Early Modern News
· 45 min
Episode Early Modern News
‘Information in the early modern world could move no faster than the bodies that carried it,’ John Gallagher wrote recently in the LRB. For a horse and rider, that was just under fifteen kilometres per hour. Yet postal systems, as pioneered by the enterprising Tassis family, were becoming ever more reliable and efficient, at first in northern Italy and then across much of Europe – despite plague, war and the efforts of bandits and spies to intercept the mail.
If the post was highly organised, news spread more organically, whether in the form of manuscript newsletters, printed pamphlets or word of mouth, at the local barbershop, from a ballad singer on a street corner, on the Rialto bridge in Venice or in the nave of St Paul's Cathedral in London.
On this episode of the LRB podcast, John joins Thomas Jones to discuss how information (and disinformation) circulated in early modern Europe, and whether our predecessors were any better than we are at sifting fake news from fact.
Read John Gallagher’s piece: https://lrb.me/earlymodernnewspod
From the LRB
Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod
Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod
LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod
Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod
Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them. Explicit shows are for adult profiles only, and children’s profiles hear only children’s shows. More about this list.