G.K. Chesterton on the Death of Literacy

G.K. Chesterton on the Death of Literacy

Author: Society of G.K. Chesterton July 28, 2026 Duration: 34:02

A new Atlantic cover story argues that America is sliding into a postliterate age—but G.K. Chesterton diagnosed the same collapse in 1928, years before Marshall McLuhan or Neil Postman raised the alarm. Joe Grabowski goes solo to walk through Rose Horowitch's statistics on the death of reading, then turns to two Illustrated London News essays in which Chesterton describes a public that has stopped reading connected prose and now only kisses books it has never opened. What emerges is a practical challenge for anyone who wants to recover the habit Chesterton simply assumed his own readers still had.

In This Episode:

  • Why G.K. Chesterton said so little about illiteracy—and what that silence reveals about how genuinely new this problem is
  • Chesterton's 1928 warning that making reading "easier" signals a slump in reading rather than a boom
  • What Chesterton meant by a public relapsing into the horn book and the cat on the mat—and why Joe Grabowski thinks he would have said much the same of reels, Shorts, and TikTok
  • The 1921 essay in which Chesterton argued that the books shaping the world are the ones nobody has actually opened: Darwin, Marx, and the rumor that replaces the text
  • Why Chesterton's critique lands on podcast listeners too—the risk of becoming the very type of person Chesterton described, taking opinions secondhand from influencers and favorite podcasters

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Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Chapters:

  • 00:00: Introduction—A Crisis Worth Paying Attention To
  • 04:20: The Atlantic Article: Rose Horowitch on the End of Reading
  • 06:42: The Numbers—Who Still Reads, and How Little
  • 09:06: Schools, Screens, and the Warnings of McLuhan and Postman
  • 11:29: Why It Matters: Media Literacy in an Age of AI
  • 13:56: If No One Reads, Who Wants to Write?
  • 16:19: Writers Come from Readers
  • 18:31: Turning to G.K. Chesterton and His 1928 Essay on Reading
  • 23:20: Newsprint Headlines, Reels, and the Attention Economy
  • 25:38: The 1921 Essay—The Books the World Has Not Read
  • 30:07: An Examination of Conscience
  • 32:33: The Challenge: Take the Book Down off the Shelf

Hosted by Grettelyn Darkey and Joe Grabowski, Uncommon Sense-The Official Podcast of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton applies a timeless, joyful, and profoundly insightful worldview to modern life. This isn't a dry historical review, but a lively conversation that uses G.K. Chesterton's own writings and sprawling legacy as a starting point to examine just about anything. We might delve into the paradoxes of faith, the wonder of ordinary things, or the humor in politics, all through that distinctive Chestertonian lens which finds truth in paradox and gratitude in contradiction. You'll hear discussions that feel both refreshingly old-fashioned and urgently relevant, exploring topics in education, spirituality, and daily life with a sense of intellectual adventure. The aim is to recapture a sense of awe and common sense, which Chesterton argued is anything but common. Each episode invites you to step into a broader, more colorful world, one where logic and wonder comfortably coexist. This podcast, brought to you by the Society of G.K. Chesterton, is for anyone curious about seeing familiar things in a startling new light, finding depth in laughter, and discovering the radical nature of gratitude. For feedback, the hosts can be reached at podcast@chesterton.org.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Uncommon Sense - The Official Podcast of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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