All episodes of EconTalk

EconTalk · 2026-09-21 · 65 min · 12,534 words

The Death of Reading (with James Marriott)

Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio

Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.

We'd love to hear from you. Today is August 16th, 2026, and my guest is author James Marriott of The Times of London, where he is a columnist. His substack is Cultural Capital. He was first here in July of 2025 talking about reading. Today we're going to talk about his new book, The New Dark Ages, The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society.

James, welcome back to Econ Talk. Thanks so much for having me. It's actually amazingly, I talked to you last in the middle of a sweltering London heat wave, and I'm in the middle of another sweltering London heatwave, although It's less hot. When I looked back at that video, I'm completely pink in the in the last time I talked to you.

That is the first couple of minutes. The rest is $1.49.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (65 minutes, 12,534 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.

get it now

Ready in under two minutes.

pay once · credits never expire

monthly · cheapest per episode · cancel any time

One episode is up to 4 hours of audio; a longer one counts as one more for every started 4 hours. Secure checkout by Stripe. Paying once needs no account: we create one from your email. By paying you agree to the terms.