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!

Every generation thinks it’s living through unprecedented change. A Short History of Saving the World is a new history podcast with Angus Hervey and historian Ada Palmer that explores the turning points, crises, and ideas that shaped world history - and the hidden patterns that connect them. From ancient civilisations to modern global events, this series zooms out to ask a bigger question: what actually happens when the world feels like it’s falling apart?

Part conversation, part historical deep dive, this series reveals history not as a timeline of collapse, but as a story of human ingenuity, adaptation, and resilience.Because if you read history closely enough, you start to see it differently.
The world doesn’t just break.
It changes.
It adapts.
It gets saved - again and again.