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.