Nineteen Eighty-Four

In a superstate where the Party watches everyone and rewrites the past, a low-level government worker named Winston Smith begins to quietly question everything. George Orwell's dystopian classic gave us Big Brother, thoughtcrime, and doublethink (1949).

• Ep 2 — Did science fiction invent our future? (18:14–19:49, 22:03–23:28): Caitlin points to "Big Brother" as the clearest case of sci-fi handing us language for surveillance. Rob says 1984 is such an interesting example because we now seem to be doing much of what it warned against: Flock cameras, endless data breaches, and ad profiles so accurate we think our phones are listening.
• Ep 3 — Science Fiction isn’t about the future (08:57–09:47, 14:27–16:00): Caitlin notes Orwell finished the book in 1948 and swapped the last two digits for the title, so he was really writing about his own present. Rob argues Orwell, fresh from World War II and the early Cold War, wrote about surveillance and fascism because that's what his moment was worried about.