 00:04:16.550 America and Superman. It's insane. But he realized 00:04:16.550 --> 00:04:19.589 with brutal clarity that the reality he believed 00:04:19.589 --> 00:04:23.209 as a boy wasn't some natural truth. It was artificially 00:04:23.209 --> 00:04:25.370 constructed. Through language and symbols. Right. 00:04:25.529 --> 00:04:28.750 orchestrated propaganda. And this birthed his 00:04:28.750 --> 00:04:31.470 lifelong obsession with peeling back the layers 00:04:31.470 --> 00:04:34.149 of how meaning is actually made. He basically 00:04:34.149 --> 00:04:37.149 needed to know the mechanics of how signs operate 00:04:37.149 --> 00:04:39.769 on our psychology so he could just never be manipulated 00:04:39.769 --> 00:04:41.689 like that again. Exactly. It was intellectual 00:04:41.689 --> 00:04:44.180 self -defense. It totally reframes his whole 00:04:44.180 --> 00:04:47.240 career. Semionics wasn't just some dusty academia 00:04:47.240 --> 00:04:49.740 for him. No, it was a survival tool. And speaking 00:04:49.740 --> 00:04:51.980 of the mechanics of signs, there's this brilliant 00:04:51.980 --> 00:04:54.240 detail in the sources about his actual surname. 00:04:54.579 --> 00:04:56.560 Oh, yeah, I love this part. So towards the end 00:04:56.560 --> 00:04:58.980 of his life, he learned that Eco was likely an 00:04:58.980 --> 00:05:02.439 acronym. Wait, really? An acronym for what? Well, 00:05:02.680 --> 00:05:05.899 his grandfather had been a foundling, an abandoned 00:05:05.899 --> 00:05:08.660 child, and a city official gave him that surname. 00:05:08.779 --> 00:05:11.779 OK. A friend of Eco's actually found the acronym 00:05:11.779 --> 00:05:15.139 on this list of Jesuit acronyms in the Vatican 00:05:15.139 --> 00:05:18.680 Library. It stands for Excalus Oblatus. Which 00:05:18.680 --> 00:05:20.819 is Latin for, like, a gift from the heavens. 00:05:21.259 --> 00:05:23.860 Exactly. I mean, a man obsessed with hidden codes 00:05:23.860 --> 00:05:26.750 discovering his own name? is literally a hidden 00:05:26.750 --> 00:05:29.670 Latin code. It's just a remarkable piece of poetic 00:05:29.670 --> 00:05:33.129 justice. It really is. Yeah. But, you know, this 00:05:33.129 --> 00:05:36.350 drive to find the structural truth behind institutions, 00:05:36.370 --> 00:05:39.129 it eventually led him to dismantle his own religious 00:05:39.129 --> 00:05:41.389 upbringing, too. Oh, right, because he was raised 00:05:41.389 --> 00:05:43.930 pretty strictly Catholic. Very strict Salesian 00:05:43.930 --> 00:05:46.550 Catholic education. But while he was writing 00:05:46.550 --> 00:05:49.610 his university thesis on Thomas Aquinas, Of all 00:05:49.610 --> 00:05:52.750 people, he systematically ceased to believe in 00:05:52.750 --> 00:05:54.550 God. He just walked away from the Catholic Church 00:05:54.550 --> 00:05:58.350 entirely. He did. He required empirical, rigorous 00:05:58.350 --> 00:06:00.569 frameworks that could actually be tested. He 00:06:00.569 --> 00:06:03.069 even helped co -found an Italian skeptic organization 00:06:03.069 --> 00:06:05.790 later on to investigate pseudosciences. He really 00:06:05.790 --> 00:06:08.350 just committed his entire life to interrogating 00:06:08.350 --> 00:06:10.389 reality. Yeah, he couldn't just accept things 00:06:10.389 --> 00:06:12.689 that face value anymore. Which logically pushes 00:06:12.689 --> 00:06:15.250 him right out of the ivory tower and into the 00:06:15.250 --> 00:06:17.930 trenches of the 1950s media landscape. Oh, yeah. 00:06:18.029 --> 00:06:20.069 He doesn't just stay in a library studying ancient 00:06:20.069 --> 00:06:23.569 texts. No, he gets a job at RAI, the state broadcasting 00:06:23.569 --> 00:06:26.230 station in Milan. Producing cultural programming 00:06:26.230 --> 00:06:28.500 for television. Right. He takes all these heavy 00:06:28.500 --> 00:06:31.399 academic tools for analyzing medieval manuscripts 00:06:31.399 --> 00:06:33.819 and just points them at the new dominant force 00:06:33.819 --> 00:06:35.980 in society. The glowing screen in the living 00:06:35.980 --> 00:06:38.939 room. Exactly. And television in the 50s was 00:06:38.939 --> 00:06:41.459 establishing this totally unprecedented kind 00:06:41.459 --> 00:06:44.240 of cultural dominance. And Eco immediately recognized 00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:46.439 that it required aggressive critical decoding. 00:06:46.620 --> 00:06:49.839 He formalized this approach in 1961, right, with 00:06:49.839 --> 00:06:52.240 that essay that made him famous. Phenomenology 00:06:52.240 --> 00:06:55.439 of Mike Bongiorno. Yes. OK, explain this to the 00:06:55.439 --> 00:06:56.879 learner because Mike Bongiorno Bon Giorno was, 00:06:56.959 --> 00:06:59.540 what, a game show host? Yeah, Bon Giorno was 00:06:59.540 --> 00:07:03.420 this massively popular, but notoriously unrefined 00:07:03.420 --> 00:07:07.220 quiz show host in Italy. Like, very basic, every 00:07:07.220 --> 00:07:10.120 man kind of guy. Right. And instead of dismissing 00:07:10.120 --> 00:07:13.209 him as just lowbrow trash, Eco put him under 00:07:13.209 --> 00:07:15.870 a rigorous philosophical microscope to understand 00:07:15.870 --> 00:07:19.649 his semiotic function in society. And the mechanism 00:07:19.649 --> 00:07:22.790 he uncovers is honestly devastating. It really 00:07:22.790 --> 00:07:25.810 is. Eco observes that Bongiorno is beloved, not 00:07:25.810 --> 00:07:28.370 despite his mediocrity, but literally because 00:07:28.370 --> 00:07:32.610 of it. Yeah. The source material quotes Eco saying, 00:07:33.050 --> 00:07:36.389 Bongiorno represents an ideal that nobody needs 00:07:36.389 --> 00:07:38.250 drive to reach because everyone is already at 00:07:38.250 --> 00:07:41.290 his level. Ouch. He essentially proves that mass 00:07:41.290 --> 00:07:43.269 media isn't designed to elevate the public at 00:07:43.269 --> 00:07:45.689 all. No, not at all. It's designed to comfort 00:07:45.689 --> 00:07:49.269 us by aggressively validating our lack of intellectual 00:07:49.269 --> 00:07:52.290 effort. He was charting exactly how mass media 00:07:52.290 --> 00:07:54.269 encourages passivity. Just sit back and don't 00:07:54.269 --> 00:07:56.610 think too hard. Right. And the very next year, 00:07:56.670 --> 00:08:00.269 in 1962, he countered this passivity by publishing 00:08:00.269 --> 00:08:03.269 a landmark book called Opera Aperta. The open 00:08:03.269 --> 00:08:07.519 work. Exactly. His thesis was that texts... You 00:08:07.519 --> 00:08:10.939 know, novels, art, music, they are not singular, 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:13.699 unequivocal messages handed down by an author. 00:08:13.800 --> 00:08:15.680 They're what he called fields of meaning. Yes. 00:08:15.879 --> 00:08:17.439 Here's where it gets really interesting. But 00:08:17.439 --> 00:08:19.420 I admit, the terminology is a little abstract. 00:08:19.519 --> 00:08:21.579 So let me try an analogy to ground this for everyone. 00:08:21.699 --> 00:08:24.120 Go for it. Think of what Eco called a closed 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:27.480 text as a strict IKEA instruction manual. OK, 00:08:27.720 --> 00:08:30.100 yeah. The manufacturer dictates every single 00:08:30.100 --> 00:08:32.769 move you make. There's only one valid outcome. 00:08:32.830 --> 00:08:34.750 If you deviate, you fail, you have a broken chair. 00:08:35.149 --> 00:08:37.450 The meaning is entirely locked. Right, totally 00:08:37.450 --> 00:08:40.029 locked. But an open text, which is what Oka was 00:08:40.029 --> 00:08:42.509 championing, is more like someone handing you 00:08:42.509 --> 00:08:45.129 a massive box of assorted Legos. I would love 00:08:45.129 --> 00:08:47.610 that. The pieces are provided, the raw field 00:08:47.610 --> 00:08:50.490 of meaning is there, but you, the reader, have 00:08:50.490 --> 00:08:53.830 to actively engage your own psychology to co 00:08:53.830 --> 00:08:56.490 -create the final product. The analogy holds 00:08:56.490 --> 00:08:59.169 up really well because it emphasizes that dynamic 00:08:59.169 --> 00:09:02.519 engagement in an Open work, the text actively 00:09:02.519 --> 00:09:04.960 invites you to play and interpret. And the reason 00:09:04.960 --> 00:09:07.279 this matters to the listener today is just profound. 00:09:07.460 --> 00:09:10.100 Yeah. We navigate a world where politicians, 00:09:10.759 --> 00:09:13.100 advertisers, social media algorithms, they're 00:09:13.100 --> 00:09:15.720 all constantly trying to hand us IKEA manuals. 00:09:15.759 --> 00:09:17.860 They really are. They want to force a closed 00:09:17.860 --> 00:09:20.240 narrative on us where we just passively accept 00:09:20.240 --> 00:09:22.899 their heavily curated meaning. But EECA wanted 00:09:22.899 --> 00:09:26.379 to fight back against that. In a 1967 lecture, 00:09:26.590 --> 00:09:29.529 He actually coined the term semiological guerrilla 00:09:29.529 --> 00:09:32.490 warfare. Such a great phrase. He urged the public 00:09:32.490 --> 00:09:35.429 to use interpretive tactics against mainstream 00:09:35.429 --> 00:09:39.889 mass media to intercept, decode and subvert those 00:09:39.889 --> 00:09:42.110 closed messages. But I have to push back a bit 00:09:42.110 --> 00:09:44.129 on this open work idea. OK, what's the issue? 00:09:44.330 --> 00:09:46.990 If a text is just a box of Legos and the reader 00:09:46.990 --> 00:09:49.350 co -creates the meaning, what stops someone from 00:09:49.350 --> 00:09:51.610 building just a chaotic monstrosity and calling 00:09:51.610 --> 00:09:54.750 it a masterpiece? Right. The anything goes problem. 00:09:54.870 --> 00:09:57.009 Yeah, doesn't that just lead to total subjective 00:09:57.009 --> 00:09:59.590 chaos where nothing means anything at all? That 00:09:59.590 --> 00:10:02.389 is actually the crucial tension in Eco's entire 00:10:02.389 --> 00:10:06.269 philosophy. An open work is not an invitation 00:10:06.269 --> 00:10:10.330 to anarchy. Okay. It is an invited freedom, but 00:10:10.330 --> 00:10:13.470 within boundaries. The author provides the structural 00:10:13.470 --> 00:10:16.470 framework, the specific Lego bricks, and the 00:10:16.470 --> 00:10:18.929 rules of physics for that world. So you can build 00:10:18.929 --> 00:10:20.710 many different things, but you can't build something 00:10:20.710 --> 00:10:22.870 that the pieces themselves fundamentally don't 00:10:22.870 --> 00:10:25.590 support. Exactly. And he spends decades teaching 00:10:25.590 --> 00:10:27.970 the public how to navigate this. Teaching them 00:10:27.970 --> 00:10:30.870 how to dismantle the media machine. Yeah. But 00:10:30.870 --> 00:10:33.789 then he decides to build his own ultimate open 00:10:33.789 --> 00:10:36.149 text sandbox to see if the public will actually 00:10:36.149 --> 00:10:39.419 play along. This is my favorite part. In 1980, 00:10:39.820 --> 00:10:43.559 this dense academic semiotician releases his 00:10:43.559 --> 00:10:47.340 first novel, The Name of the Rose, a 14th century 00:10:47.340 --> 00:10:50.659 monastery murder mystery, which sounds incredibly 00:10:50.659 --> 00:10:53.620 niche on paper. Super niche, yet it became a 00:10:53.620 --> 00:10:56.059 massive global phenomenon. How did he avoid making 00:10:56.059 --> 00:10:59.179 it sound like an audio textbook, though? He utilized 00:10:59.179 --> 00:11:02.139 this mechanism called intertextuality. It's the 00:11:02.139 --> 00:11:05.340 concept that no text exists in a vacuum. all 00:11:05.340 --> 00:11:07.639 literature is interconnected. He didn't just 00:11:07.639 --> 00:11:10.480 write a linear story, he constructed a labyrinth 00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:13.580 of literary references, proving his thesis that 00:11:13.580 --> 00:11:16.139 meaning is generated when a reader recognizes 00:11:16.139 --> 00:11:18.039 those connections. Let's look at the protagonist, 00:11:18.340 --> 00:11:20.960 for example. He's a Franciscan friar named William 00:11:20.960 --> 00:11:23.980 of Baskerville. He's this hyper -logical Englishman 00:11:23.980 --> 00:11:27.580 investigating murders. The name Baskerville immediately 00:11:27.580 --> 00:11:29.980 signals Sherlock Holmes to the reader. Oh, absolutely. 00:11:30.460 --> 00:11:32.240 And the sources note that William's physical 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:34.600 descriptions heavily mirror Arthur Conan Doyle's 00:11:34.600 --> 00:11:37.200 character, too. Right, the tall, thin, intellectual 00:11:37.200 --> 00:11:40.539 type. But his name and his role as a friar actively 00:11:40.539 --> 00:11:43.279 evoke the medieval logical philosopher William 00:11:43.279 --> 00:11:46.100 of Ockham. Famous for Ockham's razor. Exactly. 00:11:46.440 --> 00:11:49.379 He is this carefully engineered hybrid homage. 00:11:49.629 --> 00:11:52.450 And then there's the antagonist, this blind monk 00:11:52.450 --> 00:11:55.149 who guards the labyrinthine library named Jorge 00:11:55.149 --> 00:11:57.769 of Borgos. Which is brilliant. The sources tell 00:11:57.769 --> 00:12:00.350 us this is a direct structural tribute to the 00:12:00.350 --> 00:12:03.070 real -life blind writer Jorge Luis Borges. Who 00:12:03.070 --> 00:12:05.450 famously wrote the short story The Library of 00:12:05.450 --> 00:12:08.529 Babel. Yes. Eco isn't just dropping Easter eggs 00:12:08.529 --> 00:12:10.889 for the fun of it. He is forcing the reader to 00:12:10.889 --> 00:12:14.110 constantly reference outside knowledge to actually 00:12:14.110 --> 00:12:16.990 unlock the text. Even the title operates as a 00:12:16.990 --> 00:12:20.080 semiotic puzzle. It remains entirely unexplained 00:12:20.080 --> 00:12:22.679 until the very final page. Right, it concludes 00:12:22.679 --> 00:12:33.460 with that Latin verse. Which translates to, What's 00:12:33.460 --> 00:12:35.980 your take on that? Well, meaning that all the 00:12:35.980 --> 00:12:38.179 great physical things of the world. Empires, 00:12:38.399 --> 00:12:40.700 beautiful moments, monasteries, actual roses. 00:12:40.940 --> 00:12:43.320 Yeah, they all eventually decay and vanish. The 00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:45.480 only thing that actually endures is the sign. 00:12:45.639 --> 00:12:47.899 the word, the name we assign to it. It's just 00:12:47.899 --> 00:12:50.659 a gorgeous thesis on semiotics wrapped in a gothic 00:12:50.659 --> 00:12:53.360 thriller. It really is. And if we connect this 00:12:53.360 --> 00:12:56.480 to the bigger picture regarding why it became 00:12:56.480 --> 00:13:00.019 so popular, Eco deeply respected what he called 00:13:00.019 --> 00:13:03.460 the intentio lectoris. The intention of the reader? 00:13:03.940 --> 00:13:07.039 Yes. He proved something vital about human psychology. 00:13:07.379 --> 00:13:10.139 He proved that audiences actually desire complexity. 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:13.120 We don't just want the easy quiz show host telling 00:13:13.120 --> 00:13:15.940 us we're perfect just the way we are. No, we 00:13:15.940 --> 00:13:19.460 want to hunt for clues. We genuinely enjoy the 00:13:19.460 --> 00:13:22.960 psychological reward of solving a difficult puzzle. 00:13:24.059 --> 00:13:26.220 The name of the rose validated his theory of 00:13:26.220 --> 00:13:29.000 the open work on a massive international scale. 00:13:29.279 --> 00:13:32.529 It's such an empowering era of his career. But 00:13:32.529 --> 00:13:35.570 as we move into the late 1980s and 90s, the sources 00:13:35.570 --> 00:13:38.509 show a noticeable shift. A very dark shift. Yeah. 00:13:38.769 --> 00:13:40.789 His work turns into a much darker warning about 00:13:40.789 --> 00:13:42.950 the dangers of overinterpretation. It really 00:13:42.950 --> 00:13:45.029 does. And just to be completely clear to you 00:13:45.029 --> 00:13:47.889 listening, as we unpack the historical origins 00:13:47.889 --> 00:13:50.610 of fascism and anti -Semitic propaganda mentioned 00:13:50.610 --> 00:13:53.350 in the sources here, we obviously aren't endorsing 00:13:53.350 --> 00:13:55.389 any of those political viewpoints. No, of course 00:13:55.389 --> 00:13:58.110 not. We are strictly reporting on eco's analysis 00:13:58.110 --> 00:14:00.450 of how these dangerous ideologies use symbols 00:14:00.450 --> 00:14:03.179 to manipulate the public. And establishing that 00:14:03.179 --> 00:14:06.100 boundary is essential, because Eco dedicated 00:14:06.100 --> 00:14:09.419 his later life to defining the absolute limits 00:14:09.419 --> 00:14:11.379 of interpretation. Right, you can't just build 00:14:11.379 --> 00:14:14.659 anything with a Lego. Exactly. In his 1988 novel 00:14:14.659 --> 00:14:17.299 Foucault's Pendulum, he explores the psychology 00:14:17.299 --> 00:14:20.399 of confabulation. This plot is wild. It follows 00:14:20.399 --> 00:14:23.799 three underemployed editors of a minor publishing 00:14:23.799 --> 00:14:26.379 house, right? Yeah. Out of pure boredom, they 00:14:26.379 --> 00:14:29.299 begin connecting random historical dots and invent 00:14:29.299 --> 00:14:32.480 this complex conspiracy theory they call The 00:14:32.480 --> 00:14:35.240 Plan. Involving the Knights Templar and global 00:14:35.240 --> 00:14:37.899 domination. Yep. They take the box of Legos and 00:14:37.899 --> 00:14:40.120 start building connections that the pieces don't 00:14:40.120 --> 00:14:42.120 actually support. They're playing a semiotic 00:14:42.120 --> 00:14:45.519 game. Precisely. But the mechanism of conspiracy 00:14:45.519 --> 00:14:48.379 is intoxicating. Outsiders learn of The Plan. 00:14:48.700 --> 00:14:50.820 They actually believe these editors have discovered 00:14:50.820 --> 00:14:53.840 a genuine occult secret. And the paranoia becomes 00:14:53.840 --> 00:14:56.759 deadly real. Eco is mapping out how the human 00:14:56.759 --> 00:14:59.720 brain's desire to find patterns can metastasize 00:14:59.720 --> 00:15:02.100 into destructive paranoia when we just abandon 00:15:02.100 --> 00:15:04.820 critical rigor. It's a stark warning, and he 00:15:04.820 --> 00:15:06.940 tackles the real -world consequences of this 00:15:06.940 --> 00:15:09.379 in his 2010 novel, The Prague Cemetery. Which 00:15:09.379 --> 00:15:12.879 is a heavy book. Very. He meticulously explores 00:15:12.879 --> 00:15:16.080 the historical origins of modern anti -Semitism, 00:15:16.940 --> 00:15:19.500 specifically the fabrication of the protocols 00:15:19.500 --> 00:15:22.299 of the elders of Zion. Right. He demonstrates 00:15:22.299 --> 00:15:25.960 how a completely invented, forged document can 00:15:25.960 --> 00:15:29.000 be interpreted by the public as absolute truth. 00:15:29.440 --> 00:15:31.679 Leading to catastrophic historical violence. 00:15:32.179 --> 00:15:34.820 He simply refused to let the public forget how 00:15:34.820 --> 00:15:37.399 easily meaning can be weaponized. And he spelled 00:15:37.399 --> 00:15:40.799 this out directly in his 1995 essay. or fascism. 00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:43.159 He distilled the mechanisms of totalitarianism 00:15:43.159 --> 00:15:46.679 into 14 general properties. He analyzed how fascism 00:15:46.679 --> 00:15:49.120 functions not just as a political party but as 00:15:49.120 --> 00:15:51.620 a psychological framework. Like the cult of tradition 00:15:51.620 --> 00:15:54.259 where an ideology claims that all truth has already 00:15:54.259 --> 00:15:56.840 been discovered. Meaning no new learning or advancement 00:15:56.840 --> 00:15:59.720 is permitted. He also highlights action for action's 00:15:59.720 --> 00:16:02.799 sake. This idea that thinking is a form of emasculation 00:16:02.799 --> 00:16:04.960 and that action must be taken before or even 00:16:04.960 --> 00:16:07.620 without any previous reflection. It's chilling 00:16:07.620 --> 00:16:09.799 how perfectly that maps on to the mechanics of 00:16:09.799 --> 00:16:11.840 outrage culture today. It really is. And Eco 00:16:11.840 --> 00:16:13.639 saw the technological writing on the wall with 00:16:13.639 --> 00:16:16.360 all this. Oh, he became increasingly critical 00:16:16.360 --> 00:16:18.940 of systems that amplified unreflective noise. 00:16:19.620 --> 00:16:23.379 Even in 1995, he completely dismissed hypertexts 00:16:23.379 --> 00:16:25.960 and early multimedia novels as obsolete gimmicks. 00:16:26.120 --> 00:16:28.399 He thought they fractured attention rather than 00:16:28.399 --> 00:16:31.200 enhancing meaning. But his critique of social 00:16:31.200 --> 00:16:34.000 media 20 years later is probably his most stinging 00:16:34.000 --> 00:16:37.179 indictment. Yeah, in 2015, he offered a brutally 00:16:37.179 --> 00:16:39.610 harsh assessment. of the digital landscape. What 00:16:39.610 --> 00:16:42.409 did he say? He said, and I quote, social media 00:16:42.409 --> 00:16:44.690 gives legions of idiots the right to speak when 00:16:44.690 --> 00:16:47.370 they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of 00:16:47.370 --> 00:16:50.110 wine without harming the community. But now they 00:16:50.110 --> 00:16:52.190 have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize 00:16:52.190 --> 00:16:54.750 winner. It's the invasion of the idiots. Oh. 00:16:55.570 --> 00:16:57.450 But this raises an important question, which 00:16:57.450 --> 00:16:59.389 really became the central tension of his final 00:16:59.389 --> 00:17:02.149 years. Yeah. He championed the open text. He 00:17:02.149 --> 00:17:05.630 wanted audiences to actively engage. But interpretation 00:17:05.630 --> 00:17:08.150 is not infinite. You cannot just make a text 00:17:08.150 --> 00:17:10.809 or a news event or a historical fact mean whatever 00:17:10.809 --> 00:17:12.769 you want it to mean just to suit your personal 00:17:12.769 --> 00:17:15.170 paranoia. There's a firm non -negotiable line 00:17:15.170 --> 00:17:17.890 between valid critical analysis and dangerous 00:17:17.890 --> 00:17:20.829 unhinged confabulation. You can't use the Lego 00:17:20.829 --> 00:17:23.109 pieces to build a functional weapon and claim 00:17:23.109 --> 00:17:26.109 you're just playing. Exactly. So what does this 00:17:26.109 --> 00:17:28.910 all mean for us? Think about your own social 00:17:28.910 --> 00:17:31.880 media feed right now. As you scroll through the 00:17:31.880 --> 00:17:35.000 algorithmic outrage, the hot takes, the fractured 00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:37.539 context. Are we all just becoming those bored 00:17:37.539 --> 00:17:40.019 editors in Foucault's pendulum? Are we endlessly 00:17:40.019 --> 00:17:42.420 inventing conspiracies, connecting dots that 00:17:42.420 --> 00:17:44.900 don't exist, and mistaking the resulting noise 00:17:44.900 --> 00:17:48.140 for reality? Eco's entire trajectory, from the 00:17:48.140 --> 00:17:51.299 child who survived Mussolini's orchestrated reality, 00:17:51.779 --> 00:17:54.099 to the aging professor observing the rise of 00:17:54.099 --> 00:17:56.640 Twitter. It was a sustained defense of rigorous, 00:17:56.720 --> 00:17:59.720 critical thought against the rising tide of unchecked 00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:02.700 digital noise and intellectual laziness. He demanded 00:18:02.700 --> 00:18:05.140 that we participate in the creation of meaning. 00:18:05.640 --> 00:18:07.400 Because if you don't interpret the signs around 00:18:07.400 --> 00:18:09.819 you, someone else will gladly interpret them 00:18:09.819 --> 00:18:12.420 for you. Usually to their own advantage. He wanted 00:18:12.420 --> 00:18:15.619 us awake. Whether the signs are hidden in a 14th 00:18:15.619 --> 00:18:18.099 century monastery library, embedded in a political 00:18:18.099 --> 00:18:20.980 speech, or just glowing on a television screen. 00:18:21.079 --> 00:18:23.519 Which is a perfect synthesis. But there's one 00:18:23.519 --> 00:18:26.819 final piece of the puzzle. We have talked endlessly 00:18:26.819 --> 00:18:30.480 today about eco interpreting meaning, but there's 00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:32.779 a crucial detail in the source material we haven't 00:18:32.779 --> 00:18:36.500 touched on yet. Oh, right. Eco was also a highly 00:18:36.500 --> 00:18:39.640 prolific translator. Yes. He famously translated 00:18:39.640 --> 00:18:43.019 Raymond Kano's notoriously complex book exercises 00:18:43.019 --> 00:18:46.359 and style into Italian. And translation is... 00:18:46.299 --> 00:18:49.500 arguably the ultimate semiotic act. You aren't 00:18:49.500 --> 00:18:52.200 simply swapping out vocabulary words using a 00:18:52.200 --> 00:18:54.839 dictionary. No, you are dissecting the underlying 00:18:54.839 --> 00:18:56.980 mechanisms of one language and attempting to 00:18:56.980 --> 00:18:59.309 reconstruct them in another. When you translate 00:18:59.309 --> 00:19:02.069 a text, you fundamentally alter the cultural 00:19:02.069 --> 00:19:04.710 code and the entire semiotic landscape of the 00:19:04.710 --> 00:19:07.150 piece. You're moving a world of meaning from 00:19:07.150 --> 00:19:09.730 one reality into another. Right. So I want to 00:19:09.730 --> 00:19:11.529 leave you with a final thought to mull over. 00:19:11.569 --> 00:19:14.710 OK. If our entire digital world today, our news 00:19:14.710 --> 00:19:16.809 feeds, our social interactions, our search results, 00:19:17.190 --> 00:19:19.569 if all of that is constantly being translated 00:19:19.569 --> 00:19:22.170 for us through algorithms and artificial intelligence. 00:19:22.329 --> 00:19:24.049 Whose cultural code are we actually reading? 00:19:24.490 --> 00:19:27.430 Exactly. When an AI summarizes the world for 00:19:27.430 --> 00:19:30.730 you, what invisible structural boundaries has 00:19:30.730 --> 00:19:33.170 it already decided upon? Who is really doing 00:19:33.170 --> 00:19:36.130 the translating? A structural question that Umberto 00:19:36.130 --> 00:19:38.250 Eco would undoubtedly want us to spend a great 00:19:38.250 --> 00:19:40.609 deal of time trying to answer. Keep questioning 00:19:40.609 --> 00:19:43.069 the signs in your own world. Try not to settle 00:19:43.069 --> 00:19:46.230 for the IKEA manual. Words to live by. Thank 00:19:46.230 --> 00:19:48.089 you so much for joining us on this deep dive 00:19:48.089 --> 00:19:50.009 into a man who showed us how to read between 00:19:50.009 --> 00:19:52.049 the lines, and we will catch you next time.