Episode · Interesting Times · 2026-10-08
Books mentioned on TikTok Is Taking Us Back to the Dark Ages | Interesting Times
Literacy is declining sharply across the West. In the era of vertical video, who has the time or concentration to read a long article — let alone a whole book?
Mary Harrington discussed The New Dark Ages by James Marriott. James Marriott discussed Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Middlemarch by George Eliot, Paradise Lost by John Milton, Ulysses by James Joyce, Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam, The Iliad, and Beowulf by Seamus Heaney.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The New Dark Ages
Discussed“James Marriott calls this the new dark ages and he thinks that as we slip away from mass long- form literacy into a world of Tik Tok and slop that we're in danger of sacrificing the foundations of democracy itself.”
Where to get it
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Amusing Ourselves to Death
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman is a seminal media ecology critique arguing that television and modern visual media degrade public discourse by reducing serious thought to mere entertainment.
Discussed“The famous one book that made an enormous impact on me when I first read it was Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to death about the move of America from a textual print culture to a TV culture.”
Where to get it
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Bleak House
Bleak House by Charles Dickens is a sprawling and intricate Victorian novel that famously critiques the British judicial system through the interminable chancery lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
Discussed“I had to speedread Blee House and Middle March in a week um to write an essay in my first week of of the first year.”
Where to get it
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Middlemarch
Middlemarch by George Eliot is a classic Victorian novel that explores provincial life, social reform, morality, and human relationships in a fictional English town.
Discussed“I had to speedread Blee House and Middle March in a week um to write an essay in my first week of of the first year.”
Where to get it
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Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost by John Milton is a monumental epic poem that explores the biblical fall of man, the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan, and the ultimate loss of Eden.
Discussed“One of my great my great hubistic moment at university was trying to speed read Paradise Lost, which is even even even more mad.”
Where to get it
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Ulysses
James Joyce's landmark modernist novel Ulysses chronicles an ordinary day in the life of Leopold Bloom in Dublin, mapping human consciousness and daily existence through a revolutionary stream-of-consciousness technique.
Discussed“Uh yes, I think academics are finding that for instance, they've spent their whole career assigning books like Middle March and Ulyses and they're having to stop because the the kids just can't get through them anymore.”
Where to get it
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Bowling Alone
Bowling Alone by Robert D.
Discussed“there's a remarkable statistic quoted by uh Robert Putnham in his book Bowling Alone about how I think it's between the 60s and the '90s the average American gained hours of free time and they spent virtually all of it watching television.”
Where to get it
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The Iliad
The Iliad by Homer is an ancient Greek epic poem detailing the events of the Trojan War and the wrath of Achilles.
Discussed“It's not like we're going to go back to oral poems and beaywolf and the Iliad and uh you know strumming our strumming our lies and singing our our epic songs and all those things that were such important features of of oral culture.”
Where to get it
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Beowulf
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem about a hero who battles monsters and a dragon.
Discussed“It's not like we're going to go back to oral poems and beaywolf and the Iliad and uh you know strumming our strumming our lies and singing our our epic songs and all those things that were such important features of of oral culture.”
Where to get it
