How the World Survives Information Revolutions: Fake news, censorship & what history teaches us about echo chambers

Every generation thinks it’s living through an unprecedented information crisis. But according to historian Ada Palmer, we’ve been here before.

 In this episode, Angus and Ada explore the first great information revolution - from Machiavelli hiding The Prince and Leonardo da Vinci’s coded notebooks to the printing press, censorship, and Shakespeare’s anxieties about misinformation.

In this episode: 

·      Is fake news really new?

·      What happens when information suddenly becomes available to everyone?

·      Why do new technologies amplify both progress and extremism?

·      Are social media and the internet following a familiar historical pattern?

·      And… what does fruit have to do with democracy?

From Renaissance Florence to modern algorithms, this conversation reveals how societies adapt to upheaval - and why history may offer clues for navigating today’s information chaos. Because the world doesn’t get saved once. It gets saved - again and again.

Timestamps: 

00:50 Why Machiavelli hid The Prince
 03:48 Why Leonardo wasn’t really a scientist
 06:37 The printing press changes everything
 12:48 “Children of gold, parents of iron”
 19:36 What social media has in common with the Renaissance
 23:09 Why censorship rarely works
 30:21 Is change actually accelerating?
 35:15 The case for free speech
 38:27 The strange reason cantaloupe helped spark revolution 

48:51 Democracy, experts & the future

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Production credits:
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Ada Palmer
Produced by Amy Davoren-Rose, Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!