Ron Perlman was interviewed by Shock Cinema Magazine somewhere around 2005, and he was asked about his role in The Name of the Rose. It seems relevant, given how a word can be ascribed meaning, but context can change it. In this case, making it deliberately unintelligible, while still theoretically carrying (most of) the same information. Quoted below:

SC: What was the greatest pleasure of playing that role?

Perlman: The greatest pleasure was finally being asked! (laughs) And then right behind that, Jean-Jacques said he wanted Salvatore talking every time he is onscreen. I said, "but he doesn't talk in the screenplay," and he said, "if I had written all the dialogue I wanted, I never would have gotten the money to make the movie." I said, "how do you propose I do that?" And he said, "that's your problem." Salvatore was the character who spoke six languages, but all at once. Since "The Name of the Rose" was a book that had been translated into 85 languages, I got the translations of all six languages he speaks, highlighted the places Eco had him speaking, and collated them down, and went eeny-meeny-miny-moe. This word will be in Latin, this word will be in Italian, this one German, English, French - and created a hodgepodge of language. Being charged with that kind of responsibility tickled me, and he was delighted with the result. There's also a lot to be said for walking on the set and looking into the eyes of 007.

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It's funny, cause as an italian whenever someone mentions and tells you to read this book (which will 100% happen at least once in your life) there's always this sort of... shared knowledge that it's not really a book about a mistery, or a detective story. Someone presenting it will always say 'yeah, the movie is basically a detective story but the book is actually so much more'. So it was very weird hearing Someone call it a 'mistery book' and Eco a 'novelist' because from my personal background this book was never a mistery book and Eco was never a novelist: 'Il nome della rosa' is a neboulous 'so much more' and every time I've met Eco in my studies it was always as a semiotician, not as a novelist.

You said "I gave Doug Walker the idea to do musical videos." with the weight and regret of J. Robert Oppenheimer talking about the atom bomb. Or Neal Adams talking about Frank Miller.
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"That which we call a rose, by any other name would still be poisoned."

Every Eco book I've ever read has not only become significant to that time in my life, but it became a constant companion showing me new stuff every time I read them again - because I'm not the same. 📚

A couple of things. The background plot of the book, the debate that brought Adso and William to the monastery, was not about the dulcinians, as the video seems to imply, as they were by then a disbanded and condemned heresy, but rather about the Franciscan order, who also preached the poverty of the Christ. The point was to differentiate themselves from the dulcinians, that used extremely violent means to propagate their doctrine. For a couple of decades they were killing and robbing the wealthy, with a quite broad definition of wealth, one must add, destroying monasteries and castles as well as houses and farms and openly rebelled against the Church and the secular powers. They were exterminated about 30 years before the events of the book. Dante mentions them in his Inferno.

Essentially the goal was to defend the Franciscan doctrine from the accusation of being a repeat of the dulcinian heresy. And, of course, all of it is based on real events in the 14th century.

The second thing: the name of the Rose. There are several versions of the Latin phrase, in some cases instead of "Rosa Pristina" (the original rose) it is "Roma Pristina" (the original Rome), moving the meaning from an aristotelean musing over prime objects or ideal ones, unknown and unknowable by their very essence, to a perhaps more human, and somewhat more pedestrian, longing for things lost to time.

Which is understandable if one puts himself into the perspective of a medieval monk, copying and reading all day about ancient history, Roman literature and politics, the greatness of an empire, while living in its crumbled and scattered remains, among signs of disorder and uncertainty.
What remained to them of the glory of the Senate, the might of the legions, the safety of the roads, if not a list of names and pale shadows? One can understand their sorrow and how hopeless that must have felt.

Oh, and the final bit on the book, about stopping writing because of hurting eyes and the cold in the scriptorium, is taken verbatim from a note scribbled on the margin of a manuscript by a medieval scribe.
Neat, eh?

Rewatching this in light of the TERF Queen's Holocaust denial regarding the persecution of trans people in Nazi Germany, w/some of her followers asking indignantly how we know what was lost when the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was looted and its books burned, or asking for the books' ISBN numbers, a tragic and chilling example of the idea at the centre of the book/essay. It really is one of your best videos.

As a non-herosexual male I think you for cursing south park. However as an engineer "He was trying to turn language into math what a monster."  thems fighting words sir.

As a nearly blind person, voices are immesurably important to me, and yours is one of my all time favourites.

Kyle, your channel is one of my favorite ones on this platform. Top 5, easily. I visit your older videos time and time again - not just for your entertaining jokes - but for study and enrichment.
You may be a “burnt out content creator,” but you sir are not a “failed” one. If your original intent (10 + years ago) was to entertain, express, and educate - then you haven’t failed. You succeeded. I’ve followed your work because I love the opportunities you give me to learn new things. Things that I, regretfully, didn’t learn in school or out in the real world. So I study, take the knowledge you provide in your videos and apply them to teachings of my own. In the hope of keeping this kind of knowledge alive for “the youngens.”
So, I will say (as I have always said) thank you and keep at it!

By the way: as a Bostonian, I appreciate the Common Wealth shoutout!

"I said I pioneered that cringe and you thought I was playing."

That is a powerful line, fuck...late 00s/early 10s Youtube still holds so much influence in modern day.

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Sometimes, Kyle, it is absolutely surreal being a channel veteran because I will be watching a lovely video about semiotics and then you remind me of the lost Man Who Fell To Earth review that I remember seeing but can never again revisit, lost like tears in the rain.

📚 I had the worst experience watching The Name of the Rose. It was by my arts teacher when I was on 9th grade, and it was in 20 minutes chunks, 1 time per week. It's probably the worst way to consume it ever, I wasn't able to absorb ANYTHING from it at the time.
And only later I would learn that he cut the sex scene from on his VHS tape at least

I personally get a massive kick out of the self-deprecating humor, being rather harsh on my own past myself, but I also know how absolutely toxic that mindset is to actually live in. So if those jokes just live in your scripts, go for it, but if they live in your day to day thinking, it may be best not to codify them in your work. Take care of yourself, you've more than earned it. 📚

I don’t know how much of you talking about retirement or disgust towards your earlier career is performative or meta-performative or whatever, but I hope you know that I’ve enjoyed all of your videos (even the super cringe ones).

I feel that my experience reflects the average person who watches the types of videos you make. I grew up watching Doug Walker, then became too old for him and started to mature around the time so many of his colleagues pivoted to video essays and more intellectual stuff. I remember my shame and disgust when the Change the Channel controversy broke, both towards Doug and towards my own childhood self. I think you, similarly, have reflected the shifting and evolving attitudes of this YouTube niche that has become so disillusioned both with a world keen on backsliding to medieval times and with the pretenses and conventions of their own community. To me, your retirement would mean that we’ve passed some unknown point that we can’t come back from—or maybe I’m like the monks in The Name of the Rose, reading the end of times from disconnected deaths.

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This video gave me college flashbacks, man. That semiotics course was so easy but SO DANG HARD...whew.
Also, you included the Swahili word for "cat" ("paka") in the list of names. I love you.

📚 Ur-lock Holmes is peak humor. There are no greater summits to attempt, we can all turn off the internet and go home now.

Seriously- fantastic work as always, Kyle! However cringe some of it may feel in hindsight, your contributions to society and the general discourse can't be overstated.

You absolutely deserve to walk with your brows, and your head, held high. 📚

The scene where the protagonist talks about books being about books and the library  being where books talked among other books honestly just made me appreciate Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld even more: Library Space or L-Space, that in large quantities, all books warp space and time around them. The principle of L-space revolves around a seemingly logical equation; it is an extension of the 'Knowledge is Power': Books = Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter. Or you get sent up a different branch of evolution tree and turned into an orangutan.

As a fan of yours for over a decade, I’m always happy to see a new video. Hope you’re doing well you amazing person!

"Putting the 'O.G.' in 'misogyny'" is an amazing line, and you deserve to be proud of it.