ICYMI - Hustle Culture Is Quietly Killing Reading

Hustle culture and literacy don't sound connected until Greg Fish lays out the chain reaction: kids stop reading for boredom relief, schools turn reading into test prep, and an entire generation grows up without ever discovering what reading is actually for. Greg Fish traces his own love of reading back to a childhood apartment library in post-Soviet Ukraine, where books became the default activity rather than an assignment. That distinction between reading because you want to and reading because you have to shapes everything else in the conversation. The discussion turns to how ideas from dystopian fiction show up in real political language today, with people using contradictory logic without noticing the contradiction. Greg Fish argues science fiction like The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress forces the kind of moral complexity that easy answers never will. Topics: hustle culture, literacy, reading for pleasure, dystopian fiction, science fiction GUEST: Greg Fish | cyberpunksurvivalguide.com Originally aired on 2026-07-22