Provenance: Schelling Points

compiled 9/30/2026  ·  watch on YouTube  ·  transcript  ·  all videos

Sources · Assets · Music · Notes

Sources

Assets

Music

  • 0:00-0:29, 7:00-8:15 Keith Mansfield, Futureworld
  • 0:29-0:47 Synaulia, Pavor
  • 0:48-1:16 Synaulia, Mare nostrum
  • 1:16-1:57 Michael Levy, Ancient Greek Musical Fragment (Poem. Mor 1, 11f. Migne 37, 523 - Arranged For Replica Lyre)
  • 2:00-2:59 Blue Dot Sessions, Velejo
  • 2:59-3:38 The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra starring Warren Covington, Tea for Two Cha Cha (Decca, 1958)
  • 3:37-6:12 Blue Dot Sessions, Gutter on Brindell
  • 6:06-7:03 Blue Dot Sessions, Still Nite

Notes

  1. 0:35-0:38 The Carthaginians took Regulus prisoner after his second consulship (Cicero, De Officiis 3.99). At that time, Rome had two consuls, whence "co-head" of state.
  2. 1:38-1:44 Homer's Cyclopes live apart (Odyssey 9.112-15), but near enough that Polyphemus's neighbors could hear him (9.399-402).
  3. 2:28-2:35 The Operation planners expected "any papers, or at least copies of them" to reach the Germans through the German agent at Huelva (Montagu, The Man Who Never Was). Spanish officials sent the papers to the Abwehr (German military intelligence) who copied them and returned returned them to the British resealed (Macintyre, chs. 16-17).
  4. 2:42-2:45 Montagu kept the identity secret until his death in 1985. The name "Glyndwr Michael" was discovered only through later research by Roger Morgan, as told by Macintyre (ch. 24, "Aftermath").
  5. 3:10-3:29, 4:55-5:04 Schelling conducted an informal poll and said that "a lot of the people to whom I sent the questionnaire were students" at Yale (Steelman interview); his book calls this "an unscientific sample" in New Haven. Respondents opted to meet at Grand Central Station "an absolute majority" of the time (Strategy of Conflict, 55). Their informal responses were replicated in the 1990s under controlled experimental conditions with monetary incentives: Judith Mehta, Chris Starmer, and Robert Sugden, "The Nature of Salience: An Experimental Investigation of Pure Coordination Games," American Economic Review 84, no. 3 (1994): 658-73, https://research-portal.uea.ac.uk/en/publications/the-nature-of-salience-an-experimental-investigation-of-pure-coor.
  6. 4:10-4:17 The Joseph E. Levine Foundation ran the Olson House "as a gallery" for two summers around 1970 (Farnsworth Art Museum). In Final Cut (22), Levine had bought it to preserve it as a national monument.
  7. 4:20-4:26 It is entirely uncertain when Wyeth began receiving letters; this timeline given is my poetic embellishment. Wyeth is quoted as having received "at least a letter a week from all over the world" is his account as of 1965 (Life).
  8. 4:30-4:35 Christina Olson's condition was never firmly diagnosed. The MoMA calls it "a degenerative muscle condition - possibly polio."
  9. 4:37-4:45 The Levine meeting is known only from Sylbert's own memoir (Final Cut, 21-25). The "gone crazy" remark was made by Embassy executive Bob Weston on leaving the room.
  10. 5:51-6:06 Regulus's embassy and return are a Roman legend. Polybius (1.25-35) offers the earliest surviving account and ends his story with the capture in 255 BCE; the oath, the speech to the Senate and the torture come from later Roman writers, chiefly Cicero (De Officiis 3.99-100) and Horace (Odes 3.5). Scholars disagree whether the absence of the anecdote in Polybius means the episode was invented (Lisa Feldkamp, "Exemplum Fidei: Marcus Atilius Regulus as a Moral Exemplum" [MA thesis, University of Kansas, 2007], 1-2).
  11. 6:06-6:11, 6:25-6:31 It is uncertain whether the temple of Fides existed when Marcus addressed the Senate. It was dedicated by A. Atilius Calatinus in 254 or 250 BCE (Platner and Ashby, s.v. "Fides, aedes"), and Regulus's embassy, if it happened, is placed after his capture in 255 BCE, traditionally around 250 BCE. The temple was restored and rededicated by M. Aemilius Scaurus in 115 BCE. Cicero, who links Fides "neighbour to Jupiter" to Regulus's oath (De Officiis 3.104), was writing in 44 BCE, two centuries later.
  12. 6:06-6:11 We do not know the temple's location relative to the Senate meeting house. I infer its position: Platner and Ashby place it "probably inside the area Capitolina, at its south-east corner near the porta Pandana," and the CIREVE 3D model (Madeleine and Fleury, 46:31, 52:44) sets it in front of Jupiter's temple. That makes it south(-east) of Jupiter's temple and roughly south-west of, and uphill from, the Curia at the north side of the Comitium. The Senate, of course, also met in the temples of Jupiter and of Fides themselves. I have again assumed that the Senate's meeting grounds were apart from Jupiter/Fides to show the whole of the capitol visually.
  13. 6:12-6:17 The tablets on the temple are attested by the storm that tore them off (Julius Obsequens; Cassius Dio, who says they were fixed all around the temple). Platner and Ashby date the storm to 43 BCE and the CIREVE lecture to 45 BCE. Platner and Ashby say the tablets "probably" carried international agreements; the lecture adds military discharge diplomas and dedications by peoples of Asia Minor, mostly of the imperial period.
  14. 6:22-6:25 The cult statue of Fides is attested by surviving fragments (head, foot and veiled hand, per the CIREVE lecture, 51:10). Its height of about 6 m, its marble-and-bronze material, the cornucopia and the pose are reconstructions by analogy. The 3D model shows the Capitol as it stood in the 4th century CE, not in Regulus's day.

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