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What if a city without modern newspapers learned to think like a public anyway? We sit down with historian Robert Darnton to chart how Paris, from 1748 to 1789, became an information society powered by parades, fireworks, songs, rumor, and street theater. Instead of headlines, “publication” meant a royal herald reading peace aloud while bands played—and a celebration that ended in a deadly crush. Those moments didn’t just inform people; they taught them how power felt.
Darnton guides us through the mechanisms that carried ideas across a semi-literate city. Literacy gaps were bridged by chapbooks, pamphlets read aloud, graffiti, and unforgettable tunes that turned scandal into memory. We follow the “kingnapping” of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the 1750 child seizures that sparked riots and bloodbath rumors, and the widening gulf as Versailles wrapped itself in secrecy. When Necker printed the royal budget, finance left the king’s secret and entered the street, unleashing a public debate about debt, taxes, and responsibility.
The church’s authority faltered as Jansenist–Jesuit battles collided with deathbed fears, while a witty placard at a sealed graveyard mocked a monarchy that would “forbid miracles.” Royal intimacy became political fuel: Madame de Pompadour’s lavish gifts and influence, and Madame du Barry’s past, fed poissonnades and police dragnets that still couldn’t catch every tune. In the Palais-Royal, crowds staged mock trials for government texts and burned them like verdicts, rehearsing a civic role they were ready to claim.
By the late 1780s, few predicted the upheaval to come, but many believed change was possible. The nation, not ministers, should decide taxation; the king should ratify, not conceal. Transatlantic currents—from mythic American virtue to Quaker simplicity—added oxygen. Darnton ties these currents together to show how information flows can erode legitimacy and invite a different future.
Listen for a vivid, ground-level view of how culture becomes politics, how performance becomes persuasion, and why the French Revolution reshaped everyday life. If this story reorders how you think about media and power, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review to tell us which vignette struck you most.
