About
Stories are how we make sense of the world. But they’re still stories. They’re not facts.
As the philosopher Albert Camus put, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” Or as the philosopher Batman put it: “Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough.”
The best film and television, therefore, doesn’t just entertain; it reveals. It shows us something true about human nature — about power, about what we value and what we fear — that we could feel, but couldn’t quite explain, before we saw someone else try to do it for themselves.
But it isn’t just fiction that do this. And, perhaps ironically, it is often the “nonfiction” that we consume — in our politics, especially — that tells us things that take us further from the truth than we could ever do ourselves.
I’ve spent most of my adult life looking for that kind of meaning in the dark. And noticing those kinds of falsehoods in the light. Here, I write about what I’ve found.
I am a former researcher-producer for The Ezra Klein Show and editor at Vox. Follow me on Bluesky: @eliasisquith.blog
