Episode 2: Marshall McLuhan (and the Technology of How We Think)

Shane traces his college decision to study communication theory back to a feeling most ADHD people know well — sensing that something's getting lost between what you're thinking and what other people are hearing. That search led him to Marshall McLuhan, and McLuhan leads somewhere much bigger: the idea that every major shift in communication technology rewires how society works — and that we're living through one right now.

In this episode:

• Who Marshall McLuhan was — Canadian communication theorist, professor, 60s intellectual, and the man who gave us "global village" and "information superhighway"
• Hot media vs. cold media: McLuhan's framework for how different formats demand different levels of participation from their audience
• Writing as the original communication technology — and how the need to record information changed the structure of early societies
• Oral tradition before writing: the people whose entire job was to remember things, and what that world actually looked like
• Gutenberg's printing press and why timing and geography made all the difference
• Why Martin Luther succeeded where John Wycliffe and John Hus didn't — and what cheap, printable ideas have to do with it
• The internet as our printing press moment, and why the unsettled feeling most of us carry right now might just be what it feels like to live through a civilizational gear-shift

Research rabbit holes to explore:

• Marshall McLuhan — Wikipedia
• Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan — archive.org — the book his theories come from
• The Dick Cavett Show — Wikipedia — the talk show McLuhan appeared on in the 60s
• The Gutenberg Bible / Gutenberg's printing press — Wikipedia
• Martin Luther and the Ninety-five Theses — Wikipedia
• John Wycliffe and Jan Hus — Wikipedia — the reformers who came before Luther without the printing press to protect them