released 7/31/2026
Is the practice of reading disappearing, as a 2026 Atlantic article by Rose Horowitch (“The Age of Reading Is Over”) claims? Joel Halldorf, author of Reading Matters: A History for the Digital Age (NYU Press, 2026), examines the history of reading and how our relationship to texts and reading changes as technology shifts. Each form that text takes invites a mode of interaction with it, and Halldorf explains how we approach printed text differently than digital reading. This Friday Feature introduces a short segment from a longer Conversation with Halldorf about the effects of various forms of reading on both readers and societies and why book reading invites a different kind of engagement than does digital reading.
Ken Myers also reminds listeners of the perennial wisdom found on our Anthology “On Books and Reading” featuring poet and former National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia, literary critic Sven Birkerts, painter Makoto Fujimura, columnist Maggie Jackson, pastor-theologian Eugene Peterson, preacher and media ecologist Gregory Edward Reynolds, and portrait painter Catherine Prescott.
Finally, Ken shares about three Bonus Feature lectures, provided by our newest Partner, the James M. Houston Centre for Humanity and the Common Good. Listeners will hear short lecture segments from Jens Zimmermann on the mystery and dignity of the human person, Angela Franks on the construction of the empty self, and John Behr on how the early Church Fathers would answer the question, What is a human being?
35 minutes
PREVIEW
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