In this episode we dive into the fabulous 2016 film Arrival; directed by Denis Villenueve and based on a short story by Ted Chiang. In this episode we discuss the contextual nature of language, seeing the big picture, education and learning, fractal reality, the importance of failure, the importance of excellence, foresight, choosing the hard path, and having an existential meta awareness of death all the time. I am stoked because, for the first time in three years, David is back on the show! Thanks for listening!

Big thanks to Graham King for joining me on episode 90!

In this episode we chat about the great film Boogie Nights (1997) by Paul Thomas Anderson. In this episode we wrangle with notions of:

• The essence of Faustian bargain being that you don't even ask for what you really want, and the isolation that comes with not knowing what you want
• The importance of apologies
• Exploitation
• The desire to make something good
• The state of film and quality films
• Stigma
• Plucking knowledge and art from the teeth of taboo and custom
• Surrogate parental instincts
• Flattery from insecurity
• Great films giving homage to other great films
• The mindblowing cinema that is Boogie Nights

Additional Spoiler: Magnolia - 8:20

Thank you everyone for listening to the show. Please feel free to leave a rating and review!

Welcome to a bonus episode of Really True Fiction. Those with a keen eye will have noticed that our last two episodes were on 1984 and Brave New World. So, for a bonus, Dan and I do a bit of a compare and contrast between them; seeing as they are both very famous and of a similar ouevre. In this bonus episode we talk about:

1984 being a better novel, sociopathic vs. beaurocratic evil, what is a more realistic villainy, the ennui of BNW, 1984 as a society that has actually been achieved in history, media/art/culture portrayals as more accurate in BNW, 1984 as more insightful on the manipulation of language, the different takes on hedonism, speaking as indecipherable from thinking, blasphemy, and which world we find more bleak.

Thanks for listening to this mini-adventure into classic dystopia!