S02 E21: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Orwell feared the banning of books. Huxley feared there would be no reason to ban them. Postman argues Huxley was right.In this episode, we explore how television changed not just what we think about, but how we think. Postman's argument isn't that TV shows bad content. It's that television as a medium is structurally incapable of supporting serious discourse. Everything becomes entertainment: news, politics, education, religion.Written in 1985, before the internet, before social media, before smartphones. Postman worried about what television was doing to attention spans and public discourse.He hadn't seen anything yet.Source: "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business" by Neil Postman (1985)