This week, the girlies are armed with their No. 2 pencils to ask: what’s the current state of literacy, how did we get here, and are the kids okay??? They unpack how we went from clay tablets to BookTok fairy smut and trace how phonics, poverty, and the policy failures of the Bush administration shaped how we learn to read. Digressions include Zohran Mamdani socialist prom, the power of drawing portals, and empathy for Travis Kelce.
This episode was produced by Julia Hava and Eliza McLamb and edited by Allison Hagan. Research assistance from Kylie Finnigan.
We’re going on tour!!!! Find tickets at https://linktr.ee/binchtopia
SOURCES:
A Brief History of Summer Reading
A Chapter a Day – Association of Book Reading with Longevity
A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel
American Children’s Reading Skills Reach New Lows
America’s literacy crisis isn’t what you think
Ancient customer-feedback technology lasts millennia
Are men’s reading habits truly a national crisis?
BookTok: A new era in the history of reading
BookTok: The Dark Horse of the Economy
Children and young people's reading in 2025
Exploring BookTok’s impact on literature
How BookTok is Reviving the Era of Physical Bookselling
How is the popularity of BookTok impacting the publishing industry?
How Literacy Became a Powerful Weapon in the Fight to End Slavery
How One Woman Became the Scapegoat for America’s Reading Crisis
How the Second World War Made America Literate
How TikTok Became a Best-Seller Machine
Introduction to the Original Edition Literacy and History
Illiteracy: “Another form of slavery”
Literacy Rate in the US 2025: Top Picks
National Reading Panel - Teaching Children to Read
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
No Child Left Behind: An Overview
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed at Fifty
PEDAGOGY of the OPPRESSED by Paolo Freire
Report finds ‘shocking and dispiriting’ fall in children reading for pleasure
School Summer Reading Lists: A Brief and Nerdy History
Soldiers Literacy Training Collection
The Influence of BookTok on Literary Criticisms and Diversity
The Invention of Summer Reading and the Birth of the Beach Read
The Literacy Crisis in the U.S. is Deeply Concerning—and Totally Preventable
The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy
This is how much the global literacy rate grew over 200 years