{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"G.K. Chesterton on the Death of Literacy","description":"     A new Atlantic cover story argues that America is sliding into a postliterate age\u2014but G.K. Chesterton diagnosed the same collapse in 1928, years before Marshall McLuhan or Neil Postman raised the alarm. Joe Grabowski goes solo to walk through Rose Horowitch's statistics on the death of reading, then turns to two&amp;nbsp;Illustrated London News essays in which Chesterton describes a public that has stopped reading connected prose and now only kisses books it has never opened. What emerges is a practical challenge for anyone who wants to recover the habit Chesterton simply assumed his own readers still had. In This Episode:  Why G.K. Chesterton said so little about illiteracy\u2014and what that silence reveals about how genuinely new this problem is  Chesterton's 1928 warning that making reading &quot;easier&quot; signals a slump in reading rather than a boom What Chesterton meant by a public relapsing into the horn book and the cat on the mat\u2014and why Joe Grabowski thinks he would have said much the same of reels, Shorts, and TikTok The 1921 essay in which Chesterton argued that the books shaping the world are the ones nobody has actually opened: Darwin, Marx, and the rumor that replaces the text Why Chesterton's critique lands on podcast listeners too\u2014the risk of becoming the very type of person Chesterton described, taking opinions secondhand from influencers and favorite podcasters  Resources Mentioned:    &quot;The End of Reading Is Here&quot; by Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic   &quot;On Reading, and Not Being Able To,&quot; The Illustrated London News, December 8, 1928   What Mr. Belloc's Servile State Means by G. K. Chesterton  FOLLOW US   Instagram  Facebook  X  SUPPORT   Consider making a donation  Visit our Shop  &amp;nbsp; Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios Chapters:   00:00: Introduction\u2014A Crisis Worth Paying Attention To  04:20: The Atlantic Article: Rose Horowitch on the End of Reading  06:42: The Numbers\u2014Who Still Reads, and How Little  09:06: Schools, Screens, and the Warnings of McLuhan and Postman  11:29: Why It Matters: Media Literacy in an Age of AI  13:56: If No One Reads, Who Wants to Write?  16:19: Writers Come from Readers  18:31: Turning to G.K. Chesterton and His 1928 Essay on Reading  23:20: Newsprint Headlines, Reels, and the Attention Economy  25:38: The 1921 Essay\u2014The Books the World Has Not Read  30:07: An Examination of Conscience  32:33: The Challenge: Take the Book Down off the Shelf       ","author_name":"Uncommon Sense","author_url":"https:\/\/sites.libsyn.com\/23918\/site","html":"<iframe title=\"Libsyn Player\" style=\"border: none\" src=\"\/\/html5-player.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/42236320\/height\/90\/theme\/custom\/thumbnail\/yes\/direction\/forward\/render-playlist\/no\/custom-color\/88AA3C\/\" height=\"90\" width=\"600\" scrolling=\"no\"  allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen><\/iframe>","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/assets.libsyn.com\/secure\/content\/204528200"}