WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Flyover Features: Is Avoiding Books a Character Flaw?

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Emma and Sophia discuss an article that posits celebrities who discourage reading have a negative moral influence.

You're listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, a show where we discuss modern cultural events and our takes on them. In this episode, we are going to discuss a article published by the Atlantic titled The People Who Don't Read Books, Kanye West, Sam Beckman-Fried, and The Cult of Not Reading. And this article was written by Thomas Williams. So, Emma, do you have any initial thoughts on this piece? This reminds me a lot of an article that we covered a few months ago, where we talked about how a lot of college students don't do their assigned reading for their classes and rely on stuff like, what is that website called? Spark Notes. Yeah, Spark Notes is the one that just provides summaries of books and not the actual book,

if that's what you mean. Yes. Yeah. basically just websites that provide summaries of books without actually reading the books and how a lot of people, young adults nowadays, when you ask them their favorite book, they'll usually name children's literature or young adult or like teen literature instead of books that are intended for adults. Yeah.

And then this article, which is interesting because they were also both published by the same outlet, The Atlantic, and I know the one about college students that couldn't read, personally, to get a bit on the business end of things, even though we don't make money from this. It was interesting because we decided to do that episode at the perfect time, because I had heard about it, and then a lot of news outlets or people talked about that piece. This one I didn't hear as much about, but maybe we came around it later. But it's interesting that the Atlantic was responsible for both of those articles. and this is almost a step above, though, because this is basically claiming people are proudly proclaiming they don't read books,

such as Kanye West, the rapper, who, as we know, is to put it mildly a little bit of a character, he's been doing some crazy stuff as well as... Very controversial things. I think, yeah, something that's, you know, that I would contend what the author of this article about is citing Kanye West is, example is probably not the best idea because he seems very unstable and very unpredictable. And I just think that his character doesn't even lend itself to being critiqued. Like, we do not know what's going on there.

Yeah, like if he's saying, which the article quotes, him is saying, I'm a proud non-reader of books. Like, is he really anti-book if he's so mentally ill that he's, he's, he really anti-booked if he's so mentally ill that it can't really like properly critique something. I don't know. That gets into interesting territory. Sam Bankman-Fried on the other hand is more interesting because that guy, if any of you folks remember, the FTX crypto scandal where he had, you know, millions of money he was taken and being unethical with it. It's pretty complicated. Now that's crazy. And this is like the ultimate just takedown. I feel like of his philosophy.

that this man who was with Tom Brady and other celebrities and just making crypto and trying to promote this scheme almost it ended up being would have such opinions on books. Yeah. Yeah, I think something that I disagree with the author of this article about, I would say this is a great article, but I would say that something I definitely disagree about, Once again, returning to Kanye West, or as the article refers to him, yay. I thought it was Yi. Yeah.

Well, well, because his name is Kanye. I thought it was Yi. Well, maybe it's Ye. He's not Kan Yi, he's Kanye. I have no idea. Well, anyway, okay, back to the point. Kanye West. I think we're talking like,

maximum 80 IQ points, just like one of the least intelligent people, one of the least intelligent famous people, that is saying something, okay? This guy is not like a genius, okay? He's, he's, um, he, based on what I know about him, now I could be totally wrong about this. He could be doing a bit. I really doubt it. I just think that he isn't that smart. And the whole thesis behind this article is that if you reject books, it means you aren't virtuous enough.

And I think that's only true to an extent. I think in the case of someone like Sam Bankman-Fried, that could definitely be true. But someone with like Kanye West, honestly, I think the reason that he rejects books is because he's probably pretty dumb. I don't know, maybe. I know he's very mentally ill, but a lot of people think he's genuinely really good. good when it comes to producing and making music. I mean, I'm not, I'm not that much of a Kanye follower, but he's been very successful with branding. But I guess that's a different type of intelligence than like deeper thought. Making, making rap beats does not mean that you're going

to be able to like competently read a book. It's just two like completely different things. True. Yeah. Yeah. I think would you agree with me though that Sam Pinkman Fried is a better example? because, I mean, if we're going to just judge by stereotypical, like, markers of some level of intelligence, he was, his parents were, or at least his mom, I know for sure, taught at Stanford. He was Ivy League educated, went to a school, prepping kids to go to the ivies, was very successful in finance and probably was intelligent on some level, was involved in, I mean, I think it's a dumb, like intellectual movement, but was involved in the intellectual movement of effective altruism, which is basically this kind of more secular morality, which argues kind of to maximize happiness for people and helping people, we should become, like, rich, but give our money away so that we're helping the most people. Kind of a materialistic way of looking at things, but like it is a full-fledged philosophy. The movement apparently became way less popular because he was one of the most well-known figures after the whole scandal with him.

I guess do you have, like, do you think he is a better example than, than Kanye West? Yeah, I would say so. I think that there are probably a lot of affluent people who have a similar mindset. I'm thinking of the area where I come from. There are a lot of people who you might define as like pseudo intellectuals, for example, they present as, you know, being morally superior or intelligent, not needing books. I think that this is also like a sort of pride. Like I don't need to read a book, you know. Oh, it is. And, you know, a lot of them, I'm sure, don't read. Oh, well, I mean, I mean, he admitted it. Sam Bank-Midfried's crazy. Well, he also said that he posted in September on a website. He rails against literature of any kind, to state the article, lecturing a journalist on why he would never read a book.

I'm very skeptical. Sorry, I'm very skeptical of books, he explains. I don't want to say no book is ever worth reading. But I actually too believe something pretty close to that. I think if you wrote a book, you bleeped up. And it should have been a six-paragraph blog post. Wow. Imagine being so creative and being sarcastic.

Effective altruism is like not based. But imagine being so uncreative. You're just like, wow. This like like freaking like Navakove, pale fireman, that like genre-bending like story within a story of this madman, this artist who's going insane, who envisions this whole. world of Zembla. You have to read it. That's like a poem that is within this guy's mind. Oh, that should have just been it. That could have been in a blog post. That could have been in an email.

It literally couldn't have. I mean, it would lose all of its beauty. And I mean, the act of creating a work of a book, a work of art is something beautiful. And it's like anyone who makes, and also it's like, so Sam Pinkman Fried, who's fried, you're fried now because you're in jail with people in like New York City or something. I heard he's in the same jail as Luigi Mangione or something. I don't know if that's true. That'd be amazing. Interesting.

Especially if they're in the same cell. But anyway. Interesting. I don't know about that one. Anyway. Yeah. It's like how would you like it if we made a six, just a blog post about you? We never wrote about you.

Like, do you want Tom Brady to just be like blog post or do you want like a five minute long promotional video with you and him. I mean, come on, man. Come on, man. You're crazy. Yeah, I think part of it is just we, in a lot of ways, our culture and especially like our corporate culture emphasizes efficiency and just getting things done and getting things or communicating points is just as quickly as possible.

If you've ever heard the phrase, this could have been an email. You know, when people have a meeting. or people in an office have a meeting and it takes like an hour but the employees and the co-workers walk out of the meeting and they're like, oh my goodness, this could have been in an email.

This could have been in a three paragraph tops email. I mean, that's what it sounds like, right? Yes, although I feel like, I don't know, in the corporate world, I'd imagine there definitely are times or it feels like things are drawn out just to be drawn out in a frustrating way. know. I've been in some positions where I'm doing stuff and I'm like, you know, I just need an

email for this. I don't need to like spend hours mulling over it. Like, I don't know. I think in some levels you're trying to sell spark plugs. It's probably good to be able to do so efficiently. But yeah, when it comes to like literature and art, that's the thing. It's like denying that there's any value to them. That's disgusting. It's interesting because I'm reading this book by Mills, the sociologist, very strange figure, called the power elite. And he talks about the rising, this is written in the 1950s in America, corporate elite, and how they don't really like read books. So they're very, they're, they are intelligent, but they're intelligent in the sense of a very different sense than the sort of people that like love and can understand literature.

And apparently like at the time, there would be a handful or like a minority people that read, would read books or literature and then like everyone else i i literally remember him mentioning this would just not get it or be really confused or be like why are you reading a book so i guess back then there existed a small percentage of businessmen who would read but then they were still treated as like what but yeah it seems like that's a demographic that doesn't do too much reading i guess which is it's interesting and actually sorry this is this is slightly off topic but kind of still has to do with it it is interesting how much less people must read today. Because speaking of Luigi Mangione, I remember, and this is actually really strange to me. So remember how like when all that was coming

out that one of their characteristics or defining characteristics of him was how he was an avid reader and really well read from his goodreads. But his good reads actually did not have that much many books on them. And they're like mainstream self-help books. Like I have way more books than Mr. Luigi does. And I'm like a significantly, I'm a significant amount younger than him. I'm like 20. He's 27, this man has not been recording his good reads that much. So that's actually crazy to me. Like, he's listed as an avid reader, but like he doesn't have that many books. Like 100 for like being 27 and having it for like, I don't know, a while is actually not that intense. Like you could say he has sometimes likes to have reading as a hobby. But like if that's being stated and that's not an

exaggeration, like, wow, people are really not reading that much. And I don't know. Yeah. Actually, the whole situation is kind of weird too because it's interesting that people on the left like him, When, like, his Twitter and everything was liking and retweeting, like, super normie, like, Jordan Peterson-level, like, right-wing stuff. Hmm. I think, well, I think, just to get off topic a little bit, the reason that people dislike, or the reason that leftists like him is because he assassinated a CEO. And they just see it from that very materialistic standpoint.

Well, I get it. It's just hilarious to me because they can't be looking into certain aspects of his character that much because, yes, on that issue. he was very much would be in line with the left and the kind of Robertson character. But then it's like, you know, these same people probably make fun of people that like, I don't know, retweet like Jordan Peterson or Peter Thiel videos. I don't know. I make fun of people who retreat Jordan Peterson and Peter Thiel videos.

So, you know, he also had Allul's The Technological Society and his two read, but of course he didn't actually read it. He only read like Kaczynski. So that's funny. Yeah, I think they, they, he read Kaczynski. Interesting. Yeah, I don't know what to think of that. By the way, for the listeners who don't know, Goodreads is a website where you can log the books that you have read and also show which books you want to read in the future that you haven't read yet. So it's sort of like social media, but for people who read books. Yeah. Go. You're listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale

101.7 FM. Yeah, I enjoy sometimes using good reads just for organizing the information in the books I've read. The community kind of is insane because there'll be someone who's like, I don't know, we'll read like a freaking amazing work of literature. And then they'll just be like, wow, this guy had like sexist comments he made in his diary five years after he died. Therefore he's, therefore this book sucks. So it's kind of a good. little group, but it's useful for tracking stuff and

I don't know, I still like to use it sometimes. I don't know. There's individuals I know that like to use it and that makes it kind of a fun little place to be sometimes. But let's get back to the article. I think that we need to address the main thesis here, which is that if you don't like books,

there's some sort of flaw in your character. And I just, I have to disagree and I have to that I don't think this is really a character flaw or a moral issue so much as it is the fact that people are just less intelligent than they were 10 years ago, 30 years ago, in America, that's just a fact. And so that means inevitably fewer people are going to want to read books. And I think that this is just an indication of the downward trend in intelligence in our country. I'm not sure if...

I think I see what you're saying. I'm not entirely sure if I agree based on the examples given, as in I think some of the elites are not altogether entirely on intelligent. I agree they're not as smart as smarter people that probably should be running things. I do think it's a bit of a moral flaw when you're like Sam Bankman-Fried or this other person that you mentions Seine McElwe, who's also in data and tech, like, and just openly deriding reading. I actually think if you just don't want to read literature or books, I'm not going to have a massive moral panic about it. But if you say it's bad, which literally is what these guys are saying, I have a bit of a problem with that or claiming it's useless.

I don't know. This is weird to me, like, the idea that elites are not wanting to read because not to sound like, oh, the good old American days. but I was reading a bit about the 1800s and the culture of the elites in both the North and South. And broadly speaking, those people loved being classically educated and reading a lot. And they were avid readers. And like the presidents, their hobbies were reading and reading a lot, most of them. And it's interesting is even Andrew Jackson, under the reputation that I think was true, relatively speaking, of not being quite as educated. He still had interests, I think, in that more than, like, a lot of our past figures.

Yeah, I guess he has a strong moral argument against it, but it's also, like, kind of gets into the issue of, like, do we literally live in a culture that's almost anti-intellectual where, like, you're almost discouraged to be into reading or books or whatnot? And I don't know, it feels like a weird double-edged start, but people are they're like, oh, you haven't read this, you're like an idiot, or wow, you don't read that. much literature, you're dumb versus, wow, reading is dumb. I don't get it. Like, it's like opposite extremes that are bad, you know? Like, I don't know. I have friends and people I know that don't read that much, but I don't think they're like lesser people or worse if they don't read. But the same time, I think reading is very good and even important on some level. So, I don't know. It's kind of like an opposite extreme. But I do like that this person is pointing out how these CEOs are just like literally openly admitting their soulless for like about art, which is kind

of disturbing. So, yeah. And it is interesting that two of the three. examples he gives, and it could just be he's only choosing two or three people, are also involved in effective altruism, where it's like, I don't know, they're just trying to materialize almost everything too much, which is part of why I, uh, that's one of the things I don't like about Marx, is I agree the material world is very real and exists, and I totally understand him writing it in a time when the factory criticism was just absolutely horrific. But I don't like how a lot of so-called Marxist or it seems marks were just like in the material world's the only thing. You do seem to miss some things when you have only that focus.

So yeah. You've been listening to Flyover Features on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Emma and I'm here with Sophia.