The Fact of the Matter
Getting a firm hold on the truth is never as simple as nailing down the facts of a situation. This hour, we go after a series of seemingly simple facts -- facts that offer surprising insight, facts that inspire deeply different stories, and facts that, in the end, might not matter at all.
- Duration
- 1h 4m
- Broadcast on
- 24 Sep 2012
- Audio Format
- other
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
Getting a firm hold on the truth is never as simple as nailing down the facts of a situation. This hour, we go after a series of seemingly simple facts -- facts that offer surprising insight, facts that inspire deeply different stories, and facts that, in the end, might not matter at all.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Oh wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC and NPR. Okay, let's see. Hello? Hello! Hi! Is this Errol Morris? I think it's me. Hello! This is Chad from Radio Lab. Hi, thank you for your very, very nice, but somewhat disturbing email. What disturbed you in the email? The term truth-fascist. You called Errol Morris a truth-fascist? What were you thinking? I was trying to... I wrote him an email to try and get him to come talk to us, and I don't know why he used that. What is a truth-fascist? That was meant lovingly, I should say. Wasn't exactly the right choice of words. Fundamentalists? But really what I meant is this is a guy who's always trying to get to the bottom of things. He's made all these documentaries a thin blue line, got a guy off death row, actually in a thin blue line. He made the fog of war. Made Vernon, Florida. Yeah, but I contacted him because I'd recently seen him give this talk about this one investigation of his. For me, it's like the purest example of the thing that drives him. I think it's in all of his films, this desire-relentless desire to figure things out, to get to truth. And it all starts with a photograph. One of the very, very first photographs of war, 1855. Which war? This is the Crimean War that involved Great Britain, France, Russia, the Ottoman Empire. And believe it or not, Sardinia. The fighting took place in what is now basically the Ukraine, the Russians were on one side, everybody else on the other. Half a million people died. It was incredibly brutal. And there's this photograph titled "The Valley of the Shadow of Death". It's black and white. It shows a dirt road cutting through this landscape. Just one dirt road between two hills. There's nobody in the photograph. No birds, no trees, no people. There's really nothing living in the photograph. Not even grass. Nothing. But as you stare at this road a little more closely, you realize why nothing is living in this photograph.
Transcription truncated.
Getting a firm hold on the truth is never as simple as nailing down the facts of a situation. This hour, we go after a series of seemingly simple facts -- facts that offer surprising insight, facts that inspire deeply different stories, and facts that, in the end, might not matter at all.