With all due respect, Mr Vice-President @JDVance, businesses must be free to hire and fire as they need, subject to the demands of the rule of law. Absent that freedom, the dynamism and prosperity that creates jobs in the first place will soon disappear.

What's the connection between fascism and illiteracy? A third of British adults who used to read for pleasure don't anymore. And according to the OECD, literacy itself, not just the habit of it, is declining or stagnating across most of the developed world. In a new book, The New Dark Ages, @j_amesmarriott argues that we're living through a great unwinding: a retreat from the written word and the kind of rational, analytical mind that print culture built over five centuries, back towards something closer to the pre-literate world: one dominated not by books, but by images, screens, and short-form video. In this episode of The New Society, @tanjil_rashid_ is joined by @j_amesmarriott to ask: are we really heading back into the dark?