The dialogue in each video is a reconstructed drama
The two people in each game mostly lived in different times and in different countries. The dialogue in each video is a dramatization reconstructed from what the two left in writing and in speech. Most of them never met; where there is a record that they actually crossed paths, as with Hegel and Schopenhauer in Game 1, we use only what that record covers.
What is imagined is the stage where the two sit face to face, the way their lines are phrased, and the imagined characters and imagined examples identified in the full script. What each figure says comes from what that person left in writing and in speech, or from records about that person. Lines that rely on stories handed down are identified in the full script, and for every line we note which book, letter or lecture it came from.
In the full script, the lines spoken by the figures are marked "Reconstruction".
Five gates every video passes through
- We check the original sources first. For every anecdote we want to use in a story, we first see whether there is an original source, and whether it is a record or a story handed down. Anecdotes whose source we cannot find are not used.
- We verify the script twice, independently. From every sentence we pull out dates, numbers, quotations and causes and check them against at least two reliable sources, and we match quotations against the original text. A checker separate from those who wrote the script verifies it independently.
- We look again at every sentence we fix. We check the changed lines again, on their own, to make sure a fix has not created a new error.
- We check the words on screen. A new checker who knows nothing of the earlier checks goes over everything from the start: the subtitles, the cards and labels on screen, the English subtitles, the description and the title.
- We check what we publish. As a last step, we make sure the description, title and pinned comment we post on YouTube do not differ by a single character from the text that passed the checks.
We count exaggeration, missing caveats and wrongly attached labels as errors too. If even one remains, we do not move on to the next gate.
What the labels mean
- Record — confirmed in documents, official records or papers of the time
- Paraphrase — the original text, shortened
- Tradition — a story handed down. Whether it really happened has not been confirmed
- Reconstruction — scenes and lines written on the basis of the records
- Interpretation — the views of scholars or research teams, or the host's interpretation (marked "Interpretation; host")
- Debated — not yet settled
- My view — the host's opinion. In the video it is set apart with words such as "If everything so far was fact and scholars' interpretation, from here on it is my own view."
In the video, ① Fact · ② Interpretation · ③ My view at the top left of the screen tell you which layer of the story you are hearing; they are shown in Korean, and the English subtitles mark only "My view". The labels used in each episode are also listed at the top of that episode's full script.
If you spot a mistake
Please tell us in the video's comments. If it is confirmed, we put a correction notice at the top of the description and also announce it in a pinned comment.