Francis Foster

And that is the beginning of understanding the importance of news.

If we all have the same vocabulary of facts, then we're debating about how important this is compared to that.

Why is our politics so polarized today?

Because we no longer have this shared diet of facts.

But when it works, and we're all agreed as to what is going on, what the facts are, and the debate is about the emphasis, we're in a much less polarized world.

that's why the romans created the act that they are that's what they were trying to do now news really begins and maybe francis this differs entirely from what pbs told you and so i apologize um about in the 1400s along the river rhine now the rhine is a very special river in european history

It begins in the mountains of Switzerland, it goes through Germany, and then it empties into the North Sea in modern-day Netherlands, Holland.

And along this river, we see a tremendous amount of Protestant movements emerges.

Germany at this time period is not a united country, even though technically it's the Holy Roman Empire.

There's different princes and principalities and dukes and so on.

And your royal leader, your princely leader, could decide what flavor of Protestant you were or whether you're still with the Roman Catholic Church.

And you would be on a boat going down the Rhine, and you would be, if you were a Protestant, you'd look out on Catholic cities, and you know that if you came to shore, the chances of you being tried and burnt alive as a heretic were very high.

And yet, on the river, 10 feet from shore, in the current, you were safe.

And your cargo was safe, for the most part.

And that's not to say that all Protestants were united either.

Protestants executed Protestants.

These religious wars were intense.

But just as the Gutenberg in the city of Mainz, that's sort of on the east bank or the left side of the, looking from above, of the Rhine River,

Almost in the dead middle of the German Rhine is Mainz.

And in that city, not far from the docks, is this guy, Gutenberg, with the movable type printing presses.