After the feared consummation of incest that leads to the birth of the baby with a tail, the deaths of Amaranta Úrsula and her son will free Aureliano Babilonia to fulfill his destiny: deciphering Melquíades' manuscripts. In this episode, Nadia Celis and her guests analyze the end of the Buendía lineage in relation to key themes in One Hundred Years of Solitude: time, love, and the power of literature in the face of the "unavoidable" repetition of history. Jaime Abello, co-founder with Gabriel García Márquez of the Gabo Foundation, and Álvaro Santana Acuña, a researcher of the global rise of this novel, also discuss the book's writing process, its trajectory, and García Márquez's legacy beyond this masterpiece.

The devastation of Macondo by the flood is deepened in Chapter 17 of One Hundred Years of Solitude with the death of Úrsula. “The Solitude of Úrsula” is a tribute to the invisible heroines of the novel and the real women whose personalities and stories inspired them. In this unique episode, Nadia Celis speaks with María Margarita Mockler, a niece of Gabriel García Márquez, about the role of memory within the family that nurtured “Gabito’s” stories. Together, they also explore the lives of her aunts —the real women who inspired the Buendía women— whose legacy has defied the tragic fate of the novel’s female characters.

The events that would deliver the fatal blow to Macondo take center stage in Chapter Fifteen of One Hundred Years of Solitude. That’s when the Colombian state teams up with the United Fruit Company to brutally suppress the workers’ strike through a massacre—and then strategically erase it from memory. In this episode, Nadia Celis is joined by Paula Cuéllar, and Elvira Sánchez-Blake to unpack the long-lasting impact of state violence and the evasion of truth in addressing recent armed conflicts in Colombia and Latin America. Through the eyes of mothers who, like Úrsula, are weary of bringing children into the world only for them to go off to war, and who have dedicated their lives to demanding justice, this conversation sheds light on how history keeps repeating itself, fueled by the “plague of forgetfulness.

The next era of Macondo is marked by the townspeople's perplexity following the arrival of the train. New neighbors and modern artifacts appear, adding to a series of marvelous occurrences that make them lose their grasp on reality. In this episode, Maria Rueda and Ryan Kovarovics join Nadia Celis to explore how bewilderment obscures the town's invasion by foreign powers and plays into García Márquez’s “magical realism". They also examine the leadership embodied by the Buendía family, and their failure to protect their people from the dangers hidden beneath technological progress.

The bloodiest era of One Hundred Years of Solitude begins in the sixth chapter with a summary of the dozens of armed uprisings led by Colonel Aureliano Buendía, including the one that will bring him before the firing squad. In this episode, Nadia Celis and Allen Wells, a historian of the Caribbean and Latin America, guide us through the real wars that inspired García Márquez and the many mutations of that monster throughout the century the novel synthesizes. They also discuss the degenerative effects of power and its violence on Aureliano, the people of Macondo, and their heirs, both within and beyond fiction.

The path opened by Úrsula, Macondo’s new leader, triggers an irreversible change, further fueled by the town’s first business—her candy animal industry. But before Macondo fully succumbs to the seduction of capital and its "machines of well-being," visitors from other times bring the plague of insomnia to the town. Nadia Celis and her guests, Chrissy Arce and David George, explore the collective amnesia of the Macondians, the town’s incorporation into the nation, as well as the political struggles that will lead the first generation of Macondo’s men to war. They also address the intimate drama of the Buendía sisters, Amaranta and Rebeca, and of Aureliano, whose battles with desire and love pave the way for the rise of the brutal Colonel Aureliano Buendía.

In the iconic opening lines of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Macondo—the town founded by the Buendía family in the heart of the Colombian Caribbean—becomes the seed of the world. In this episode, Nadia Celis sits down with historian Kristen Block to explore how the Caribbean emerged as the “navel of the world.” Together, they uncover the historical currents that shaped this region and dive into the origins of the Buendía family, tackling their most enduring struggles: violence and solitude.

In this opening episode, Nadia Celis and her guests situate us in Macondo, the imaginary town where García Márquez located the saga of the Buendía family. But Macondo is not only a fictional town. Silvana Paternostro, a Colombian journalist in London, and Hector Hoyos, a Colombian professor at Stanford University, discuss their own experiences coming in and out of Macondo, and grappling with the ambivalent legacy of "magical realism". Nadia also welcomes the audience to the way we'll read the novel, together.