Can Technology Rescue Reading? (Your Radical Questions with James Marriott)
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amol runs through your questions with the Times columnist James Marriott. They take on whether we could use technology to encourage people to do more reading, pessimism on social media, and whether we risk changing our sense of what it means to be human when we lose our connection to imaginary worlds in books. James’s Radio 4 series ‘How Reading Made Us’ is available now on BBC Sounds.
GET IN TOUCH * WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480 * Email: radical@bbc.co.uk Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday.
Amol presents the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 and hosts University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor of The Independent newspaper.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers and Rufus Gray with Anna Budd, Cordelia Hemming and Oscar Pearson. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davies. Technical production was by Johnny Hall. The editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.0 | Hello and welcome to your radical questions. |
| 0:08.1 | This is where I put your questions to one of our magnificent radical guests. |
| 0:11.8 | It's a chance to engage very directly with them and basically ask them about their ideas for the future and about their ideas about what's going wrong today. |
| 0:19.7 | And if you heard last Thursday's |
| 0:21.4 | episode, you will have heard the very distinguished writer, columnist, reader James Marriott, |
| 0:27.5 | who has chronicled the astonishing decline in reading in many modern societies. I think |
| 0:32.6 | it goes so far as to call it a collapse. And he thinks we are entering a post-literate age with profound implications for our culture, |
| 0:40.0 | our democracy and our future. |
| 0:42.0 | Here's BBC Radio 4 series, How Reading Made Us, asks whether learning to read, |
| 0:46.6 | rewired our brains and changed the way we live today. |
| 0:48.9 | He's got a new book out in June. |
| 0:50.7 | It's called The New Dark Ages. |
| 0:52.1 | But I promise, if you haven't heard last Thursday's episode, |
| 0:55.6 | it does end on a note of optimism. So almost optimistically. As close as I can get to optimism. I did my best. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. We've been inundated with questions. I say that every week, but it's always, it's always true because you've got a lot of fans. And we've got a bunch questions. Are you feeling radical and ready? Yeah, as radical and ready as I'll ever be. |
| 1:14.2 | Fantastic. This is the first |
| 1:15.1 | one and it's from Oliver. Hi, it's Oliver Pritchard from County Durham here. When printing technology |
| 1:20.9 | first evolved, it was adopted and used for all kinds of ends. It changed the world. It was the |
| 1:26.7 | new technology of its day. The new communication |
| 1:29.8 | tools of today are equally disruptive and with even great attraction. Can we shape and use them |
| 1:36.2 | to promote critical thought? If so, how? Thanks. Oliver, thank you very much indeed. We like |
| 1:41.9 | critical thought on this podcast. How do we use technology to actually shape and encourage the better angels of our nature, both emotionally and intellectually James? What can we do to, I mean, I know people who heard last Thursday's episode will know that you've got a dumb phone. You're not a dumb guy. How can you use technology to to encourage people to do more reading, not less? |
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