The Long Echo: Cutting the Rope

Today’s broadcast is about the things we set in motion that immediately slip beyond our control, from sovereign titles and state institutions to children and free falls. In 794, an emperor founded Kyoto and coined the military title that would eventually supersede the throne; in 1964, an existentialist discovered that even radical freedom cannot undo a committee's verdict. Listen along as we trace how history rarely leaves the author in charge of the ending.