Epistemic Status: Musing and speculation, but I think there's a real thing here.

1.

When I was a kid, a friend of mine had a tree fort. If you've never seen such a fort, imagine a series of wooden boards secured to a tree, creating a platform about fifteen feet off the ground where you can sit or stand and walk around the tree. This one had a rope ladder we used to get up and down, a length of knotted rope that was tied to the tree at the top and dangled over the edge so that it reached the ground.

Once you were up in the fort, you could pull the ladder up behind you. It was much, much harder to get into the fort without the ladder. Not only would you need to climb the tree itself instead of the ladder with its handholds, but [...]

---

Outline:

(00:11) 1.

(01:33) 2.

(05:03) 3.

(08:45) 4.

(11:40) 5.

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

---

First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.