Emerson's Land, and Ours

Walden Pond was never wilderness. It was a woodlot belonging to the most famous man in Concord, who offered it to his young friend as a place to think. Before Walden opens, Kaag wants the ground under it: the bargain every citizen strikes with the state, and why a small cabin might be a way of renegotiating it. Then Emerson himself, whose land and whose ideas the whole experiment stands on, and who Kaag suspects the book is quietly arguing with. The episode ends in the Concord of today, where Kaag happens to live, and where the criticism turns around and finds him.