I REALLY enjoyed this discussion (this is what a podcast interview should be!) between journalist Mary Harrington + columnist/author James Marriott, on his new book, The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society which argues that we’re shifting towards a post-literate culture.

they get into the decline of reading (as someone who was recent-old when I read the stats on how few people read and how how few weekly sales can put a book on the NYT bestseller list, this no longer shocks me… I did used to think it was a LOT higher!); why literacy and democracy go hand-in-hand, You Know Who presidents using visual imagery to evoke larger-than-life iconography that harkens back to Europe's pre-modern monarchies; and what all this means for our collective future.

what I hadn't really considered at length before is how literacy (and actually reading) facilitates critical thinking. I guess that when you work a muscle long enough, you come to see it as independently strong.

I do hope we manage to turn all the brain rot virus around somehow, but I'm preaching to the choir here cos all this has made me want to do is go on an even bigger book shopping spree than I already engage in near-daily 😆

reading is an act of defiance in service of our humanity!

▶play YouTube video