Well, howdy there internet people, let's bow again.

So tonight we're going to talk about a single line out of a song that has become a touchstone.

It's become something that pretty much everybody's heard.

They may not even know it came from a song,

but they've heard this one sentence.

They've probably seen it on memes.

Maybe even heard it in movies, because it gets referenced a lot.

But because of that, because how it was used in the memes and in popular culture,

some of the meaning may be lost.

Now, it gets shown most times as a battle crime,

as a way of saying that network news is censoring things and therefore the

revolution will not be televised but that may not have been what the author meant.

Now, we have that idea that once something enters public consumption, once it's out there,

it can be interpreted however the public wants and that's fair game and that's true

it's a concept called the death of the author but normally when we invoke that we

can't actually ask the person that wrote it and in this case we could and

somebody did so we actually know what he meant the revolution will not be televised.

Gil Scott Heron.

If you haven't heard it yet, stop now and go ahead and listen to it and then come back.

You'll notice the first two lines,

you will not be able to stay home, brother,

you will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.

...