# The Reading Recession: Are We Making Ourselves Less Intelligent? (James Marriott)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/radical-with-amol-rajan-6625076/the-reading-recession-are-we-making-ourselves-less-intelligent-james-marriott
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/radical-with-amol-rajan-6625076/the-reading-recession-are-we-making-ourselves-less-intelligent-james-marriott.md
Podcast: [Radical with Amol Rajan](https://stenobird.com/podcast/radical-with-amol-rajan-6625076)
Published: 2026-04-09T05:00:00+00:00
Episode link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002tpw0
Audio file: http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download-rss/proto/http/vpid/p0nc7s48.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/radical-with-amol-rajan-6625076/episodes/the-reading-recession-are-we-making-ourselves-less-intelligent-james-marriott
Duration seconds: 3496

## Resource

This week, the columnist and writer James Marriott argues that reading is essential to the rise and fall of liberal democracy. He proposes that reading helps the spread of information, encourages critical thinking, and forces people to structure their ideas logically. But he’s concerned the shift from deep reading to digital skim-reading - driven largely by screens - is weakening our ability to think in complex, reflective ways. He suggests the decline has political consequences - that a less literate, more screen-dependent public may be more vulnerable to misinformation and less capable of meaningful democratic participation. GET IN TOUCH * WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480 * Email: radical@bbc.co.uk Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday. Your Radical Questions is released every Monday. Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, and he’s the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and the 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-Davis. Technical production was by Johnny Hall. The editor is Sam Bonham.

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/radical-with-amol-rajan-6625076/episodes/the-reading-recession-are-we-making-ourselves-less-intelligent-james-marriott/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/radical-with-amol-rajan-6625076/the-reading-recession-are-we-making-ourselves-less-intelligent-james-marriott.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.