Ten years after his passing, this episode revisits Umberto Eco, the novelist, philosopher, semiotician and one of the last true public intellectuals.

From his childhood in Fascist Italy to The Name of the Rose, from Foucault’s Pendulum to essay collections like Inventing the Enemy, I explore how Eco studied power, propaganda, conspiracy, and the way meaning shapes the world around us.

Eco believed books are never innocent. Reading is not leisure. It is training.

He did not want admirers. He wanted alert readers.

This is not an obituary. It is a return to a mind that still challenges us to slow down, think clearly and distrust easy answers.