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Podcast: Plain English with Derek Thompson
Episode: The End of Reading
Description: Something alarming is happening with reading in America. Leisure reading by some accounts has declined by about 50 percent this century. Literacy scores are declining for fourth and eighth graders at alarming rates. And even college students today are complaining to teachers that they can’t read entire books. The book itself, that ancient piece of technology for storing ideas passed down across decades, is fading in curricula across the country, replaced by film and TV and YouTube.Why, with everything happening in the world, would I want to talk about reading? The business podcaster Jo...