The Corbett Report - Film, Literature and the New World Order
Aug 4, 2026 · 1 hr 16 min · 16 segments
When you read Umberto Eco's Foucault’s Pendulum and saw the allusions to Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, did you begin to suspect a Plan. Did you think that James was obviously sending you on a literary…
Tom-Oliver RegenauerGuestBut yes, I will probably never be able to talk to another human being about this book ever again because no one will ever read it.
And, you know, your story is fascinating and interesting and funny because as soon as you mentioned those books that you got when you got to high school and they're trying to make you read these stuffy books with this incredibly difficult language, I'm like, wait, do you like Foucault's pendulum? Because yeah, it is not an easy read.
And as you say, it mixes reality with fiction in a way that is fascinating and provocative and and philosophically interesting because, of course, as people who have done any sort of precursory research on Umberto Eco will know, he was a semiotics professor.
And that comes through when you start to get into his work in a more serious way and some of his nonfiction and other things.
I will throw, for example, a YouTube video I came across on the ashes of postmodernism and new realism, a conference with Umberto Eco, which is... an actual lecture that he delivered at this one conference that shows his philosophical chops and some of the things that, um, that he talks about, um, with regards to this.
But yes, he raised, of course, first of all, the first thing that most people will encounter when they pick up this book is that it is an incredibly difficult, incredibly dense, incredibly, um, What can I say? Offensive tome insofar as, yes, there is this sort of impenetrable barrier that you have to break through in order to get into the book.
But as you say, Echo very specifically said in one of his interviews that I saw with regards to Name of the Rose, which I have not...
He said that the first hundred pages of that book, the publisher was very enthusiastic about the book, but said the first hundred pages is too historical.
And he said, no, I will not do that because the first hundred pages is the penitence that you have to pay in order to enter the Benedictine Monastery.
exactly as an initiate into the monastery would have to pay penitence in order to gain entry.
He said, if you're not willing to pay that first hundred pages penitence, then good, go on, be on your merry way.
And I think there is probably some aspect of that in this work as well, right? Yeah.
And he even released an addendum book to the name of the Rose of 120 pages because I think he left something out in the first 100 pages.
But yes, I will probably never be able to talk to another human being about this book ever again because no one will ever read it.
And, you know, your story is fascinating and interesting and funny because as soon as you mentioned those books that you got when you got to high school and they're trying to make you read these stuffy books with this incredibly difficult language, I'm like, wait, do you like Foucault's pendulum? Because yeah, it is not an easy read.
And as you say, it mixes reality with fiction in a way that is fascinating and provocative and and philosophically interesting because, of course, as people who have done any sort of precursory research on Umberto Eco will know, he was a semiotics professor.
And that comes through when you start to get into his work in a more serious way and some of his nonfiction and other things.
I will throw, for example, a YouTube video I came across on the ashes of postmodernism and new realism, a conference with Umberto Eco, which is... an actual lecture that he delivered at this one conference that shows his philosophical chops and some of the things that, um, that he talks about, um, with regards to this.
But yes, he raised, of course, first of all, the first thing that most people will encounter when they pick up this book is that it is an incredibly difficult, incredibly dense, incredibly, um, What can I say? Offensive tome insofar as, yes, there is this sort of impenetrable barrier that you have to break through in order to get into the book.
But as you say, Echo very specifically said in one of his interviews that I saw with regards to Name of the Rose, which I have not...
He said that the first hundred pages of that book, the publisher was very enthusiastic about the book, but said the first hundred pages is too historical.
And he said, no, I will not do that because the first hundred pages is the penitence that you have to pay in order to enter the Benedictine Monastery.
exactly as an initiate into the monastery would have to pay penitence in order to gain entry.
He said, if you're not willing to pay that first hundred pages penitence, then good, go on, be on your merry way.
And I think there is probably some aspect of that in this work as well, right? Yeah.
And he even released an addendum book to the name of the Rose of 120 pages because I think he left something out in the first 100 pages.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.