Do books have a future in the new digital world order? And can we engage productively with problematic cultural content?

This week luminary philosopher A.C Grayling and cultural content creator Mary McGillivray join host Lloyd Vogelman on the couch for an unfiltered conversation that digs into the personal side of the Principle of Charity.

A. C. Grayling CBE MA DPhil is the Principal of Northeastern University London and its Professor of Philosophy. He is a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He is the author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas and essays. He was a columnist for The Guardian, The Times and Prospect Magazine. He has twice been a judge for The Booker Prize, in 2014 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Vice President of Humanists UK, Patron of the Defence Humanists, Honorary Associate of the Secular Society and a Patron of Dignity in Dying.

Mary McGillivray is a content creator making visual culture analysis accessible for the next generation. She holds a Masters degree in History of Art and Architecture from The University of Cambridge and is currently a PhD candidate at The University of Melbourne. Mary has worked with art galleries and cultural institutions across Australia, the UK and Europe to bring their collections to a massive online audience of highly engaged young viewers and she also appears on ABC Arts.

CREDITS

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman

This podcast is proud to partner with The Ethics Centre

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and X

This podcast is produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This special episode was recorded live at the 2024 Sydney Writers’ Festival with Emile and Lloyd joined on stage by eminent philosopher A.C Grayling and digital content creator Mary McGillivray. Together they consider the merits and pitfalls of various forms of factual information distribution.

This is arguably the greatest time in the history of the world for reading, with literally the entirety of human knowledge available in books or in the online world of articles, blogs etc. If you want to develop a deep understanding of the world we live in, you just have to read. But with the rise of online video platforms like YouTube and TikTok, many people - young people in particular, are getting their factual content, not from reading, but from these alternative sources.

Research has shown that we are evolutionarily adapted to taking in knowledge audiovisually - we apparently process video images 60,000 times faster than text - and that reading, as a form of communication is complex and inefficient.

For a long time, reading was the only available technology to disseminate ideas beyond the campfire, fuelled most powerfully by the invention of the printing press. Now that we have the technology to create video content, which sits most naturally with the way we’re evolved to take in information, maybe we should thank reading for its help in bridging the techno- gap, and let our books collect dust as we finally return to the way we most naturally absorb knowledge about the world.

In this conversation we look at the tsunami of non-fiction video content that has taken so many young people’s attention away from the written word, and ask whether it’s a merciful release from the boring and inefficient world of reading, a release into a promised land of enlivened, engaging, memorable video content, or whether it signals a slow spiral into a shallow, unfocused, unimaginative and insubstantial way of understanding of the world we live in.

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You can be part of the discussion @PofCharity on Twitter, @PrincipleofCharity on Facebook and @PrincipleofCharityPodcast on Instagram.

Your hosts are Lloyd Vogelman and Emile Sherman.

Find Lloyd @LloydVogelman on Linked in

Find Emile @EmileSherman on Linked In and Twitter.

This Podcast is Produced by Jonah Primo and Sabrina Organo

Find Jonah at jonahprimo.com or @JonahPrimo on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.