How Tudor People Actually Got Their News (It Was Chaotic)

Related episode on Isabella Whitney: https://youtu.be/JoSeTYE22SE

Before newspapers, before coffeehouses, Tudor England had its own chaotic information ecosystem, and it reached further down the social ladder than most people realize. In this episode we're looking at who could actually read, what ordinary people were reading (broadside ballads, almanacs, monster news), and how the Crown kept losing the information war no matter how hard it tried. Turns out the Tudor relationship with fake news, spin, and banned texts looks a lot more familiar than you'd expect.

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