Francis Foster

And no one should be able, in the Protestant perspective, no one should be able to interfere in your exploration.

And part of your exploration is talking about it and thinking about it and reading about it.

So in this great, in these religious wars and this desire for social peace and just,

you know, you guys go worship over here, and we'll worship here, and these third guys will go worship over there, is this idea that free speech is necessary for social peace.

Let everyone have their say, let the ideas move up and down the Rhine about religion, but also increasingly about politics, about economics.

And believe it or not, we owe this

initial idea of free speech which is essential to the creation of news to these very tough-minded german protestants who were stubbornly insisting they were right and everyone else was wrong and also their great desire to make money and capitalism which is a lot like

you have an individual relationship with God is that you have the right to an individual relationship with your customers and your employees.

You can choose who to hire and fire.

There are no hereditary employees.

It's governed by contract.

And you have a right to sell to your customers as they, if they choose you and you choose them, that's it.

That's all that matters.

So this idea of this personal relationship with God has enormous political and economic effects.

and at the mouth of the rhine in the modern day netherlands becomes an incredibly tolerant society especially after the spanish leave in the at the end of the 1500s and this this idea of tolerance becomes super important but what is moving up and down isn't just books people don't want books are expensive and people don't have time for books all the time but the beginnings of

what are originally called in German news books, but just what's going on in these different cities of the Rhine.

And by the way, has the religion of this city changed since you last sailed past and is now unsafe for you to land?

Or do we want to mock these people in Geneva or in Strasbourg or what have you?

And so these newspapers are quite lively.

They caricature people.