About this episode
Send a textGEORGE:Today: How Plague Trained UsHow plague trained Elizabethan culture—audiences included—toward certain fears and reflexes…and how COVID trained us in remarkably similar ways.GEORGE:Quick reminder: my Shakespeare can look back from the present day—films, scholarship, modern claims—but he cannot predict the future. No prophecy.WILL:Memory, yes.Foresight, no.GEORGE:Now, When I say “habits of mind,” I mean the reflexes that become automatic:how you interpret a coughhow you feel about crowdswhat you do with your handswhat you believe when you’re afraidwhat you do to feel safewho you trust, and how quickly you withdraw trustWILL:An epidemic trains a person the way war trains a person—not by speeches, but by repeated fear.GEORGE:Exactly. Repetition makes instinct.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.
