ANDREW HEATON:

Tribalism is Dumb: Where It Came from, How It Got So Bad, and What to Do about It, Andrew Heaton, 2024. 

35:50  What exactly is the causal mechanism that connects social media with this tribalism? 

35:55  Great question. 

38:25  The period we're living in right now is most akin to when the printing press was invented.  When Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses, whether you're Catholic or you're Protestant, most historians would agree that Martin Luther's ideas were not actually new.  They'd been promulgated by prior thinkers like John Wycliffe and others.  The difference was that previously, those ideas could be snuffed out by a very potent gatekeeper.  Once the printing press came out, you now had the ability to disseminate and promulgate  ideas before the gatekeepers can catch them, and it resulted in this very chaotic time where basically the worldview of Europe was settled at swordpoint because there wasn't this gatekeeper anymore.  I think we're living in a very similar time like that where the gatekeepers are toothless.  On top of that, because we use social media.  A lot of mechanisms we have in our minds that make us self-censor.

Heaton's podcast is called Political Orphanage.