How Reading Made Us: 3. How Reading Made Our Politics

Learning to read permanently alters your brain. It changes the emotions you experience and the way you relate to others. When a society learns to read the consequences are dramatic: wars break out, revolutions erupt and new political systems spring into being. Reading made us who we are. With time spent reading - and even reading ability - starting to nosedive, Times writer James Marriott explores how reading changed humanity, and what might happen if we stop. In this episode James digs into the question of whether literacy led to the invention of democracy, asks whether reading helps us proof ourselves against misinformation, and asks what happens to our politics if reading dies out? Contributors include - Jung Chang, author - Robert Darnton, historian - Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University - Naomi Alderman, writer and presenter - John Burn-Murdoch, chief data reporter for the Financial Times - Nick Harris, ideas editor at the New Statesman - Professor Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA Producer - Beth Sagar-Fenton Editors - Chris Ledgard & Alasdair Cross

You can listen to How Reading Made Us: 3. How Reading Made Our Politics online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

How Reading Made Us: 3. How Reading Made Our Politics is an episode from Understand: The Economy by BBC.

This episode is 42:01 long.

This episode was published on Mar 30, 2026.

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