That Daily Brain Rot Break Is Taking Us Back to the Dark Ages

Literacy is declining sharply across the West. In the era of vertical video, who has the time or concentration to read a long article — let alone a whole book?

As we lose the ability to read long-form text, we might also be losing the capacity for democratic deliberation and self-governance. That’s the argument this week’s guest, the Times of London columnist James Marriott, makes in his recent book, “The New Dark Ages.” He sits down with guest host Mary Harrington to discuss our return to oral culture, the political consequences and what we can learn from the medieval era about storing information in a digital world.

Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months.

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:52 What Is Post-Literacy
• 02:05 The Data Behind the Decline
• 05:21 The Shift Toward Video
• 09:44 Why Reading Is Hard
• 10:45 Walter Ong on Oral vs. Literate Cultures
• 14:27 Tribal Politics and Emotion
• 18:21 The Reading Revolution
• 21:14 Literacy as an Engine for Democracy
• 25:15 Medieval Literary Culture
• 27:27 What We Can Learn the Medieval Era
• 30:13 Remembering Everything and Nothing
• 33:49 How Bukele Communicates Visually
• 37:04 Monarchy vs. Dictatorship
• 41:38 Is Postliteracy a Right-Wing Phenomenon?
• 43:29 Can We Resist the Slide?
• 46:33 Closing

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

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