In 1948, in a freezing farmhouse on the Scottish island of Jura with no electricity or hot water, a skeletal George Orwell coughed blood while pounding out thousands of words a day on a manual typewriter, racing tuberculosis to finish 1984. This episode goes past the plot summary to the historical blueprints behind Oceania, beginning with the 1943 Tehran Conference where Orwell watched Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin carve the post-war world into spheres of influence.

We map the direct borrowings: Big Brother from Stalin's personality cult, Emmanuel Goldstein from Trotsky, the slogan two plus two equals five from an actual Soviet five-year-plan campaign displayed in electric lights on Moscow buildings, the sudden enemy switch during Hate Week from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the unperson from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia subscribers  ...