Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / We have stopped READING - is it a sign our civilisation is COLLAPSING? With James Marriott

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We have stopped READING - is it a sign our civilisation is COLLAPSING? With James Marriott · The Smart Cookies podcast

• 0:04
  James Marriott is a writer at The Times and the
• 0:07
  author of an unputdownable sub stack called Cultural
• 0:11
  Capital. James, welcome to the show. Thanks very
• 0:14
  much for having me. A couple of months ago, you
• 0:16
  published a piece with the title The Dawn of
• 0:19
  the Post -Literate Society and the End of Civilization
• 0:23
  on your sub stack. That kind of... Well, not
• 0:26
  kind of, that actually blew up, thus slightly
• 0:28
  negating your central thesis. Anyway, more about
• 0:31
  that later. The article really makes for an excellent,
• 0:34
  if extremely uncomfortable read. And even though
• 0:38
  I kind of didn't want to, I find myself nodding
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  along pretty much the entire time. Definitely
• 0:43
  an obligatory read for anyone out there that
• 0:46
  still reads. Which, as it turns out in your article,
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  is almost nobody here in the Lord's year of 2025.
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  A fact that you... allege has many disastrous
• 0:55
  consequences, not just for us as individuals,
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  but for our societies and democracy itself as
• 1:02
  well. But let's go back in time just a little
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  bit, because I think it would be useful to provide
• 1:08
  some context here. You do that in the article
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  as well, actually. Now, obviously, we take it
• 1:13
  totally for granted now, but reading wasn't always
• 1:17
  a thing. So when did it start in earnest? And
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  I'm not talking about some sassy scribe of the
• 1:23
  pharaoh handling one of Egypt's four available
• 1:26
  papyruses 5 ,000 years ago. I'm talking about
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  us, the poor masses. When did we start to read?
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  Yeah, it's a good question. And this is where
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  my essay begins, basically. So the first pivotal
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  moment is obviously the invention of the printing
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  press at the beginning of the 15th century. The
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  fact being able to print books rather than have
• 1:47
  to read books that have been laboriously written
• 1:48
  out by hand by scribes begins to change. You
• 1:53
  can access them. But for the first couple of
• 1:54
  hundred years of printing, reading is still an
• 1:56
  elite activity. Even printed books are extremely
• 1:59
  expensive. Education is not that widespread.
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  You have to be pretty rich to have been educated
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  enough to read them. And my argument, and this
• 2:06
  is a pretty conventional view among historians
• 2:09
  of this kind of stuff, is that... reading really
• 2:11
  exploded in the 18th century. There's a phenomenon
• 2:14
  called the reading revolution, which historians
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  refer to, which refers to this kind of critical
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  juncture that was reached in the middle of the
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  18th century, where two factors collided. The
• 2:25
  expansion of education, more and more people
• 2:27
  were learning how to read at school, in some
• 2:29
  instances teaching themselves how to read, and
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  the beginning of a huge explosion of cheap books.
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  people could begin to afford books. There were
• 2:38
  other bits of social infrastructure that mattered
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  for this too. The expansion of reading clubs,
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  lending libraries, you get the periodical press
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  beginning. So in the middle of the 18th century,
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  suddenly, this is basically the first time in
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  history, ordinary people have access to knowledge.
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  And you really, we live in such a kind of knowledge
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  rich society now. I think it's really important
• 3:01
  to remember how stark this was. If you're an
• 3:04
  illiterate peasant living in rural France in
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  the 17th century, your information environment
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  is extremely restricted compared to what we know
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  now and compared to what it would have been 100
• 3:15
  years after that point. You know, you know so
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  little about the world. You rely on gossip, rumour,
• 3:21
  oral traditions handed down from your ancestors.
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  This moment when suddenly people can open a newspaper
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  or open a book. and read about what's happening
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  at court, what the king did, sometimes allegedly
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  what the king did, that this isn't always like
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  perfect information. That's a totally transformative
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  moment in human history. And I think it has really
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  kind of profound consequences for the rest of
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  history as we know it. It's a real foundational
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  moment in the modern world. And sometimes you
• 3:52
  don't even have to go back that far. My wife's
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  grandmother... was korean and she lived a very
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  long and fruitful life but she was illiterate
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  until her 60s because she just had to start working
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  at a very very young age um apparently not all
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  that uncommon at that time in place so yeah it
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  puts it into perspective quite a bit doesn't
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  it yeah and especially for women i think uh right
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  in kind of traditional societies even until recently
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  it's been quite hard for them to be educated
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  and still is in many places Okay, so what happened
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  when people started to read en masse? What effect
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  did that have on society? I mean, it had all
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  kinds of effects. And it really can't be underestimated
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  how important this moment in history was to go
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  from a world that was just so information poor
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  to one that was really quite rapidly becoming
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  quite information dense. I guess the most consequential
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  effect of the spread of reading was political.
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  And the transformation of political culture was
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  such an important part of the spread of reading.
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  There's a distinction that historians of that
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  period sometimes make between the age of the
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  representational culture and the age of the public
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  sphere. In the 17th century, in the age of absolutism,
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  power had been disseminated in the population
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  and imposed on the population through what's
• 5:17
  sometimes called the culture of representation.
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  So if you're Louis XIV... You display your wealth
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  and your power through extraordinary buildings
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  like Versailles, through parades, through statues,
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  through paintings, through firework displays,
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  through ballets, through operas. And the culture
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  of the European Ancien Regime and the absolutist
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  monarchs atop of it was an intensely visual one.
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  Power was expressed visually and imposed on the
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  population visually. There's a passage, I think,
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  in Louis XIV's memoirs where he says, most common
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  people aren't capable of seeing to the bottom
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  of things. They can only see the outside. And
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  the outside is what you have to impress them
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  with. And that culture of European power in the
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  17th century is still amazingly rich to us to
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  look back on. Just amazing paintings and statues,
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  the golden clocks, this whole apparatus of, I
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  guess, what we would now almost call propaganda,
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  that was supposed to be the visual... message
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  of the regime. What literacy did was it totally
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  changed that. The appeals of this message were
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  very emotional. They were very kind of pre -rational.
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  They were just like, this was the language of
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  authority and power and intimidation. And when
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  people could read books and when people could
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  read newspapers, suddenly they could get behind
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  the facade of the regime. And for the first time
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  in history, ordinary people could have access
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  to how the government was working. The information
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  was obviously not always accurate. There was
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  fake news in the 18th century. This is a remarkable
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  turning point. You could be an ordinary middle
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  -class person in Paris or in the provinces of
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  France, and you could suddenly be reading about
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  what had happened between the king and his mistress.
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  What did the king's mistress say to him in his
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  bedroom one night? What's going on in the corridors
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  of power with the government ministers? This
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  is a totally transformative moment because people...
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  suddenly you're able to see what's happening
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  in power. And I say in the essay, I don't think
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  it's an exaggeration, that ignorance was a foundation
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  stone of the feudal European order that existed
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  before this point. People just didn't know what
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  was happening. They didn't understand the abuses
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  of power. They had no way to without a newspaper.
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  How can you know? But there are a number of sort
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  of amazing, amazing developments in this period.
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  One of the things that happened in the 18th century
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  was that people who'd been arbitrarily imprisoned
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  by the state began to publish memoirs about what
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  had happened to them. There are two famous examples
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  by two French writers, Lange and Mirabeau, who
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  both published quite similar memoirs of being
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  imprisoned in the Bastille. Just before the French
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  Revolution, right? Yeah, in the years running
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  up to the French Revolution. And suddenly, you
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  know, ordinary people taken inside what was happening
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  inside the French state at its worst, you know,
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  the worst abuses of power. You could be taken
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  inside the Bastille. Imaginatively, they would
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  describe the corridors of power, also the corridors
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  inside the prison, the cells where they languished.
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  And I mean, this is just mind -blowing for ordinary
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  people who've just been kept behind the facade
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  for pretty much almost the entirety of history
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  so far. Suddenly, they can see behind it. And
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  another thing that isn't to be underestimated
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  is the influence of things like philosophy. Literacy,
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  as I say in the essay, kind of encourages rational,
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  critical modes of thought. and the spread of
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  literacy is a real factor in the growth of like
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  enlightenment thought and suddenly people have
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  a whole new language and whole and new ideas
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  to draw with which to criticize the social system
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  you know the rights of man why are we all equal
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  why does this guy live in a huge palace and we're
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  all kind of languishing in the mud getting arbitrarily
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  imprisoned by the state and this is yeah this
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  is kind of like it's a knowledge revolution people
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  just know more about what's going on or an information
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  revolution you could say and it's also a kind
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  of cognitive revolution, these kind of critical
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  modes of thought spread. And both those things
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  are disastrous for the old regime. Right. I was
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  just about to say the ruling classes couldn't
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  have been very ecstatic about this development.
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  Did they try to suppress the widespread adoption
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  of reading? Yes. Not very successfully, it has
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  to be said. I think there's an estimate because
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  you could censor books and the regime did try
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  to ban books. And there are all kinds of amazing
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  stories. Books were burnt. Sometimes dummy books
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  were burnt to save the real books from being
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  burnt, but to still create spectacle. I think
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  books were publicly flogged. And there was a
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  real kind of, I mean, this was a sign that the
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  regime took books seriously. They were publicly
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  punished, destroyed and burnt. This wasn't always
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  super effective. I think I read somewhere once
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  that there's, according to one estimate, about
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  half of books published in France. in the middle
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  of the end of the 18th century were actually
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  being published. Sorry, the books written and
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  read in France were actually being published
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  outside France because you could go to Holland
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  and have your subversive anti -government polemic
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  slash atheistic pamphlet printed out there. And
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  yeah, I mean, this just, the regime, I think,
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  found it very hard to control. And this sort
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  of flood of stuff was just incredibly undermining
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  of the ideology of the regime, the authority
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  of the regime, of the... regime's control of
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  power, of its secrets, all this kind of stuff
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  was just eaten away by print. Yeah, the regime
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  is telling you, hey, everything's going top notch.
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  We're doing amazing. And you've got a pamphlet.
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  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Marie Antoinette has a necklace
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  that's worth like half of the entire country.
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  And anyway, in the article, you also write, more
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  importantly, print changed how people thought.
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  Could you elaborate a little bit? Yes. I mean,
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  this is a slightly more complicated point to
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  make, but there's a lot of interesting work that
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  was done by media theorists in the, I guess,
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  the 60s and 70s, inspired by the rise of radio
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  and the rise of television. People like Marshall
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  McLuhan, Walter Ong, Eric Havelock began to look
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  into the ways that Knowledge and information
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  is structured differently in either written word
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  as opposed to when it's spoken or presented to
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  you visually. And the consensus among these media
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  theorists, which I think is a very convincing
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  one, is that print is an inherently more rational
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  means of communication. And it enables us to
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  have more complex and more reasonable ideas about
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  the world. So for instance... One way to think
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  about it, there's a good analogy in Neil Postman
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  where he says, this is a great book, Amusing
• 11:56
  Ourselves to Death, a really prophetic book about
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  the screen age. And he's got a great analogy
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  where he says, imagine a culture that has to
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  communicate entirely through the medium of smoke
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  signals. They're deeply limited as to what they
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  can communicate. You can't really do philosophy
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  in smoke signals. You can't really communicate
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  like long works of history in the form of smoke
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  signals. And I guess this is that Marshall McLuhan
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  phrase, the medium is the message. print does
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  is that it allows us to communicate new kinds
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  of information and I think actually also allows
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  us to have new kinds of thought. The analogy
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  I use in my essays, if you imagine someone trying
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  to write a long and complex work of philosophy,
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  say Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason,
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  an unbelievably complicated book, an incredibly
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  dense one, and you couldn't just speak that book.
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  Immanuel Kant couldn't just get out of bed one
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  morning and just start speaking for 700 pages
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  and just verbally pronounce the critique of pure
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  reason into the world our brains aren't formed
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  to do that people would not would not be able
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  to listen to it we can't achieve that complexity
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  of thought verbally if you want to complete if
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  you want to um have a series of thoughts as complicated
• 13:07
  as interconnected and as rich as the critique
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  of pure reason or any other long book you can
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  think of you need reading and writing so you
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  have to start writing your ideas down You can
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  revise them. You can look back at them. You can
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  reread them. You can meditate on them. You can
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  cross them out. You can rewrite them. You can
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  add to them. You can go away. You can write something
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  else. You can add them together. So what writing
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  does is it pins thought down and it makes it
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  fixed and visible, concrete in the world, which
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  means we can analyze it and critique it and develop
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  it. And there's a kind of theory. I mean, this
• 13:40
  is the theory of this great classicist, Eric
• 13:43
  Havelock. is that the spread of literacy in ancient
• 13:45
  Greece precipitates the birth of philosophy.
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  The arrival of writing suddenly means that we
• 13:50
  have access to these kinds of thoughts that we
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  just couldn't have before. You can't have the
• 13:54
  critique of pure reason in oral culture because
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  the tools to achieve that level of cognitive
• 14:00
  or intellectual complexity just aren't there.
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  print spreads in a culture and when text and
• 14:09
  writing spreads in a culture suddenly you've
• 14:11
  expanded the range of thoughts that people can
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  have and you've also i guess the secondary point
• 14:17
  i don't know if you want to come on to this is
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  that i think the other important argument about
• 14:21
  what writing does is that it kind of fools and
• 14:23
  rationalizes discourse but that might be something
• 14:26
  you want to you want to come on to in a bit i
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  don't know if you've got a question about that
• 14:30
  It would be funny if somebody after listening
• 14:32
  to this conversation would like record the audio
• 14:34
  book of Kant's Critique of Reason, all 900 pages,
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  and then people would just start buying it like
• 14:40
  hotcakes and listening to the whole thing. But
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  that's still not the same because they wouldn't
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  just like speak it out of their head. They would
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  record what's already written. Yes. And also,
• 14:49
  it's important to say that the reading part of
• 14:53
  that reading and writing process is just as important.
• 14:55
  So just as impossible to speak. critique of pure
• 15:00
  reason out of your head if you want to understand
• 15:02
  it you really have to have it in a book in front
• 15:04
  of you so that you can i mean you know whenever
• 15:06
  you read a complex book yeah the dense book is
• 15:09
  full of ideas you're rereading you're going backwards
• 15:11
  and forwards you're checking you're kind of thinking
• 15:13
  about something until it goes in then you're
• 15:15
  kind of moving forward and then maybe flipping
• 15:17
  back a page to check the logical connections
• 15:18
  so it's not only the creation of complex thought
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  depends on text and print the reception of it
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  depends on that as well like you have to be able
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  to um have often with the most kind of complex
• 15:29
  forms of information just have to have it fixed
• 15:32
  in front of you on the page if you want to understand
• 15:34
  it properly which is why i just think yeah i'm
• 15:38
  sort of i think audiobooks are useful up to a
• 15:42
  point but i think if you really want to get to
• 15:43
  know get to know a topic you have to have like
• 15:46
  a printed book in front of you i just don't think
• 15:48
  it works any other way yeah unfortunately though
• 15:51
  the the story of the reading revolution that
• 15:53
  you just outlined has a sequel a much less happy
• 15:57
  one, and it's unfolding now. And you've got some
• 16:00
  pretty grim stats to back it up. Yeah, I do.
• 16:05
  So the case in my essay is that we had a reading
• 16:08
  revolution in the 18th century, and it's now
• 16:10
  being answered by a kind of counter -revolution.
• 16:12
  So we have that explosion of reading, and now
• 16:14
  there's really strong evidence that reading is,
• 16:18
  I mean, not just declining, but in kind of in
• 16:20
  free fall. Some of the most alarming statistics
• 16:23
  are that in America, reading for pleasure has
• 16:25
  fallen by 40 % in the last 20 years. In the UK,
• 16:29
  more than a third of adults say they've given
• 16:31
  up reading, I think over a similar period. The
• 16:34
  National Literacy Trust has a really depressing
• 16:36
  report finding shocking and dispiriting falls
• 16:38
  in children's reading, which is now at its lowest
• 16:41
  level on record. These statistics go on and on.
• 16:44
  A particularly depressing thing is this report,
• 16:50
  or I think kind of alarming thing, is this report
• 16:52
  that came out from the OECD at the end of last
• 16:55
  year, so at the end of 2024, which found that
• 16:57
  literacy was declining or stagnating in most
• 17:00
  developed countries. So people are becoming less
• 17:04
  good at reading and interpreting and digesting
• 17:07
  and analysing text in developed countries. And
• 17:11
  that's adults as well as adolescents. And that's
• 17:14
  an extraordinary finding. As I often say, that's
• 17:19
  the kind of thing you might associate with. the
• 17:21
  education system collapsing or some kind of calamity
• 17:25
  breaking out like a war or a civil war or something.
• 17:28
  But, you know, as I said in the essay, I think
• 17:30
  the cause is pretty obvious and I think it's
• 17:32
  screens. So that, in the essay, I say that the
• 17:37
  reading revolution is the greatest democratization
• 17:39
  of knowledge in human history. Knowledge, which
• 17:43
  had been the preserve of a small group of elites,
• 17:46
  was kind of seized and pulled down into society.
• 17:49
  by this newly literate middle class and even
• 17:51
  working class in the 18th century. And now our
• 17:54
  access to information is once again being restricted
• 17:58
  and our access to knowledge is being restricted
• 17:59
  by these addictive personal entertainment devices,
• 18:03
  iPhones and smartphones that everyone has. Yeah,
• 18:05
  we'll get to that. But you also write that the
• 18:07
  last time something like this happened was during
• 18:09
  the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Yikes.
• 18:14
  Yeah, I know. And I think it's, yeah. It's good
• 18:17
  that you said that because there's always an
• 18:21
  argument against people saying, oh, no one's
• 18:23
  reading anymore. This is what people have always
• 18:25
  said. Is it really that big a deal? But it is
• 18:31
  true that we haven't really seen anything like
• 18:33
  this since, yeah, I think you really could say
• 18:36
  the fall of the Western Roman Empire. I mean,
• 18:39
  I know sometimes the stuff about the Dark Ages
• 18:41
  is overdone, but it is true that as the Roman
• 18:43
  Empire declined, literacy fell. books were just
• 18:48
  lost you know for centuries people just some
• 18:50
  of the classics that have been handed down for
• 18:52
  centuries or even millennia of classical antiquity
• 18:54
  just stopped being read and if you believe and
• 18:57
  i do believe because i've spoken to people who
• 18:59
  taught who teach at universities and it's been
• 19:01
  studied and reported on that students at universities
• 19:04
  are basically unable to read the books that have
• 19:08
  been assigned to them we're living through that
• 19:10
  again And we're talking about students studying
• 19:13
  English literature or something. We're not talking
• 19:15
  about engineers. Yeah, exactly. So even students
• 19:19
  studying English literature at even elite universities
• 19:21
  are reporting that they just can't finish the
• 19:24
  books that have been assigned to them. Often
• 19:26
  their teachers aren't even assigning them books.
• 19:29
  They're getting extracts. They're watching videos
• 19:31
  because they're just not capable of absorbing
• 19:33
  that information. Spoke to a guy who was teaching
• 19:36
  at Oxbridge who thought there had been a collapse
• 19:38
  in literacy among his students. There was a real
• 19:40
  severe falling off among his students. There
• 19:44
  was a study a few years ago of American university
• 19:47
  students, which found that they couldn't, these
• 19:50
  were English literature students at American
• 19:51
  universities, which found they couldn't make
• 19:54
  their way through the first paragraph of Charles
• 19:58
  Dickens' novel, Bleak House. You'd think being
• 20:00
  able to read Charles Dickens is a pretty basic.
• 20:04
  criterion for studying English literature. And,
• 20:07
  you know, as I think I observed in the essay
• 20:10
  or elsewhere, Charles Dickens was once read by
• 20:12
  children for fun. There's a George Orwell piece
• 20:15
  in his collected journalism where he's writing
• 20:18
  about reporting to literacy among children. And
• 20:20
  the report finds that among the reading material,
• 20:23
  this is a study of the reading material of poor
• 20:25
  children. They're reading like Gulliver's Travels
• 20:27
  and Charles Dickens and books that now strike
• 20:29
  us as like unapproachable classics. That was
• 20:31
  only what, like, you know, 70 or 80 years ago.
• 20:34
  And that is a massive transformation for our
• 20:37
  civilization to go through. And what's happening
• 20:39
  is that books that have been passed on from generation
• 20:42
  to generation over centuries can no longer be
• 20:45
  passed on. We just can't pass on Charles Dickens
• 20:48
  to the next generation because, I mean, not all
• 20:50
  of them, but like increasingly fewer and fewer
• 20:53
  and fewer of them are able to actually read that
• 20:56
  book. You know, things like Shakespeare, that
• 20:58
  is a kind of cultural artifact. that has been
• 21:01
  passed on for centuries and i think we're hitting
• 21:03
  the end of the line we're not going to be able
• 21:04
  to pass those things on anymore and that chain
• 21:07
  of cultural transmission is breaking down in
• 21:08
  front of our eyes at universities and yeah it
• 21:11
  is analogous to what happened as the western
• 21:13
  roman empire collapsed uh classics have been
• 21:17
  passed on through antiquity for centuries or
• 21:20
  millennia stopped being passed on and that's
• 21:23
  happening to us now in front of our eyes yeah
• 21:26
  when you were explaining about like kids reading
• 21:28
  uh charles dickens for for fun in the past uh
• 21:32
  got me thinking about like old chat shows from
• 21:35
  like the 60s and the 70s like the dick cabot
• 21:37
  show or something you know everybody was so articulated
• 21:39
  from from like entertainers to philosophers to
• 21:43
  authors to politicians and yeah and also like
• 21:46
  like uh politician debates campaign debates Used
• 21:50
  to be like very, very eloquent, no? And now you
• 21:54
  have a guy in the White House who says, I have
• 21:56
  the best words. And it's easy to pick on Trump,
• 21:58
  but it just, it does illustrate something, doesn't
• 22:01
  it? So it's a really good point. This guy, Neil
• 22:06
  Postman, who wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death.
• 22:08
  Have you read it? No, I haven't. It's really
• 22:12
  good. I really recommend it to you and to everyone.
• 22:15
  All right. Has a great phrase. He talks about
• 22:18
  the phenomenon of printed orality. which describes
• 22:20
  the way that in a society which is immersed in
• 22:25
  the culture of print, as our society was until
• 22:27
  quite recently, people not only read a lot of
• 22:29
  books and wrote a lot more than we do, when they
• 22:32
  spoke, they sounded like books. So if you read
• 22:34
  a 19th century novel, the characters speak in
• 22:38
  these amazingly fluent, articulate, multi -causal
• 22:40
  sentences that roll on for line after line after
• 22:42
  line. And this looks unrealistic to us from the
• 22:45
  perspective of the 21st century. But what Neil
• 22:48
  Postman says is that people at this time in history
• 22:50
  were so immersed in books and the rational, logically
• 22:54
  sequential thought that's fostered by print.
• 22:57
  They spoke much more like books. And that's the
• 23:00
  phenomenon you talk about with those old TV shows.
• 23:02
  I mean, the kind of crazy thing is that in amusing
• 23:05
  ourselves to death, Neil Postman is analyzing
• 23:09
  some of the television shows that were being
• 23:12
  broadcast in the 1980s and saying, This stuff
• 23:17
  is terrible. Like these people are inarticulate.
• 23:19
  They're not discussing the issue seriously. This
• 23:21
  is a catastrophe. This shows what television
• 23:24
  does to our public discourse and it's totally
• 23:26
  degraded it. And this is so cheap. And compared
• 23:28
  to the level of discourse that you get in a book
• 23:31
  or a newspaper, this is just a disaster. You
• 23:34
  go back onto YouTube and you can watch the exact
• 23:35
  debates that Neil Postman talks about. And this
• 23:37
  seems like, you know, this seems like the most
• 23:39
  high level intellectual discussion to us. compared
• 23:42
  to the level of discourse that we have nowadays.
• 23:43
  They thought that was the bottom of the barrel.
• 23:44
  Yeah, he was like horrified at what had happened.
• 23:47
  And we look back and we're like, oh, wow, those
• 23:48
  guys seem so smart. And, you know, sorry, go
• 23:52
  on. No, no, yeah. When Dick Cavett was the lowest
• 23:56
  form of entertainment. Yeah, he mentions this.
• 23:59
  I was watching it, actually, out of curiosity.
• 24:01
  He mentions this specific debate about the dangers
• 24:03
  of nuclear war. And it's like... It's proper
• 24:07
  intellectuals. There's people like Carl Sagan,
• 24:09
  William F. Buckley. They all call each other
• 24:11
  Mr. Buckley and Mr. Sagan. And it's incredibly
• 24:13
  respectful. And they have statistics at their
• 24:15
  fingertips. And they're like serious people who've
• 24:18
  read philosophy. And Neil Postman is like, this
• 24:20
  is a disaster. This is so shallow. And then you
• 24:22
  click over to like, there's a YouTube show, I
• 24:24
  think it's called Surrounded, where you get like
• 24:26
  one guy surrounded. It's like the absolute nadir.
• 24:30
  Neil Postman would be spinning in his grave if
• 24:32
  you could see this. The episodes are all called
• 24:34
  things like, one conservative versus 20 liberals.
• 24:38
  I've seen that Jubilee. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And
• 24:41
  that's just like, I mean, whether that even qualifies
• 24:46
  as debate is, I think, profoundly questionable.
• 24:49
  It's just shouting and all the kinds of emotional,
• 24:54
  pointless attempts to, you know, an argument
• 24:59
  that have nothing to do, that have nothing to
• 25:00
  do with reason and rationality. And yeah, you
• 25:04
  just look at that and you think. I don't know.
• 25:06
  I certainly think how can you have a society
• 25:08
  in which this is the way we're discussing important
• 25:11
  ideas and policy and stuff that really matters.
• 25:15
  We've just, this is an experiment that we've
• 25:17
  never done before. We haven't tried to run a
• 25:19
  society in which most of the people acquire their
• 25:22
  information about the world and plug into arguments
• 25:25
  about how the world works. And we live in an
• 25:26
  unbelievably complex world. The world has never
• 25:28
  been more complex, but we've never done it where
• 25:30
  we're just doing that through people screaming
• 25:33
  at each other for two minutes on. surrounded
• 25:35
  or you know people singing songs on tiktok or
• 25:38
  whatever this is like this is a crazy experiment
• 25:41
  that we're going through right now it makes sense
• 25:43
  that what we're putting in structures our internal
• 25:47
  world right like i live in japan and it's so
• 25:50
  beautiful here and the the country's so rich
• 25:53
  in culture there's many things to explore and
• 25:55
  to see and i'm forcing myself to see new things
• 25:59
  and to experience like new, new, new stuff all
• 26:03
  the time. And often when I do that, the first
• 26:05
  thought that enters my mind is how can I turn
• 26:09
  this into an appealing Instagram post instead
• 26:11
  of like, how can I be in the moment or what can
• 26:14
  I take out of this experience or, you know, how
• 26:16
  am I, how am I going to remember this? The first
• 26:19
  thought is like, how can I make this seem really
• 26:22
  cool on an Instagram story? So people will think
• 26:26
  I have a. a really cool life and yeah i mean
• 26:29
  you're very far from the only one it's a horrifying
• 26:32
  thing yeah that's what i wanted to say but i'm
• 26:34
  not i'm probably not the only the only one right
• 26:37
  no i mean i'm i mean i'm totally guilty of all
• 26:40
  this too yeah yeah oh well um in the article
• 26:45
  you say it's not just about reading, is it? It's
• 26:48
  about the cognitive ability that reading sustains,
• 26:51
  right? And sadly, you've brought some receipts
• 26:54
  about our recent IQ scores as well. I don't want
• 26:59
  you to reveal them, but we kind of have to do
• 27:01
  that. Yeah, no, there's been some really interesting
• 27:05
  work on this too. There's a great article which
• 27:08
  I'd encourage everyone to look up called Have
• 27:11
  Humans Passed Peak Brain Power by a journalist
• 27:14
  called John Ben Murdoch. who works at the Financial
• 27:17
  Times, who does data journalism. And that's measuring
• 27:20
  things like the decline of PISA scores, which
• 27:23
  is the kind of global benchmark test for students.
• 27:27
  Those have been declining since the scores in
• 27:30
  things like maths, reading and science have been
• 27:32
  declining since the early 2010s. There's other
• 27:36
  reports that's found performance and reasoning
• 27:40
  and problem solving tests is declining, not only
• 27:43
  in adolescents, but in adults as well. And the
• 27:46
  other thing which is really alarming, what we're
• 27:52
  seeming to see, which is data that suggests that
• 27:53
  IQ is declining as well, there's a phenomenon
• 27:56
  called the Flynn effect, which describes the
• 27:58
  way that basically the whole of the 20th century,
• 28:00
  IQ increased year on year. People were always
• 28:04
  getting smarter as measured by IQ, better nutrition,
• 28:08
  longer time spent in education, all this kind
• 28:12
  of stuff. That effect now seems to have gone
• 28:13
  into reverse. And all of these trends come back
• 28:18
  to the early 2010s, which is the point in society
• 28:20
  at which smartphones became widespread. One of
• 28:26
  the points that John Byrne Murdoch makes, and
• 28:28
  I think rightly, is that you don't have to necessarily...
• 28:31
  I mean, I suspect this is true because I think
• 28:33
  the IQ data is alarming. But even if you don't
• 28:36
  necessarily think that people are getting stupider,
• 28:39
  it's... Definitely true to say that we live in
• 28:42
  an environment which makes it possible for us
• 28:44
  to fulfill our full intellectual capacities.
• 28:48
  One of the absolute foundational things of complex
• 28:53
  thought, of deep and meaningful creative activity
• 28:58
  is attention, is concentration. And if you can't
• 29:01
  concentrate for long periods of time, you can't
• 29:04
  fulfill your potential. If you're always checking
• 29:05
  your phone and if you're unable to leave your
• 29:07
  phone for an hour. You're never, ever going to
• 29:10
  be able to have that full enriching immersion
• 29:13
  in deep thought, in creative activity, in those
• 29:19
  kinds of states of mind from which basically
• 29:24
  I think all the greatest achievements of humanity
• 29:28
  spring. Rich attention is such an important part
• 29:31
  of every human achievement, every invention,
• 29:34
  every great book, every piece of music. Yeah,
• 29:38
  our ability to fulfill that potential is just
• 29:40
  being really eroded. And does the widespread
• 29:44
  use of smartphones kind of coincide with all
• 29:48
  of these horrible statistics that you outlined?
• 29:52
  Yes, yeah, I think it does. So the smartphone,
• 29:55
  the iPhone was invented in 2007. And a lot of
• 29:59
  these trends begin to kick in in the early 2010s,
• 30:01
  which is basically when smartphones begin to
• 30:04
  become widespread in society. It's probably about
• 30:07
  that time that I first got a smartphone, maybe
• 30:09
  sometime around 2012, 2013. And as soon as we
• 30:13
  have these ubiquitously distracting devices that
• 30:16
  stop us reading, that stop us concentrating,
• 30:18
  that feed us an increasingly inane diet of what
• 30:23
  is basically incorrectly called slop, scores
• 30:26
  of intelligence, attention, reasoning skills
• 30:29
  just begin to decline. It used to be, I think
• 30:33
  this used to be more controversial to say. And
• 30:35
  when I first started writing about this, I used
• 30:37
  to get pushback, people saying, is it to do with
• 30:41
  the different ways that reading is taught in
• 30:43
  schools? Is it to do with a switch from phonics
• 30:46
  to other reading systems in schools? I think
• 30:50
  it's now pretty much accepted that it's obviously
• 30:52
  phones. We've not really seen this before. The
• 30:55
  effect across virtually every country, this is
• 30:59
  happening. And it's just remarkable. I think
• 31:03
  pretty much unprecedented in our civilization.
• 31:05
  We've just never been down this road before where
• 31:07
  we all have access. And I mean, having a smartphone
• 31:09
  is becoming virtually compulsory in society to
• 31:12
  these addictive entertainment devices that are
• 31:14
  making us stupider. I think it's just such a
• 31:17
  sinister and frightening moment for our civilization.
• 31:22
  And we really have to wake up to how serious
• 31:25
  this is. On the new media we're consuming now,
• 31:29
  like on YouTube, on Instagram Reels, TikToks,
• 31:32
  what have you, people are obviously much less
• 31:35
  articulate, as we discussed before, than they
• 31:37
  would be if they were writing an essay. Their
• 31:39
  arguments are also clearly much worse. And yet
• 31:42
  they seem more convincing, more impactful somehow.
• 31:45
  Why do you think that is? It's such a good point.
• 31:48
  And this is actually, I mean, I think this is
• 31:50
  almost one of the key points about the differences
• 31:51
  between what's called oral societies that communicate
• 31:54
  mainly through... conversation and speech and
• 31:58
  literate societies which is the society we lived
• 32:00
  in probably until five or ten years ago in which
• 32:03
  discourse and public conversation and communication
• 32:06
  is structured by print and people communicating
• 32:08
  in text so the point that walter on this great
• 32:12
  media theorist a brilliant book called orality
• 32:14
  and literacy which i highly recommend the point
• 32:17
  that he makes in this book is that if you're
• 32:21
  communicating to someone face to face or in person
• 32:23
  And I guess this also obviously goes for if you're
• 32:25
  communicating with someone over a screen on TikTok
• 32:28
  via YouTube and you want to persuade them of
• 32:30
  a point. Say you want to tell them that vaccines
• 32:33
  cause cancer or that the moon landings never
• 32:35
  happened or the earth is flat. If you want to
• 32:37
  persuade someone of this kind of zany point,
• 32:39
  there is a whole array of persuasive techniques
• 32:43
  available to you. So you can make your argument
• 32:46
  kind of logically or rationally. If you're talking
• 32:48
  to someone in person and you want to impress
• 32:49
  them with a point, you know, you can shout at
• 32:52
  them. You can cry. You could, if you're a charming
• 32:55
  person, you could be very charming and you could
• 32:57
  be kind of funny and witty about it. You could
• 33:00
  persuade them with a display of your social status.
• 33:02
  Human beings are very conscious and tuned into
• 33:06
  status displays. So if you're an impressive person,
• 33:10
  you're really tall, you're really respected,
• 33:12
  you're really good looking. You can use those
• 33:14
  things to your advantage to persuade someone
• 33:15
  of a point. And we know this happens because
• 33:17
  we see this happen in conversations all the time.
• 33:19
  People will agree with the most charming or good
• 33:21
  -looking person or the most charismatic person,
• 33:23
  even if what they're saying is nonsense. I think
• 33:25
  everybody's seen that. What this means is that
• 33:28
  communication in oral cultures, so cultures before
• 33:31
  the arrival of print, is much less rational.
• 33:34
  Because if you want to persuade someone of something,
• 33:37
  you've got all kinds of emotional and non -rational
• 33:39
  techniques with which to persuade them. What
• 33:41
  print does, and anybody who's ever tried to write
• 33:44
  anything persuasive in print, I do it every week
• 33:46
  in Opinion Columnist, is it strips all those
• 33:49
  extra rational persuasive techniques away from
• 33:51
  you. And I'm very much not saying that print
• 33:55
  is like a perfect medium of communication, that
• 33:57
  it's perfectly logical, that it's perfectly rational,
• 34:00
  but it is much more rational than speech. And
• 34:02
  you know this if you've tried to write. If you're
• 34:04
  trying to persuade someone in print, you can't
• 34:06
  shout at them, you can't cry at them, you can't
• 34:08
  charm them. All you can do is like fit one sentence,
• 34:11
  after another sentence, after sentence, after
• 34:13
  sentence, after sentence. And it's very hard
• 34:15
  to do. And if your argument doesn't logically
• 34:17
  add up in print, you're very exposed. And it's
• 34:20
  very obvious to readers and people can see the
• 34:22
  logical breaks in your argument. They can see
• 34:25
  where you've skipped over a point. They can see
• 34:27
  where there should be more evidence. I write
• 34:30
  an opinion column every week and I am so aware
• 34:32
  of this because I get told by readers when I've
• 34:34
  missed stuff. None of that applies in conversation.
• 34:38
  None of that applies in a TikTok video. And,
• 34:41
  you know, you can directly see the difference
• 34:45
  if you, for instance, take like a Joe Rogan monologue
• 34:49
  or a Candace Owens monologue and you write it
• 34:51
  down and print it off onto a piece of paper and
• 34:53
  try to read it. It makes no sense at all. It's
• 34:56
  full of like logical discontinuities. It's full
• 34:59
  of random assertions that are never evidenced.
• 35:01
  It's full of ideas that just arrive out of nowhere
• 35:03
  and then disappear. It's totally illogical. And
• 35:06
  if you tried to print that stuff in a newspaper
• 35:07
  every day, you would go bankrupt because people
• 35:09
  would say, What on earth is this? This makes
• 35:11
  no sense at all. This is totally unreasonable.
• 35:13
  Why am I paying for this? When this kind of information
• 35:17
  is very poor quality, very illogical information
• 35:21
  is communicated via screens, we're much more
• 35:23
  persuaded by it because people can be really
• 35:25
  charming with it and they can be funny. And like
• 35:27
  Joe Rogan is a charming guy, but he says a lot
• 35:29
  of nonsense. And if we lived in a world in which
• 35:31
  YouTube and podcasts didn't exist, he wouldn't
• 35:33
  have a career because the stuff that he says
• 35:35
  and the way that he structures his information,
• 35:37
  it wouldn't pass muster in print. And the ultimate
• 35:40
  test of this is anybody who, you know, it's much,
• 35:44
  much harder to bluff your way through a topic,
• 35:47
  writing an essay about it than it is in conversation.
• 35:50
  You can get by on anything in a conversation,
• 35:52
  roughly saying kind of plausible sounding shit
• 35:54
  and just sort of moving on. You can't do it in
• 35:56
  an essay. Print is just so much more demanding.
• 35:59
  And a culture which is structured by newspapers
• 36:01
  and magazines, every single person contributing
• 36:03
  to discourse is held to this minimum standard
• 36:06
  of rationality. I'm not saying it's super high.
• 36:08
  I'm not saying every newspaper is like the most
• 36:09
  logical thing in the world. They're definitely
• 36:11
  not. But there's like a minimum standard of rationality
• 36:14
  in our culture. And when you move from this literate
• 36:17
  culture that we've had for hundreds of years
• 36:18
  to this post -literate or kind of oral culture
• 36:23
  again, that is out the window. And the quality
• 36:26
  of our discourse has just fallen off a cliff.
• 36:28
  And this is just so dangerous for our society.
• 36:30
  This is going to be a bit counterproductive for
• 36:32
  me. But podcasts are a bit of a scourge here,
• 36:35
  aren't they? You mentioned Joe Rogan. You can
• 36:38
  see what you were describing in action there
• 36:41
  because he's going to host some amazing archaeologist
• 36:44
  from Yale one day. And then on the next show,
• 36:47
  he's going to host some conspiracy theorist,
• 36:51
  Graham Hancock or somebody. Yeah. And it's like,
• 36:54
  you know, the last Graham Hancock is going to
• 36:57
  completely wipe his mind off, like completely
• 37:00
  delete. everything that he knows through conversation
• 37:02
  from the previous guy who was an actual archaeologist.
• 37:05
  And you see that he had thousands of episodes
• 37:08
  yet, but you can't say that Joe Rogan is much
• 37:11
  more knowledgeable or articulate now after all
• 37:13
  of these episodes that he did with actually smart
• 37:16
  people. It's really true. And you can see that
• 37:19
  sometimes someone like Joe Rogan or another kind
• 37:21
  of podcaster will have two people on. One of
• 37:23
  them will be an expert, one of them will be a
• 37:24
  nutjob, and they'll debate. And the nutjob will
• 37:26
  be more convincing because... There's not a format
• 37:29
  that rewards the most logical and the most evidenced
• 37:32
  person. It's a format that rewards often the
• 37:34
  most charismatic or the most fluent person. And
• 37:36
  those things don't map onto whether your idea
• 37:39
  is better or not at all. I read somewhere that
• 37:42
  apparently a lot of the big tech CEOs, people
• 37:46
  making a handsome profit on making us hooked
• 37:49
  on these horrific algos, are sending their own
• 37:53
  kids to schools with strict zero screens policy.
• 37:57
  Yeah, I've read the same thing. Is it the Waldorf
• 38:01
  School in Silicon Valley? Yeah, in the Montessori.
• 38:03
  And yeah, I mean, it speaks volumes because these
• 38:08
  people are creating devices that they would like
• 38:09
  us to think are tools for intelligence and, you
• 38:14
  know, become enlightenment. You know, all these
• 38:17
  devices are smart devices or intelligent devices.
• 38:21
  The people who make them, or I think many of
• 38:23
  the people who make them know that they're not.
• 38:24
  They basically make you stupid. They're meant
• 38:26
  to make you stupid because it's in the business
• 38:29
  interest of most Silicon Valley companies to
• 38:31
  make you stupid. And therefore, they don't want
• 38:33
  their kids anywhere near them. I think Steve
• 38:35
  Jobs is the famous example who wouldn't let his
• 38:38
  kids have iPhones. And you can see why. Because
• 38:40
  if you want your kid to be a successful and intelligent
• 38:42
  person in the world, you don't want them rotting
• 38:45
  their brain on an iPad for the duration of their
• 38:47
  childhood. You want them doing enriching, intellectually
• 38:50
  stimulating things in the real world. One of
• 38:53
  the things that's already emerging, and I think
• 38:56
  is really dangerous, is we spend a lot of time
• 38:57
  talking about economic equality, but we're going
• 39:00
  to see, and we are beginning to see, the emergence
• 39:02
  of intellectual inequality. There's going to
• 39:04
  be a real divide between rich middle -class people
• 39:07
  who have the knowledge and the resources and
• 39:09
  the time to keep their kids off screens and to
• 39:11
  get their kids reading books and doing constructive
• 39:13
  play, and poorer people who maybe are not so
• 39:16
  well informed about the problem or simply just
• 39:18
  don't have the money or the time because they're
• 39:20
  working two jobs. who for ease, and because it's
• 39:22
  the only way of getting affordable childcare,
• 39:25
  will stick their kids on an iPad and those kids
• 39:27
  will rot their brains for entire childhoods.
• 39:29
  And there is going to be a gulf opening up between
• 39:32
  the powerful knowledge hoarders and the rest
• 39:35
  of us who just don't have the means to live without
• 39:38
  technology. And that is really dystopian and
• 39:41
  frightening. And that is the kind of society
• 39:42
  that existed in Europe before the reading revolution,
• 39:46
  when you had a mass of peasants. who were limited
• 39:51
  in what they could achieve in their lives and
• 39:52
  what they could achieve in politics and what
• 39:53
  they could achieve culturally because they didn't
• 39:55
  have access to knowledge and information. And
• 39:58
  then you have the elites who live this unbelievably,
• 40:00
  one of the most sophisticated cultures that has
• 40:03
  existed in history, the court cultures of the
• 40:05
  17th and 18th centuries, unbelievably rich in
• 40:08
  philosophy and art and music. And they lived
• 40:10
  a totally different intellectual life. Just reciting
• 40:10
  poetry for fun. Yeah. And that divide is opening
• 40:14
  up in society in front of our eyes. it's going
• 40:19
  to be a real political problem it's tricky isn't
• 40:22
  it one of the biggest reasons i started this
• 40:24
  podcast was because i could feel my brain turning
• 40:27
  into mush spending all that time on tiktok and
• 40:30
  instagram like i was just you know it was like
• 40:32
  blood coming out of my ears literally every day
• 40:34
  and i wanted to put a stop to it by having conversations
• 40:37
  with a bunch of smart people. Of course, I believe
• 40:39
  I'm naturally a very curious person, but if I
• 40:42
  up the stakes and host a renowned university
• 40:45
  professor who's just released a book on the opium
• 40:48
  wars, I'm going to have to read it to prevent
• 40:50
  asking illiterate, embarrassing questions. And
• 40:54
  that part works. That part is great. However,
• 40:56
  I soon realized that if I want this pod to have
• 40:59
  any sort of traction, I have to cut up... every
• 41:02
  conversation into tiny little bits for social
• 41:05
  media. And then I have to upload and post and
• 41:07
  write descriptions for these. And all of that
• 41:09
  takes up a lot of time, time spent online again.
• 41:13
  So in the end, I've come full circle in the worst
• 41:16
  possible way. It just seems unavoidable to me.
• 41:20
  Yeah, it isn't escapable. And I mean, I have
• 41:22
  the same thing with my job as well. Like it's
• 41:25
  very hard to stay off the internet and it's only
• 41:27
  going to get harder. There was a disturbing proposal
• 41:30
  here in the UK. that the government seems to
• 41:32
  have walked away from to introduce digital ID
• 41:34
  cards, which would mean that every citizen would
• 41:37
  have to have an ID card, not necessarily a policy
• 41:39
  I'm opposed to, but the ID card would have to
• 41:40
  be on your phone. And smartphones are basically
• 41:42
  going to become compulsory. And it's going to
• 41:45
  become harder and harder and harder to avoid
• 41:47
  these devices, which we know are dangerous for
• 41:50
  our minds. I mean, we've got used to it far too
• 41:53
  quickly. If you said 20 years ago, if you said
• 41:56
  30 years ago, it's going to be virtually mandatory
• 41:59
  for every citizen of society. to have an addictive
• 42:02
  entertainment device that is going to damage
• 42:04
  their mental health, damage their IQ, we would
• 42:06
  say that could never happen. That is a disaster
• 42:08
  for democracy. We must stop this. There must
• 42:10
  be legislation to stop it. It's crept up on us.
• 42:13
  I mean, as I always go on about, I managed to
• 42:16
  live without a smartphone. I've got a dumb phone.
• 42:18
  And it's just about doable. I'm lucky in my job
• 42:21
  as a writer. I'm not always answering emails.
• 42:23
  I don't have to have apps on my phone for work.
• 42:26
  I've got a friend who has to use a smartphone
• 42:27
  to get into his office. He has to scan an app.
• 42:30
  on his phone by the front door of his office
• 42:32
  to get into to get into work he can't live without
• 42:35
  a smartphone he is you know it's obligatory for
• 42:37
  him to succeed in society and to have an income
• 42:39
  but he has to have this device and i think it's
• 42:41
  so sinister and i worry that even as i say this
• 42:45
  now people with smartphones will you know think
• 42:48
  that i'm overstating it but the statistics are
• 42:50
  there um intelligence is declining concentration
• 42:52
  is declining mental health is declining that's
• 42:54
  a whole other that's a whole other issue and
• 42:56
  this is basically becoming compulsory And it's
• 42:59
  really frightening. Yeah, I wanted to ask you,
• 43:02
  I mean, you're a journalist, which means you
• 43:03
  have to navigate this minefield of constant Trump
• 43:07
  tweets and social media and AI slop, even more
• 43:10
  than the rest of us, at least sometimes. I imagine
• 43:12
  you can't afford to just ignore it. And I know
• 43:15
  you have an ex -account. How do you deal with
• 43:18
  that? Yeah, it is difficult. So I have two laptops.
• 43:23
  I've got my work laptop and my personal laptop.
• 43:27
  I only have Twitter on my work laptop and I've
• 43:29
  blocked my Twitter timeline. So I can't see my
• 43:33
  timeline. I can see my own profile page and I
• 43:35
  can tweet and I can see my notifications and
• 43:37
  that's it. So it limits it that way. Obviously
• 43:40
  not having a smartphone is helpful. And I just
• 43:45
  try to, as far as I can, keep all my digital
• 43:48
  devices out of my bedroom. So my bedroom, I'm
• 43:50
  just reading. It's not perfect, obviously, like,
• 43:53
  you know, a laptop in itself is not nearly as
• 43:54
  bad as a smartphone, but you can go down rabbit
• 43:56
  holes. like reading like doom scrolling menus
• 43:58
  on the laptop but i tried to be very strict about
• 44:02
  it because i had an iphone for ages and i saw
• 44:04
  what it was doing to my mind and i grew up loving
• 44:06
  books i grew up reading a lot and i was suddenly
• 44:08
  aware that i wasn't reading nearly as much as
• 44:10
  i was and i was like is this what i want for
• 44:13
  my life my entire ambition for myself when i
• 44:16
  was a kid and as a teenager was to be well read
• 44:17
  and to know a lot about the world and i'm spending
• 44:20
  my time like scrolling twitter on my phone and
• 44:22
  i was just like this is a disaster this is not
• 44:24
  at all what I want to do with my life. I just
• 44:26
  have to walk away from this. So I did. And I'd
• 44:30
  say if people are thinking about it, it's more
• 44:33
  doable than you think. When I first got rid of
• 44:35
  my, I wrote about this in the paper and it was
• 44:37
  quite kind of funny because it was a bit difficult.
• 44:39
  When I first got rid of my smartphone, I just
• 44:41
  got a normal dump, like a kind of a real dump
• 44:44
  phone, like an old 90s style Nokia brick. And
• 44:46
  that was like, that's not a realistic way to
• 44:49
  navigate the proper world. I remember trying
• 44:50
  to go to my, my best friend was getting married.
• 44:53
  And I was trying to go to his wedding. I started
• 44:55
  meeting him at his house earlier before we went
• 44:56
  down to the venue where he was getting married.
• 44:59
  And I was like, oh, I don't have Google Maps.
• 45:01
  I actually can't make my way to his house. So
• 45:03
  I had to ring my girlfriend on my dumb phone.
• 45:05
  She had to go on Google Maps on her computer
• 45:07
  and explain to me how to get to his house. So
• 45:10
  I was like, this is not working. But there are
• 45:11
  good dumb phones. So this thing that I've got,
• 45:13
  the Chin F21 Pro, has Maps, it has WhatsApp,
• 45:17
  and it has Spotify, and it does basically nothing
• 45:19
  else. Wow, that's fantastic. highly recommended
• 45:23
  yeah because for example in japan i need google
• 45:26
  maps i cannot like this city has 40 million people
• 45:29
  uh you know the train system is insanely elaborate
• 45:33
  like i cannot live without google maps i was
• 45:35
  just wondering how do you yeah so i really recommend
• 45:38
  that because i think it works basically as a
• 45:40
  tool it like enhances your life and where you
• 45:42
  know the the idea about the you know the idea
• 45:44
  always sold about smartphones is always just
• 45:46
  a tool it's just to enhance your life they're
• 45:48
  not they're addictive and timid devices i think
• 45:49
  this is much closer to being a tool that you
• 45:52
  can use to navigate the world better but it doesn't
• 45:55
  like you know it's not trying to melt your mind
• 45:56
  all right what implications does this massive
• 46:00
  dying of print we're witnessing have on politics
• 46:04
  do you reckon yeah a catastrophic implications
• 46:07
  and we're seeing them in front of our eyes right
• 46:11
  now um i mean it touches a lot of the things
• 46:14
  that we've spoken about our political discourse
• 46:16
  has just collapsed the difference between a um
• 46:20
  public realm in which people are discussing political
• 46:23
  and policy issues in long in the through long
• 46:26
  form text in magazine articles in journal articles
• 46:28
  in books and in newspapers is utterly different
• 46:31
  to one in which people are discussing these issues
• 46:34
  through tiktok i think tiktok is now the number
• 46:36
  one news source for people under the age of 18
• 46:39
  or maybe even 25 in in the uk in the us so the
• 46:44
  mainstream media now is 30 second tiktok videos
• 46:47
  it is impossible to express complex political
• 46:50
  ideas in the form of a TikTok video. TikTok videos
• 46:53
  are vulnerable to all those irrational forms
• 46:54
  of argument we were talking about, you know,
• 46:56
  charm, weeping, shouting, playing music. I mean,
• 47:00
  all this is familiar. All this is familiar from
• 47:02
  anyone who's ever looked at TikTok. And yeah,
• 47:05
  we live in an extremely complex civilization
• 47:06
  and we're trying to run it with the intellectual
• 47:08
  apparatus of a preliterate society. We're trying
• 47:11
  to run it through, I mean, worse, to be honest,
• 47:12
  because a preliterate society, you know, often...
• 47:15
  Yeah, had this great oral tradition, like storytelling.
• 47:18
  Exactly. And that's often quite a rich tradition.
• 47:20
  And we know in traditional villages when the
• 47:23
  elders and members of the community gather around
• 47:25
  to debate issues that are facing the community,
• 47:27
  they're very long and quite complex debates informed
• 47:29
  by these people who know their own little part
• 47:31
  of the world incredibly richly. I mean, there's
• 47:33
  obviously much inferior... Not to be rude about
• 47:37
  oral societies, I guess, but it's a very different
• 47:39
  thing to the world of newspapers and print. The
• 47:41
  world we're going to is a world in which people
• 47:44
  are just communicating through 20 -second videos.
• 47:46
  And that is just an intellectual catastrophe
• 47:47
  unfolding in front of our eyes. And as we get
• 47:51
  older, a generation of people who've grown up
• 47:53
  entirely in this world of 30 second videos are
• 47:57
  going to run things. And eventually the people
• 47:59
  who remember this world of print, who thought
• 48:00
  that to participate in politics and to understand
• 48:03
  politics and to vote, you have to read a newspaper
• 48:05
  and you have to have a reasonable understanding
• 48:07
  of how public affairs worked, are going to die
• 48:09
  away. And the entire world will be... just left
• 48:13
  to people whose only understanding of politics
• 48:15
  has been the 22nd TikTok video. And I mean, to
• 48:20
  be honest, this is barely even a generational
• 48:21
  thing because I think middle -aged people are
• 48:23
  increasingly just, and old people are increasingly
• 48:25
  just as dependent on this trivial visual world
• 48:28
  as young people are. And we can see the effect
• 48:32
  in front of our eyes. Why is Donald Trump president?
• 48:34
  Why is there a populist surge around the world?
• 48:36
  It's not only communications devices. You can't
• 48:38
  blame everything on screens. There are economic
• 48:40
  factors and things like inequality matter as
• 48:42
  well. But these are people who are, I mean, Donald
• 48:46
  Trump is preeminently a product of the screen
• 48:48
  culture. He dominated television, the last kind
• 48:51
  of great screen media system that dominated our
• 48:55
  society. And he's moved seamlessly into the world
• 48:57
  like TikTok and Twitter and Truth Social because
• 49:00
  he's extremely emotional. He's extremely visual.
• 49:04
  He's extremely angry. All these things that screens
• 49:07
  and short attention spans reward, he plugs into.
• 49:10
  And there are various studies that show that.
• 49:13
  And there's a study of Romania that shows that
• 49:15
  the areas of the country with the highest levels
• 49:19
  of TikTok use were the areas that were most likely
• 49:21
  to vote for far -right or populist candidates.
• 49:24
  Yeah, I believe you wrote that TikTok is rocket
• 49:27
  fuel, especially for far -right parties. Yes,
• 49:30
  that's not my phrase. Yeah, it's another really,
• 49:33
  it's a phrase from a great essay that I again
• 49:34
  urge everyone to look up. TikTok is rocket fuel
• 49:37
  for populists by Ian Leslie in his blog, The
• 49:39
  Ruffian. And yeah, he goes through it all and
• 49:42
  shows all the correlations between TikTok usage
• 49:45
  and voting for populist and far right parties.
• 49:48
  I mean, that's not to say that every populist
• 49:49
  party is like bad and all their ideas are bad,
• 49:51
  but it's a kind of politics that is much more
• 49:54
  skewed towards emotion, irrationality, like lack
• 49:59
  of complex reasoning. And I basically think,
• 50:03
  and one of the arguments in my essay is that
• 50:05
  I think democracy is a product of print culture.
• 50:07
  We've never had a modern democracy that's not
• 50:10
  been founded on print culture, that's not been
• 50:12
  founded on this world in which everyone who can
• 50:14
  vote and all the citizens of a society have access
• 50:18
  to and regularly engage with complex, long, complex
• 50:23
  texts explaining how that society works and what's
• 50:25
  going on. That has slipped away. And the thing
• 50:29
  is, I don't even think the standard has to be
• 50:30
  that high. If you look at even tabloid newspapers
• 50:33
  here in the UK, which are notorious for being
• 50:36
  downmarket and lowbrow and irrational. If you
• 50:41
  read a tabloid newspaper, and especially a tabloid
• 50:43
  newspaper that was 50 or 60 years old, and the
• 50:46
  kind of apogee of that post -war print culture,
• 50:48
  you learn an awful lot. Like, yes, it's biased.
• 50:50
  And yes, it's outrageous. But compared to TikTok,
• 50:52
  it's kind of amazing. Like, you are reading full
• 50:54
  paragraphs about what's going on in politics.
• 50:57
  And we're just entering a world of ignorance
• 51:00
  and irrationality. And I just don't think democracy
• 51:04
  can survive that world. Democracy is a historically
• 51:06
  contingent phenomenon that arose in a particular
• 51:09
  place in time, which was the print -saturated
• 51:11
  culture of the 19th century. And just as we know
• 51:14
  that that old European hierarchical feudal system
• 51:16
  depends on the culture of the image and then
• 51:20
  died when the culture of the image died and was
• 51:21
  replaced by the culture of the text, democracy
• 51:23
  is... dependent on the culture of the text. And
• 51:27
  as text dies, democracy is dying. And we're going
• 51:32
  to, I think, head back to the deeply unequal
• 51:35
  hierarchical world of the image that prevailed
• 51:37
  in Europe up until the reading revolution before
• 51:39
  the middle of the 18th century. Yeah, here in
• 51:43
  Japan... The last elections were kind of shocking
• 51:46
  in a lot of ways, most of all because a fringe
• 51:49
  far -right conspiracy party called Sunsetto managed
• 51:52
  to break into the mainstream for the first time,
• 51:55
  primarily by instrumentalizing incidents of individual
• 51:58
  tourists and foreigners who were misbehaving
• 52:02
  here to kind of enrage the public. And it worked.
• 52:05
  They did all of that, of course, on social media,
• 52:07
  almost exclusively. on social media. And I'm
• 52:10
  the first one to say that some American shithead
• 52:12
  Twitch streamer hanging from a Sakura cherry
• 52:16
  tree for views should be kicked out of the country
• 52:19
  ASAP. However, I really don't think that's Japan's
• 52:22
  number one problem at the moment, or even a top
• 52:25
  five problem. And yet, here we are. And that's
• 52:29
  exactly the kind of political discourse that
• 52:30
  is susceptible to politics in the age of the
• 52:33
  screen, because it's highly visual, you can see
• 52:34
  it, and it's a one -off incident, and politics
• 52:36
  has become incredibly personalized. If you're
• 52:39
  reading that thing in a newspaper, a responsible
• 52:41
  newspaper, and even a somewhat irresponsible
• 52:42
  newspaper, will be able to contextualize this
• 52:45
  somewhat. They'll say, oh, well, it's only like,
• 52:47
  you know, 0 .01 % of American tourists in Japan
• 52:51
  are doing this. When all you're seeing is you're
• 52:53
  not seeing the statistics, you're not seeing
• 52:54
  the overall reality of the situation, you're
• 52:56
  just seeing this one provoking incident, very
• 52:58
  suited to the visual culture of the screen, if
• 53:00
  you can capture it on a phone, that completely
• 53:02
  distorts politics and it completely distorts
• 53:03
  political priorities. And yeah, and it's instructive
• 53:06
  that's happening in Japan because it's happening
• 53:07
  everywhere. around the world. Is becoming a post
• 53:10
  -literate society, which you allege we're doing
• 53:13
  very convincingly, basically returning to like
• 53:16
  an oral pre -literate society of the past, like
• 53:20
  sort of doing a big circle? In some ways. I mean,
• 53:25
  there are loads of really interesting analogies
• 53:27
  and comparisons people have made between pre
• 53:29
  -literate and post -literate societies. It can
• 53:31
  be overdone. So when I say that we're becoming
• 53:33
  post -literate, I'm not saying that everyone's
• 53:35
  going to not know how to read. We do have an
• 53:37
  education system. People will learn how to read.
• 53:39
  The differences between a society that is structured
• 53:42
  around written communication versus one that's
• 53:44
  structured around oral communication, it won't
• 53:47
  be exactly the same because we can still read
• 53:49
  and write and people still do read a bit, I think,
• 53:50
  less than they did. It's become more visual and
• 53:52
  more video -based. But people will still read
• 53:56
  a bit in their everyday lives and they'll still
• 53:57
  write a bit. You can't have a job without writing
• 53:59
  an email. We're not all going to become illiterate.
• 54:03
  Well, that's true. And we don't know how far
• 54:06
  it will go. But there are all kinds of intriguing
• 54:08
  parallels. Walter Ong's book, Orality and Literacy,
• 54:11
  again, is so interesting on this. And he points
• 54:13
  out, he doesn't actually draw the parallels,
• 54:16
  but they're just kind of obvious to readers.
• 54:18
  So he says that one of the main characteristics
• 54:22
  of discourse and debate in oral cultures and
• 54:25
  traditional tribal societies or historical societies
• 54:28
  before the arrival of writing is that discourse
• 54:30
  is, the word he uses is agonistic. It's very
• 54:33
  emotional and it's very angry often. And that's
• 54:36
  because, as I guess I was saying earlier, it's
• 54:38
  very personal. All the pieces of information
• 54:40
  you receive and all the arguments you have are
• 54:42
  with a person. What print does, Walter Ong has
• 54:45
  this phrase, it separates the knower from the
• 54:46
  known. A book, I mean, all these ones behind
• 54:49
  me, takes knowledge and takes it away from its
• 54:51
  immediate human context. And every immediate
• 54:53
  human context is full of anger and emotion and
• 54:56
  like envy and lust and all these human feelings
• 54:59
  that complicate knowledge. And it... removes
• 55:02
  it from that context and it depersonalizes it.
• 55:04
  And that allows us to have a much more kind of
• 55:06
  like, you know, rational and reasonable society,
• 55:08
  as I was saying. But oral societies, everything
• 55:11
  is personalized. It's happening again on TikTok.
• 55:13
  If you're getting all your news from TikTok,
• 55:14
  everything that you know about politics in the
• 55:17
  world is coming from a particular person. And
• 55:19
  it's much more personalized and it's much more
• 55:22
  angry, as we were saying. And he has all these
• 55:23
  amazing sort of little details. Like he says
• 55:26
  that one of the characteristics of oral societies
• 55:28
  is that they deal in what he calls heavy characters.
• 55:31
  This is the kind of extremely exaggerated, larger
• 55:36
  than life, mythological kinds of characters that
• 55:38
  you get in Greek myth, for example. So, you know,
• 55:43
  you have Achilles who can run faster than any
• 55:45
  man on earth, or you have Ajax who's stronger
• 55:47
  than an ox. And in an oral culture, they really
• 55:50
  kind of, because you can't write anything down,
• 55:51
  you have to remember everything. So what sticks
• 55:53
  in your brain are these really larger than life,
• 55:56
  big characters. And it's kind of obvious. It
• 55:59
  kind of seems that we're returning to that now.
• 56:01
  Like, what is Donald Trump if not a heavy character?
• 56:03
  Larger than life, you know, absurd looking, but
• 56:06
  he sticks in your memory. And there are all these
• 56:08
  kinds of intriguing parallels. But as you say,
• 56:11
  I think the most important one is that discourse
• 56:13
  is becoming, again, more emotional, which is
• 56:16
  one of the characteristics of a preliterate society.
• 56:19
  The problem is, of course, like it's maybe fine
• 56:21
  to run a small village on those lines or a hunter
• 56:23
  -gatherer band out in the kind of desert or the
• 56:26
  plain or the steppe on those lines. to run the
• 56:28
  most complex technological civilization in the
• 56:30
  history of the planet through the medium of most
• 56:33
  citizens understanding the world through 20 -second
• 56:35
  TikTok videos is insanity and it's not going
• 56:37
  to work, in my view. Allow me to, for a tiny
• 56:44
  bit of pushback at the end. Yeah, of course.
• 56:47
  As someone who's approaching middle age now,
• 56:49
  I begin spending an inordinate amount of time
• 56:52
  thinking about the Roman Empire, of course, and
• 56:54
  the Second World War, which is also... reflected
• 56:58
  in this podcast somewhat, like Tony Soprano.
• 57:01
  I don't know if you've seen The Sopranos, but
• 57:03
  he's always watching some weird World War II
• 57:07
  documentaries. Anyway, one of the biggest horrors
• 57:09
  of World War II is that Nazism and the idea of
• 57:12
  Holocaust manifested themselves in Germany, which
• 57:16
  was one of the most, if not the most, literate
• 57:18
  societies in the world during World War I and
• 57:22
  World War II. So it seems that... Sometimes being
• 57:25
  extremely literate doesn't shield you from falling
• 57:29
  prey to the worst kind of ideas. Exactly. And
• 57:32
  it's a good point. And it's important to make
• 57:34
  because the argument of my essay, my argument
• 57:37
  is not that literacy is a magical cure -all that
• 57:40
  permanently banishes irrationality and hatred
• 57:43
  from society. It's not. And it would be mad to
• 57:45
  say that. For me, literacy is a necessary but
• 57:49
  not sufficient condition of democracy. So to
• 57:52
  run an effective democracy, there are probably
• 57:54
  a few things that you want to have in place.
• 57:56
  One of them would be a functioning economy. Obviously,
• 57:59
  what happened to Germany before the Second World
• 58:00
  War was the economy collapsed in the most dramatic,
• 58:03
  almost as dramatically as any economy has ever
• 58:05
  collapsed. And if everybody suddenly gets poorer,
• 58:08
  they're going to get really angry and all kinds
• 58:10
  of irrational forces will be unleashed. So it's
• 58:17
  not the case that like... The kind of communications
• 58:20
  technology in a society is the only thing shaping
• 58:22
  its destiny. There are a range of things that
• 58:24
  I think shape the destinies of society, climate,
• 58:28
  economics, communications technologies, other
• 58:31
  forms of technology, you know, transport technologies,
• 58:34
  infrastructure. If one of these things goes wrong,
• 58:37
  your society can end up in a bad place. And I
• 58:40
  think what's happening for us at the moment is
• 58:43
  the number one thing that's going wrong is our
• 58:44
  medium of communication. And it's not to say
• 58:47
  that like every... literate society is like perfectly
• 58:51
  rational and gets along very well. That's not
• 58:54
  the case. Loads of different things can go wrong
• 58:56
  in society. But if you do lose that element,
• 58:59
  I think you also lose democracy in the same way
• 59:01
  that if you lose a good economy, you lose democracy.
• 59:03
  So there are a few things that you want in place
• 59:05
  for your society to function. Literacy is one
• 59:07
  of them. And that's one thing that's going importantly
• 59:10
  and badly wrong right now, I would say. James,
• 59:13
  a very easy question for the end. How do we get
• 59:15
  out of this colossal pickle? My God, it's the
• 59:19
  hardest question. I mean, the thing is, I'm sort
• 59:20
  of, I've been asked this a few times and I'm
• 59:24
  kind of wary of faking optimism. What we're living
• 59:29
  through is like - No, don't do it. I'm from Eastern
• 59:30
  Europe. We're very like - Okay, good. You're
• 59:32
  happy with pessimism. I think often you talk
• 59:34
  to Americans and they can't believe that you
• 59:35
  haven't got a solution. It's a very American
• 59:37
  mindset. For me, it's the opposite. I hope you're
• 59:41
  going to say something horrible. No, no, don't
• 59:43
  worry, I am. I think we're basically living through
• 59:46
  a civilizational transformation. Yeah. Equivalent
• 59:49
  to the invention of the printing press. That's
• 59:50
  a bit of a euphemism. By transformation, I don't
• 59:53
  think you meant that in a good way. No, no, a
• 59:55
  negative transformation. You know, I think really
• 59:57
  a catastrophe, actually. And, you know, you could
• 1:00:00
  imagine you're asking me. You know, we were both
• 1:00:04
  Catholic priests and the printing press had just
• 1:00:06
  been invented. And Martin Luther's Protestant
• 1:00:08
  ideas were like swirling around Europe. And we're
• 1:00:11
  saying, oh, my God, what's happened? It's terrible.
• 1:00:13
  Print is allowing people to disseminate all these
• 1:00:15
  ideas that are destroying the Roman Catholic
• 1:00:16
  Church. Like, what's the solution to Europe splitting
• 1:00:20
  in half between Protestants and Catholics? There
• 1:00:22
  wasn't a solution. Like, technological change
• 1:00:25
  is very hard to reverse. I'm not really sure
• 1:00:27
  there are many instances in history when it has
• 1:00:29
  been reversed, and especially these kind of communications
• 1:00:31
  technologies. And I think this is transforming
• 1:00:33
  our society. And I think in so many ways, the
• 1:00:36
  society that we grew up in and the society that
• 1:00:38
  we know. was a society that was founded on print
• 1:00:40
  and the culture of print and the cognitive and
• 1:00:43
  intellectual capacities that grow from print.
• 1:00:46
  And that world is disappearing very rapidly.
• 1:00:49
  And I just don't see how we can stop that happening,
• 1:00:53
  not least because when print spread around Europe
• 1:00:58
  and transformed Europe and caused the Reformation,
• 1:01:01
  Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the people
• 1:01:04
  who had a kind of profit interest in that technological
• 1:01:07
  transformation were... booksellers in venice
• 1:01:11
  and in german university towns they weren't that
• 1:01:14
  powerful really and what's happening now is the
• 1:01:17
  people who who control this new communications
• 1:01:20
  infrastructure this infrastructure of addictive
• 1:01:23
  screens that's destroying society these are some
• 1:01:25
  of the richest well these are the richest and
• 1:01:27
  most powerful people on earth they want us all
• 1:01:30
  to have an addictive personal entertainment device
• 1:01:32
  and they've succeeded in doing it and everyone's
• 1:01:34
  going to have have one And that genie is never
• 1:01:36
  going to go back in the bottle. And no government
• 1:01:38
  is powerful enough to rein them in. And their
• 1:01:40
  entire business model rests on having you addicted
• 1:01:42
  to your screen so that you can scroll and look
• 1:01:44
  at adverts, which make them money. And the more
• 1:01:46
  you scroll, the more information they have about
• 1:01:47
  you. They sell you better adverts. You see more
• 1:01:49
  adverts. They don't care what happens the rest
• 1:01:51
  of your life. We know that screens are really
• 1:01:54
  eating away at a lot of what we've considered
• 1:01:55
  the point of human life. Relationships are declining.
• 1:01:59
  People socialize less. People go to art galleries
• 1:02:02
  less. People eat out in restaurants less. People
• 1:02:04
  read books less. The whole richness of human
• 1:02:07
  experience is being destroyed by the fact that
• 1:02:09
  screens are capturing our attention because they're
• 1:02:11
  made to be addictive, because Silicon Valley
• 1:02:13
  companies want them on their screens, want us
• 1:02:15
  on their screens because that's how they make
• 1:02:18
  money, and they don't care what happens to the
• 1:02:19
  rest of society. And we can see that because
• 1:02:21
  society is being transformed in negative ways
• 1:02:23
  in front of our eyes, and they don't mind because
• 1:02:26
  it makes them money. And I just don't see how
• 1:02:28
  you can push back against that. I don't think
• 1:02:29
  anyone is powerful enough to push back against
• 1:02:32
  that. If I were to have one slight note of optimism,
• 1:02:34
  which is like a small one, it's that, you know,
• 1:02:37
  you can get a dumb phone. It's difficult to do,
• 1:02:40
  but it's still possible. And we're not yet at
• 1:02:42
  the point where I think we probably will end
• 1:02:44
  up in my lifetime where smartphones are effectively
• 1:02:46
  enforced on people by the government because
• 1:02:48
  they need to have digital ID cards or your passport
• 1:02:50
  will be on a smartphone. There's this little
• 1:02:53
  window where you can opt out of this. I think
• 1:02:56
  basically civilizational catastrophe. And you
• 1:02:59
  don't have to have a smartphone just yet, often
• 1:03:01
  for many people. And you can still do that. And
• 1:03:05
  I would say the more people who do it, and the
• 1:03:08
  more we create at least a small minority of people
• 1:03:10
  in society who have not opted into the mainstream
• 1:03:13
  smartphone culture, the more we will have little
• 1:03:17
  caucus of people, an interest group, who every
• 1:03:19
  time that... governments or companies try and
• 1:03:22
  force smartphones on us you'll have a group of
• 1:03:24
  people who'll be able to stick up and say hang
• 1:03:25
  on we're not part of this we can't do it we can't
• 1:03:27
  have digital id cards because we don't have smartphones
• 1:03:29
  i don't think many people will be able to join
• 1:03:32
  me i don't think many people will want to but
• 1:03:34
  if some people do you have a little group of
• 1:03:36
  people who can who can stand up for themselves
• 1:03:38
  and for me that's the only that's the only ray
• 1:03:41
  of light i can see that if we can just get a
• 1:03:43
  little band of people together who can kind of
• 1:03:45
  put their shields up and you know we can huddle
• 1:03:47
  together we might we might we might have a better
• 1:03:50
  chance individually of escaping some of the worst
• 1:03:52
  parts of this stuff. I think that's the only
• 1:03:54
  plausible solution I can give. I have a solution.
• 1:03:58
  In fact, I have two solutions. Number one, subscribe
• 1:04:00
  to this podcast, of course. And number two, head
• 1:04:03
  to Substack and subscribe to Cultural Capital.
• 1:04:09
  Yes, I completely agree with that. James, thank
• 1:04:13
  you so much for this conversation. slightly terrifying
• 1:04:16
  i'm not gonna lie but uh come on we we're not
• 1:04:20
  gonna pretend that everything is like tips topsy
• 1:04:23
  -turvy or whatever you say in in english how
• 1:04:25
  do you say it like everything is um dadly doodly
• 1:04:27
  i'm sorry yeah it's something like that there
• 1:04:30
  are all kinds of english phrases that sound slightly
• 1:04:31
  absurd but yeah i think along those lines yeah
• 1:04:35
  and hopefully next time when we meet i have one
• 1:04:39
  of those phones And I started reading books again.
• 1:04:42
  The problem is I have stopped reading all fiction.
• 1:04:45
  And that was my main thing. I really enjoyed
• 1:04:47
  a good novel when I was like 16 or 17. And I
• 1:04:51
  basically, I'm reading some nonfiction for the
• 1:04:54
  podcast when I'm going to have a historian on
• 1:04:56
  or whatever. But I basically stopped reading
• 1:04:58
  novels. And it's a shame. I think you can get
• 1:05:01
  by that. I think it's doable. Thank you so much
• 1:05:03
  for listening. Please subscribe to the podcast
• 1:05:05
  on YouTube. Follow and rate on Spotify and Apple
• 1:05:07
  Podcasts. Marketing tutorials insist. It's really,
• 1:05:10
  really important that I have to tell you about
• 1:05:12
  that. So I am doing it. Also, if you'd like to,
• 1:05:15
  please support me on Patreon. It's a big help.
• 1:05:18
  This is a one -person podcast. I do everything
• 1:05:20
  by my little old self. There's no team behind
• 1:05:21
  me. Nobody. Very, very sad, I know. But you can
• 1:05:25
  help. by hopping on Patreon and finding the Smart
• 1:05:29
  Cookies podcast on there. And then last, but
• 1:05:34
  certainly not least, I have to thank my existing
• 1:05:37
  patrons. Without you, there would be no Smart
• 1:05:40
  Cookies podcast, which makes you actual producers
• 1:05:43
  of this show. So eternal thanks goes to Luke
• 1:05:48
  Johnson, Jim Bird, Bewildered Beauty, Davorin
• 1:05:51
  Paulica, Dale and Mia, Chirt Gozar, Sasha Sodia,
• 1:05:54
  Richard. Thanks, you absolute legends. I am deeply,
• 1:06:20
  deeply touched. It means a lot.