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 Statistics

BookTok: The Dark Horse of the Economy

Can Reading Make You Happier?

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

Share of TikTok users reading more books because of #BookTok in the United States as of May 2023, by state

School Summer Reading Lists: A Brief and Nerdy History

Sold a Story

Soldiers Literacy Training Collection

The History of Summer Reading

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 Nation's Report Card

The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy

The Subversive Joy of BookTok

This is how much the global literacy rate grew over 200 years

Why I Won't Quit BookTok