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Episode Description
As these United States commemorate 250 years this Fourth of July, TCA Chaplain Msgr. Roger Landry explores the rich Catholic roots of our country and highlights the inspiring legacy of America’s many great American saints, including the North American Martyrs. Msgr. Landry retraces the often-overlooked contributions Catholics made to the nation’s founding, and reflects on the Church’s lasting impact through Catholic education, hospitals, immigration, and charitable institutions.
We enjoy a sneak peek of Meghan Cox Gurdon‘s new book, Free Range Girl, coming to bookstores this Fall. Set in the spirit of 1976, the memoir is a “powerful and luminous look back at a childhood that could likely never happen again, providing a striking counterpoint to the screen-saturated and tightly managed childhoods of today.” Recounting her unconventional upbringing in an off-the-grid homestead in rural Maine, she reflects on a childhood marked by independence, adventure, and resilience.
We also revisit a timely and memorable conversation with Andrew Laubacher, founder of Humanality, on reclaiming intentionality in a technology-driven world. Drawing from his popular digital detox presentation, Laubacher explains how smartphones and social media exploit human psychology, and contribute to rising rates of anxiety and addiction. He outlines Humanality’s holistic approach to technology by helping individuals focus on habits that restore attention, relationships, and spiritual well-being.
Catch the show every Saturday at 7amET/5pmET on EWTN radio!
And don’t forget to subscribe to TCA’s daily media roundup for smart Catholic news and commentary delivered straight to your inbox.
Bios
Monsignor Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the UN in New York. In 2024, he was appointed National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA by Pope Francis. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and served as executive editor for the Diocese of Fall River weekly paper. He is the author of Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God, and was an on-site commentator for EWTN during the last two papal conclaves. He is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA and New York Chaplain for the Leonine Forum. Msgr. Landry traversed the 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024, coinciding with his 25th year in the priesthood.
Meghan Cox Gurdon is an author and longtime book reviewer and weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal, covering children’s literature and adult titles. She is author of the best seller, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. She writes and speaks widely about literature, family life, and the formative power of stories in a culture saturated with screens. Meghan’s work has appeared in numerous national publications and she is a leading voice on education, culture, and children’s reading. Her forthcoming memoir, Free Range Girl, reflects on her adventurous upbringing in rural Maine, and offers a compelling reflection on the value of an unscripted childhood in contrast to today’s tech-filled youth. A former foreign correspondent and magna cum laude graduate of Bowdoin College, she has five children with her husband, English journalist Hugo Gurdon. The family divides their time between Maryland and Maine.
Andrew Laubacher is Executive Director of Humanality, a non-profit organization helping people overcome addictions to digital technology. His comprehensive Digital Detox Program was developed after extensive research into the neurological, psychological, and spiritual effects of modern technology. The program helps individuals, families, and organizations reduce screen-related anxiety, loneliness, and depression through healthier human relationships and purposeful living, with deeper forms of human connection. A speaker and worship leader who spent a decade as a Catholic touring musician, he is a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach and personal trainer. He is Founder and CEO of Illumined Wellness, centered on holistic health through integrating physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. He holds degrees in Theology and Philosophy from the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 376 Transcript
| Ashley | Welcome back to conversations with consequences now on EWTN radio. I'm your host, Ashley McGuire. |
| Betsy | And I'm Betsy Fentress. |
| Ashley | And we are thrilled to have our TCA chaplain with us today as we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, remembering what was at the heart of that document and the foundation of faith that we have etched into our country's birth and our many great American saints. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today, Monsignor. |
| Msgr Landry | It's great to be with you, Ashley. Great to always be with you, Betsy. It's, it's a rare opportunity when we're all having the same time together. So I'm super excited to be able to have this conversation as we approach our 250th birthday as a nation. |
| Ashley | Well, I've just marked two separate, very exciting Catholic things. The first was I was at the back, a fun dinner where Pope Leo sent an address to attendees that was read in the shadows of Independence Hall. And then I just returned from Boston, where we spent some time showing our kids, the the origins of the American story. |
| Ashley | And I was reminded, actually, that despite the narrative that this country was founded on religious freedom, there was actually a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment at the American founding. And yet the church, you know, now we have an American pope. But can you tell us a little bit about, those first American Catholics who were came here and what they were up against and their contribution to expanding religious liberty to Catholics? |
| Msgr Landry | So there was a notion of religious liberty, but it was narrow. It was only toward the ones that they wanted to have religious liberty. In a lot of places, Catholics were, not extended the same thing that was extended to those who had left England precisely for religious liberty purposes. When we look at the Catholic origins of the country, it's always super important for us not to just focus on the northeast. And we can clearly do that in the state of Maryland, for example, with the carols. And but we have to look to Florida, where the first mass would have been at, in the diocese and City of Saint Augustine, where the Franciscan missionaries had landed. And then the faith was planted there. We likewise have to remember what Saint Junipero Serra did on the west coast of our country, coming up from Mexico and founding all of these missions to spread the faith there. That was happening before the events that were marking the 250th anniversary at this time period. And so we've really got we've got those three settings, and then we've got the work of the North American martyrs coming down from Canada, and three of whom dying in upstate New York and orange will the, Saint Isaac jog Saint John to sorry, Saint John de la land and Saint Rene Pio and Saint Kothari could take a queen to begin to grow there. This was over 100 years before the Declaration of Independence. And so there really is a Catholic history here, that often most Catholics don't know. And we need to be proud of that. We started to lay the groundwork for what eventually would have become the United States of America, through the prayers that were made by the first Catholics, through the sacraments that were celebrated through the witness and even through the blood of the first Catholics on these shores. And so we're going to be marking later on this year not only the beatification of Fulton J. Sheen and Saint Louis on September 24th, but on October 31st, we're going to be marking the Franciscan Martyrs of Savannah, Georgia, who died in 1597. And their blood, the blood of the North American martyrs, the prayers, the efforts of all of the first Catholic saints have had an important role in the flourishing of Catholic faith in our country. After the Declaration of Independence, and particularly over the course of these last 150 years, where the church was organized enough to be able to make a real contribution to the flourishing of our country. |
| Betsy | You know, Senator Ben Sasse was accepting the award at the Manhattan Institute recently, and he made a comment about how anti-Catholic John Dewey was, in relation to education in the United States. Talk about the role that the Catholic Church has played in education and the founding of parochial schools and the the bigotry that they faced. |
| Msgr Landry | Because the government schools were anti-Catholic, because they were first and foremost serving a clientele that came from anti-Catholic groups. And then a lot of the teachers were likewise of those religious groups. Catholics needed to do it on their own, and the parents thought that the most important thing of all is making sure our children receive the light of the fullness of the Catholic faith. And so, at great personal sacrifice, most built Catholic schools before they even built their Catholic parishes, so that their children would be able not just to learn how to read and how to write and how to add and subtract, but so that they could learn their Catholic faith. Well. And so we developed the greatest Catholic school system in the history of the church in any country, that because of the immigration here and the need to make sure Catholics were going to learn in, according to their entire being, including their soul, including to their faith, we founded the Catholic school system. It was a saint. Elizabeth Ann Seton was one of the first. She founded the first woman's religious order to teach Catholic schools and opened up the first free school for girls, for example, which was serving all children, but then eventually the Catholic school system in the early 1800s in Baltimore and likewise Saint John Newman, the fourth Bishop of Philadelphia. Now there are archbishops in Philadelphia. He really built up the Catholic school system there, such that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's Catholic school system was the greatest in any diocese in the history of the church, and it still is really formidable. That's what, allowed the Catholic Church really to grow, because so many different women's religious communities and male religious communities were working in Catholic schools where they had an opportunity not just to prepare Catholic students for excellence in different fields, but also to integrate their Catholic faith into whatever their profession would be. And so Catholic schools are a super important part of the history of the church in our country, and something that's made the United States much stronger. And it's something we can't take for granted. The first Catholic wisdom was such that government schools were not really serving their children effectively, and that has become the problem anew. We just can't finance Catholic schools because of our capacity for sacrifice to make these schools successful. In the early days, it was $50 per head and for our family to go to Catholic schools because the religious who were running the Catholic schools were living under the vow of poverty. And so in many cases, they weren't compensated at all or they were compensated, very poorly, including with health care, including with retirement benefits, including things like this. And when we've had a decrease in the amount of religious vocations, we've had to pay laypeople small salaries compared to what they can get in public schools. And a lot of the times, even with those small salaries, we can't make ends meet because they're just not able to do it off. The tuition income coming from the poor families that are sending their kids there. There are different dioceses that do this, totally different that. The Diocese of Wichita, Kansas has a stewardship model such that it's free for Catholics to go to Catholic school in Wichita, and the parishes pay 70% of their Catholic schools budget. When that happens, there's no surprise that Wichita is teeming with vocations to the priesthood, to religious life, to marriage, etc. that they're doing very, very well ecclesiastical because they they've received a really profound Catholic education. And the whole church shows its value of Catholic education by the amount that they sacrifice for it. And so we could return there again. But that's that's something where it's got to be led by our appreciation for Catholic schools. And I long for the day where priests, religious and laypeople love the children of the church enough to be able to do whatever it takes to provide a really solid Catholic education for them, because there's no greater gift we can give to our kids and no greater foundation we can lay for them than an authentically Catholic education. |
| Ashley | Well, I certainly will never take for granted Catholic education. And for me, a big part of that was the Covid pandemic. And the way that Catholic schools stepped into that scary void of were opening. And it was so clear when all the public schools were shut down, it was so clear it was because they were mission driven in a way that that the public schools are not. And that really defines not just Catholic schools, but Catholic institutions. Another one of which we can't take for granted are our hospitals. And, you know, 1 in 7 hospital beds in this country are at a Catholic hospital. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the Catholic Church really pioneered our modern day hospital system and still does. So talk a little bit about Saint Francis Cabrini and and what Catholics did, to pioneer health care in this country, especially during times of terrible disease. I mean, I'm just finishing Elizabeth Ann Seton biography and the amount of, of just malady and disease that people had to live with and a lot of unknowns and the Catholics were, were just fearlessly at the forefront, helping all people, not just Catholics. |
| Msgr Landry | Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini was in the news because Pope Leo last weekend visited her birthplace in Italy. He gave some beautiful remarks about her. We remember that Pope Francis said she was his favorite saint, and she needs to be known by every American Catholic. Her tomb is in New York City. I visit her place often and I'm always taking Catholic visitors to go in prayer. Tomb. She was a huge problem solver when she came. You know, when Pope Leo the 13th said, not to the East, not to China, but go to the west, and she showed up. She found Italian immigrants in great squalor. They were really suffering. There were 200,000, Catholic Italian immigrants here living in ghettos. There were only 12 priests, 11 of whom had been kicked out of Sicily, in Lower Italy for crimes. So they weren't really getting the best of pastoral care either. And she came in first. She did an orphanage for the kids who were living off the streets. That was an immediate need. Out of that, she started to found a school system. Out of that, she started to build hospitals because people didn't have the money or the resource to be able to go into the hospitals that, that were founded elsewhere. She never planned to form a, religious community that could run all of these types of things. She was just trying to respond to what God was asking in the moment with regard to the needs. And she ended up going to many different countries, 67 different Catholic institutions, from Catholic schools to Catholic universities to Catholic hospitals to Catholic social service ministry. Whatever was needed she sought with her community to provide. And so she fit in very well to American culture, because American culture has always been entrepreneurial, and she's one of the greatest entrepreneurs in the history of the church. Like a typical entrepreneur, she saw unmet needs. And so she founded something to meet those needs. And the types of needs she met were among the most important needs. And so three cheers for Saint Francis Xavier Cabrini, who is the only American in the niches inside Saint Peter's Basilica. She's looking at the altar where the Pope continues to celebrate mass, as well as the altar of the chair where the Holy Spirit comes down upon the church, because she truly was a woman of the spirit, whose motto was Omnia Possam and I'll keep May Conforti, but I can do all things. And her move strengthens me. And so she was such a woman of prayer. She received the strength from God in prayer, in the sacraments. And boy, did this diminutive Italian flexed those spiritual muscles with all that she built. So we give her thanks. She's one of, Hall of Fame of American saints that is going to be added to this fall with Blessed Vault Jean and the Franciscan Martyrs of Georgia. |
| Betsy | So much of the American story is immigration and people who came through Ellis Island in both the religious who served and the people that they served. What in the 20th century, what do you see as the church's mission regarding immigration as part of our American Catholic heritage? |
| Msgr Landry | So we know that in the 1700s, but particularly in the 1800s, there were these mass movements of, Catholics coming to the United States. At the time we had Irish, we had Italians, we had various Eastern Europeans who were all coming on over in search of a much better life, and they were greeted by the Statue of Liberty, by those extraordinary words of come to me with, with basically all your burdens, that that we were open and that we were grateful for the way that they wanted to come on in and make a difference. Some of the times they, they, received some blowback by those who considered them others. But eventually they found their niche. They built up strong parish structures which strengthened the cities with the education. There was upward mobility, and then there was huge patriotic love on the part of Catholics that Catholics became involved as the police officers, keeping order as the firemen to make sure that places weren't going to be destroyed, eventually founding universities and trying to help Catholics get some terminal degrees. Then serving in our military. Catholics volunteered in great numbers, out of love and gratitude for our country, and so they strengthened the main institutions of our country that have allowed us to flourish. Because we can only do that in a situation in which there's some type of governmental structure. And the Catholics were always present there. And likewise, it's unsurprising that eventually Catholics were running for public office and serving us in public office, being elected in cities and in states, and eventually in Congress and in the Senate. And then we've had two presidents likewise elected who have been baptized, this this whole notion that Catholics were not going to keep their faith to themselves, but they were summoned by Jesus himself to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, an 11 that lifts all society up. Catholics took that seriously, and their formation in the faith overflowed their parish boundaries into the neighborhoods, into the cities, into the states, and into the nation that they called home. And so huge waves of immigration over the course of, of our becoming the the leading country in the world in economic factors, in terms of influence, in terms of military, all the rest that was on the backs of very hard working Catholics. And that has got to be a lesson for us. We Catholics have received a lot from this country. And therefore, just like God called the Israelites who had been freed from Pharaoh to remember the widows in the orphans and all those who are immigrants and things like this. So God says, remember once two, you were suffering and you came to these shores, and what's going to be your attitude to new waves of immigrants who likewise look at America as the place where some of their dreams for themselves and for their families were able to be fulfilled. And so we need to have an open heart, which doesn't mean that there's no border, which doesn't mean that we can accept an unlimited amount of immigrants. There can be proper regulations so that migration can be safe, orderly and regular, as the church has emphatically taught. But we have to start with that heart. And because of the greatness of our country, we do have a capacity to absorb many and to integrate them so that they're able to continue to remind us of our first love, of our dreams, how we've been able to fulfill many of those dreams in our nation, and how many others are coming here to be able to recapitulate those beautiful stories for individuals, for families, even for their neighborhoods, in their companies and in in our states and country as we begin to integrate them better. And so when we look at the history of the saints in the United States, we start with a lot of immigrant saints who came here and really built up. We've already discussed Saint Francis, Xavier Cabrini, the North American Martyrs, Saint Junipero Serra, but we could likewise say Saint John Newman, Blessed Francis Xavier, see Los. We can similarly talk about those who came down from Canada Saint Isaac, Rene and John. We can talk about blessed, and then we can talk about those that we exported. Blessed Stanley Roeder, blessed James Millar, this is become a place not where just Catholics have lived and gotten integrated, but where the fullness of the Catholic life has, has shown in those who have made that eternal Hall of fame. And so as we celebrate these 250 years, it's great for us to be grateful for the Catholic saints to invoke their intercession so that we can follow in their footsteps and their continued prayers that our country be able to live up to all the hopes and the dreams of those who, over the last 250 years, have called this place home. |
| Ashley | Well, we just have one minute left. But if you, you know, if somebody were listening and thinking, how can I find out more, where's a good starting point to find out more about any saint or just what's a good resource for somebody looking to learn a little bit to to grow their depth of the understanding of the Catholic contribution to the American founding and and subsequent centuries. |
| Msgr Landry | So there are various historical books about the growth of the church in the United States. The author I would recommend would be Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, who tells that story in a very easy way. That's that's where it begin. If you're looking for one place, if you're looking to do a little bit more inspirational work, I'd encourage you to just pick up the lives of some of these American saints, see how they responded to the challenges and questions and opportunities of the age with faith in Jesus Christ. They are the ones who are able to teach us how to adapt to our own circumstances and make it stronger, thanks to the way that together, in tandem with Jesus, we can do all things in him who strengthens us to. |
| Ashley | Well, we didn't even get to the the unfolding chapter, the next chapter of American Saints, Fulton Sheen. So we'll have to save that for another day. But, Monsignor, we thank you so much for all your wonderful insights on this topic during this patriotic week where we're celebrating our country and our faith's role in our country. Thank you. |
| Msgr Landry | Massey 250th birthday, Ashley and Benson. |
| Ashley | Thank you. Welcome to conversations with consequences. Now on EWTN radio on your host Ashley McGuire is Andrew Le Bakker, whose presentation on his digital detox went viral at the Sea conference earlier this year. Andrew, thanks for taking the time to join us today. |
| Andrew | I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. |
| Ashley | So this is a topic that everybody's talking about. And as I said, people, and it's something I personally care about have written about. I have five kids. Two of them are teens. So we're in the thick of, you know, trying to hold screens at bay. But tell us, you know, why from your point of view, is reevaluating our relationship with technology so important right now? |
| Andrew | I think before diving into the weeds of all the problems that are unfolding, which are vast, and we can talk about this for 17 hours, I think it's first good to understand how we got in this predicament. And the reality is, and Gaia Bernstein talks about this in her book Unwired. But we've essentially been given these products without our consent. Right. No one was asking for Facebook. No one was asking for Instagram or TikTok or even the smartphone. These were products that were given to us without what's called any precautionary principle. So in science, you're supposed to look at these possible trade offs of implementing a new technology or product and see what the negative outcomes could be before releasing the product. Right now with the smartphone, the ease and convenience of all of these tools in one place was so exciting. When it first came out in 2007, it was like amazing, right? All of a sudden you could email and text and you could talk to people. And it was this cool, sleek new product, and we didn't know that there was going to be a vast amount of trade offs from being accessible at all times, from being able to view the world in the palm of your hands. We had no idea what social media was going to do, and obviously access to things like pornography and gaming addiction. And now a huge problem is unfolding with with the gambling and gaming combined into these different platforms. Right? So I think it's first good to acknowledge and to allow people to experience the compassion and the mercy on ourselves, knowing that as parents and as people in the 21st century, we did not know that these products were going to be incentivized to by large tech companies to exploit vulnerabilities in our human psychology. Right. The name of the game of the attention economy is just that. It's gaining your attention. That's how they make money. So these products aren't free. They're actually costing us a lot. They're costing us our relationships, our purity, our attention spans, our social connections, our connection to God. Right. So there's a lot unfolding there. And at the same time, there can be real tools that are in these technologies that can be beneficial for humans. So a huge part of humanity's mission is to help people get that intentionality back in their lives with their tech, and also get out of the trade offs of a lot of these platforms. |
| Ashley | So what is your approach to a digital detox? Break that down for us. |
| Andrew | Yeah. So in our, program, we created this 12 week program. You go through this this detox, what I'm unpacking what technology is, is way more vast than just the screen and specifically social media. It's all of it, right? Technology is a computer. Technology is a fork. The pencil is a technology, right? Your car is a technology. The light bulb is a technology. So in our program, the detox is really comprehensive and addressing the whole person. So these 11 human ality ways that I created are the antidotes to the trade offs that are happening with technology in our lives. So I'll give you just a few examples. So for example, the, you know, one of the first episodes is called Be Free. There are 11 BS, right? So in Be Free, we go into all the addiction science that's unfolding. And I can say with a high level of confidence that we are in real addiction level science in regarding our technology. It's playing on neural pathways in the brain that look the same under fMRI studies that drug addicts look like. So there's real implications. Just because it's not something you're ingesting doesn't mean it's not affecting your neurological wiring. Right? So in Be Free, we go into all the addiction science, how these tech companies are purposely addicting you to their products. And once you start to understand that this again isn't happening by chance, this is by design. You're not as willing to give away your time and attention to these platforms, right? So, and be free. We give you multiple ways to break free just from even understanding how these, technologies work. Right. So really basic equation that these tech founders use is, under a psychological school of thought called behaviorism. And within behaviorism you have thinkers like B.F. Skinner. If you've heard of the Skinner Cages, and these other tactics that have this like Q reward, trigger, cycle. So. Right. You hear the notification being you see in the feed, you get the dopamine hit and then you get the reward. Now there's multiple studies, one particularly called Facebook Depression that actually showed that as time increase, as users increase their time on screen on these platforms, their increase in mood disorders, specifically anxiety and depression, doubled. So we know now there's a real dose dependent relationship with these technologies. The more time you spend on them, the more likely your risk of anxiety, depression, and many other disorders are are happening because technology is changing everything, right? So Neil Postman wrote about this in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985 and simply said this quote, A new technology doesn't just change this or that. It changes everything. |
| Ashley | Great. We'll. Andrew, thank you so much for coming on the show today. |
| Andrew | Thanks for having me, Ashley. |
| Ashley | Welcome to conversations with consequences now on BTN radio. I'm your host, Ashley McGuire, and we are thrilled to have back with us the one and only Megan Cox. Gurdon, who has been sounding the alarm on the importance of reading to children for many years now. Her critically acclaimed book, The Enchanted Hour really speaks to the power of reading in an age of distraction. Welcome back to the show. Megan. |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | Well, thank you for having me. It's wonderful. |
| Ashley | So your book, The Enchanted Hour, was written back in 2019, and fast forward to 2026, it seems like your advice has become even more timely, as there's more and more research coming out about how we really are living in the age of distraction. What have you seen change in the years since you've written the book? |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | Well, what I've seen change is pretty much when you I think I've seen, we've all seen I mean, my book was written before the pandemic, when many of us were still struggling with, you know, addiction to screen time or if not addiction, but, you know, it kind of being drawn to our screens, away from each other, away from our own families, away from the people who are in the room with us. And that was that was pretty notable, you know, in 2019. And then comes the pandemic. Everyone's locked in at home and school goes online, social life goes online, and the kind of barrier to entry for children and parents being on their phones all the time as it phones. I use that loosely to mean screens. Those barriers to entry just dropped and we all became habituated, I think, to to finding, you know, comfort and succor, through the screen. And so, yeah, I would say, I would say the greatest change that I've seen is that, is that we are all even more deeply distracted than we were in 2019. And I think also the culture of reading aloud with children is undergoing some stresses that some there are some young parents are finding it, you know, because they themselves are habituated to being on screens and finding their pleasure through screens are finding more difficult to set aside time. I mean, I hear this anecdotally to set aside time with their young children and therefore they are not getting the benefit of of that quiet but productive time with their children. And the children are not getting the benefit of the quiet, productive time with their parents. So, you know, it's look, we can what we can do is we can just tell if people know, you know, if people what I try to say in the book and which we've talked about before, you know, if people knew how good reading aloud was for them, if it were a pill, everybody would be having a prescription. Right? So we can't take it by pill form. We have to take it the old fashioned old school way, sitting together and reading together. And we can do it. But you have to kind of know about it. There was a time, maybe in American history where it was axiomatic. People just read together all the time, and they would know the benefits from experience. Well, we don't necessarily know those benefits so well anymore. So it's always a good idea to remember what is good for us. I mean, many of us have to be reminded to drink water. I mean, how basic is that? |
| Ashley | We it's such a good point. And, you know, you mentioned the pandemic and we very early on just completely opted out of online learning. And one of my best memories of the pandemic was reading Anne of Green Gables out loud with my then eight year old daughter, and I was struck by how much I benefited from the book, how much I loved rereading that book, especially as an adult. Last time I had read it was as a child. However, since the last time that we had you on the show, my husband and I have made a more concerted effort to read out loud, especially with our older kids. And we're pretty good about doing it with our younger kids. But I have to say, it is still it is. It is a real struggle to find the time to fight for the time. So can you talk about what is it about reading out loud that's different than just, say, sending their kids to their room to read quietly? What is it about reading out loud? Because that's really your that's your unique angle here? |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | Yeah. Well, when we read aloud, we bring all sorts of different domains together. So there are things that happen. There's a, you know, how can I break it down. So the written word is something that is, you know, we have to learn, how to read it. And you talk about children reading alone in their rooms or whatever. That's lovely. But when somebody reads the written word out loud to another person, they're giving them a kind of a kind of gift that the written word is sort of floating through the air into their ears. And it becomes very easy to follow a story when you're sitting with someone who's reading to you. But you don't have to work at the words. And it's not to say that reading, you know, is some kind of arduous task that people should be gotten out of doing. It isn't really that. It's more that you can experience language in a rich, full way when you have the experience of just hearing it float into your head naturally. Which is how we all learn language, is how we all pick up on things. And you described reading Anne of Green Gables to your daughter. You know, what you gave her there was you gave her beautiful writing. You gave her an adventure in a place that you both went to together. She was able to conjure in her mind images of, you know what the old radio people used to call the theater of the mind. She. You would put the words there for her, and she would draw the picture in her head. And all of that is very productive. It's and it's it's very it's very meaningful. And very a very rich way to encounter one another. There are other things about reading aloud. There is a kind of chemical shift. And perhaps we've talked about this in the past, but when a, say, a parent and child. But it doesn't just have to be a parent child, two people sit down to read together. There is a kind of there's a kind of emotional shift that takes place so that, you know, hormones that produce closeness, such as oxytocin go up in the body. The, the hormones that produce feelings of stress, you know, that, that make us feel agitated. These decrease and it's a measurable shift. So there is a there's a sense in which by sitting together with a book, we are engaging with one another in a very personal and intimate way that uses the book as the vehicle for connection. |
| Ashley | That's beautiful. Well, we're heading into summer and for a lot of burned out kids, I think they're thinking this is what I'm going to veg in front of the TV. And even for burned out parents, you know, this is when I'm not going to have to be writing my kid about homework. But what is your advice to parents who want to be purposeful about their kids summers? And sure, you know, kids get the summer reading list, but who want to make reading both reading out loud and reading to oneself truly an integrated part of their summer. |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | So I love this idea, and I'm so glad that you're proposing this to families. I think summer is the perfect time because it is this discreet period of time. There's not the same like the school rush in the morning. There's not the commute, there's no homework. I mean, there's usually some homework, but there's not the homework. The usual homework. And it's a it's a wonderful kind of, you know, it's what, three months they get off something like, it can be a wonderful test period to start a new habit. So actually, in the Enchanted Hour, there's, the final chapter actually begins and ends with a test family that I had, this family with three children agreed to be my guinea pigs, and they did not read aloud. They were very screen based family. And they had an elder daughter who was kind of orderly and then two very rambunctious little boys who couldn't focus and didn't know what the kind, didn't really know what books were. And one of them, the middle one in particular, was certainly old enough to be able to look at books and get something out of them, but they just were habituated to it. And I used a pseudonym. I called them the Rasheed family. That was not their real name. But the great thing is they decided at the beginning of the summer. So it had been the summer before the book came out to, to implement, reading aloud as how the mom said, we're going to implement reading aloud every day. We're not going to ask ourselves if we're going to do it, we're just going to do it for ten minutes, something very small. I mean, I encourage them just and I would encourage any family listening. You don't have to be heroic. You don't have to start with an hour. You don't have to. I mean, you don't even have to do it every day. Although I would recommend like like any habit, if you want to develop a habit and get the real benefit of it, you do it reliably. And what the Rasheed family did was they would decide in the morning when they were going to read that day, and it might be, you know, when they get back from the pool or over dinner or during bath time or at breakfast. It's really any time is read aloud. Time, often when children are a little contained is especially if they're young and they're rambunctious. In the bath, say, or while they're eating, it's a pretty good time to pounce on them and read to them. And the effect on this family were stunning. I have to say, I am a true believer in reading aloud. I was amazed by how the change in this family. By the end of the summer, they had been really conscientious about it. They had read every day. And I walked back into their house at the end of the summer, and it was it was measurably, immeasurably. I say it measurably. I didn't measure it, but it was palpably it was calmer, more orderly. The the baby in particular, who was two at the time, had been throwing books in the beginning of the summer. By the end, he was crouching over them in that cute little toddler way, you know, with his diaper showing, just looking through the pages of books like they were just these children. The family culture was transformed by reading aloud. And these children, especially the young boys, were calmer, more focused. They everything that the parents had hoped might come from reading aloud, they had got by dedicating the summer to doing it. So I have to say, this was a real test case. It really happened. I really recommend. |
| Ashley | It. Wow. That's great. Well, you know, to initiate that, you need dedicated adults. And I've been struck by a lot of the research that's coming out showing that adults increasingly don't read or are struggling with some of these same struggles that we've been reading about with children. In terms of distractibility, we're all on Twitter. Twitter is clearly affecting our ability to focus everything from shorts, you know, and everything has to be made into video shorts. And there was an article that went viral a couple of weeks ago about dads, I think, and how dads aren't even reading anymore. So how do how do adults get back into the into the habit of reading? Because if they're going to, if they're going to lead their family on this, this journey, they have to be committed themselves. |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | You know, I would say I mean, it's it's like anything, if you want to do something, you actually have to do the thing. But but I don't think, you know, I remember that article about the dad books, and I believe that the discussion was that the dad books, which, you know, those big histories that you. |
| Ashley | Can read, History. |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | Of Christmas or whatever, that that dads are now getting their history fixes from podcasts and a little bit more challenging for the publishing sector. But I would say reading aloud or reading with children, or even reading spouses reading to one another, it doesn't have to have you don't have to have young children at home to do this and get the benefits of it. Or if you have, I mean, it could be anybody you're reading to your elderly parent or whatnot. You know, reading aloud together. That could be the entry point for grown ups as well as for children. And then there are wonderful stories. For instance, let's say you were to read fairy tales, okay. Or folk tales from, you know, pick pick your culture that you might want folk tales from you, like Korean folktales or Chinese folktales or Norwegian or Norse folktales. Norwegian. You know, these are stories that come to us from the mouths and hands of adults. They are not fairy tales, were not originally children's stories. They were stories for everybody. Aesop's fables, similarly. You know, they're not, they're not. It's not baby stuff. It's foundational literature. And that's maybe that's why we now think of it as something that's very good to read with children. But it's these are stories with a lot of kind of dynamic complexity, and they are interesting to the adult mind as well as to the child mind. And so if, let's say you're a family and everybody's been on their phones and you think, gosh, we should really let's get back into books, do it together. Do you know, do it over, do it over. Something that might seem childishly simple, like Aesop's Fables. Those stories are rich in precept, rich in analogy and allusion, and we see there echoes all over the place. These these books are resources for adults as well as for children. |
| Ashley | You know, it's so true. I remember my son and maybe we discussed this story the last time you were on the show, but, it was summer, and he had come home with a gift from, his school. He's not at that school anymore, but it was a one of the Dog Man books. And I think that was their idea of, like, let's get off on the right foot with summer reading. And I took it and I swapped it out for the first of the Narnia series, and it was unbelievable to see the way he plowed through those books. So can you talk a little bit about the, I think, misperception that childish books are books that are there's this the genere of like books that are geared towards children, but they clearly aren't, aren't succeeding in captivating children because the, the, the literacy rates, the reading rates are all just tanking. And I don't think it's entirely screens. |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | You know, I think you're right that screens are not the only culprits. There's a sort of another cultural element to work here. There is, there's a very strong desire, it seems. Maybe it's a good commercial desire, maybe very sound to for, book publishers to produce books that, that meet children where they are. This is this is one of the phrases that's used in the industry is we're going to meet children where they are. Well, where are our children? Right? They're they're, you know, they think they think dogs farting is funny, you know, whatever. And okay, it is objectively funny. But that's not just because that's funny. You might might get a one time laugh out of a child reading a book. But there is obviously a whole series of books about Walter the farting dog. But there is this there's a kind of there is a cultural problem of pandering to children, but also not expecting very much of them. Meeting them where they are at an undeveloped level and not lifting them up to something greater. What you found with your son and the Narnia books is a beautiful demonstration of that. If you give children something rich to chew on, it's more interesting for them than something that can be just gulped and swallowed in one bite. You know, it's just, I guess that's probably true for all of us. It's. We do respond to short, easy pleasures. It's one of the reasons why we like to be on our phones, for instance. Because we get it's, you know, get instant, pleasurable feedback from them. But to really feel as though you've done something. Okay, here's an analogy for you know what it's like when you go, you make the effort to get to a museum, which can seem like a lot sometimes even for the house or whatever. And then you're in, you're exposed to high, beautiful, sometimes demanding art, and somehow you are replenished in a deep way from an encounter like that. And that's what complicated literature will do for people as well. Richness of language, richness, the story and characterization and things not all being pat and smooth and easy and perfect, but having a little rough edges that it's very enriching. It's, I don't know, I'm kind of I'm going in a circular way on this point, but I do think that we have a bit of a problem with a our culture is feeding people fast and delicious, you know, bites of literature or television, video, whatever. Maybe not television. It's kind of an old medium. Now, when in fact what really sustains us is, is, is deeper connection, deeper engagement. |
| Ashley | And so, you know, for parents who are maybe like this test family that you described who may not be, you know, we send our kids to these wonderful schools or literature. So emphasize and there's just a steady conveyor belt of wonderful options that are presented to us. And, you know, I have a resource that I sometimes consult a mother's guide to Books by Teresa Fagan. But for parents who aren't, who are maybe new to this, you know, you go into a public library now and it's just kind of everything on display is garbage. And it's even I remember they used to the public libraries used to even have sections A just for and some probably still do, like Newbery, Caldecott where you could just be like, okay, I'll go here, skip everything else. But we're what do parents do who are trying to find that richer, material and avoid the pitfalls of, you know, diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dog Man and things like that. |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | Fun fact diary of a Wimpy Kid was actually originally written for the adult market. |
| Ashley | Interesting. Yeah. It is. There's some clever humor in there, but it's not. Oh, definitely. It's not what I would call, rich sustenance. |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | It's a materialistic literature. No. So I would say, I would say parents who whose who are, you know, have children in schools where literature is not emphasized or who themselves don't have much of a home library and don't know where to begin. I would say there are two things that they can do. One is to avail themselves of the reading lists of of the schools that you mentioned, sort of that, you know, you can often find if you if you know of a school, you might not have been able to afford it or get your child in there. But often the reading lists per class are available at some of the really fine private schools, and that's one place to start. But the other thing I would say is, you know, you can always go back to, foundational stories. It's a great way to begin exploring literature. And again, I would say fairy tales are just this fantastically rich resource. The fairy tales and folk tales have not, modern retellings necessarily, although some of them are very funny and nice. Mark Burnett recently retold Rumpelstiltskin, for instance, in a way which is quite charming. But but, you know, go back to the old fusty originals as far back as you can go. You know, there's the wonderful Andrew Lang series that they're all the fairy books with colors like the Blue Fairy Book and the Green Tree book and the Orange Fairy Book. They're just fantastic resources full of stories that are strange, but also stories that have been told so long and so well that they are structured in such a way that they engage, you know, the human imagination. I don't know why that is. I don't know how that is, but it just happens that way. Folktales are as distinct from fairy tales are often stories that, you know, people in primitive cultures, would tell sometimes about the guy and the neighbor. You know, the neighboring village who he was so strong he could do whatever. And the story gets told and told and passed down, passed down and honed and perfected and improved. So even while a story might have a very specific geographical origin, it becomes a story of a kind, of a kind of everyman available to everybody, sort of, you know, folk tale by after a couple of generations of retelling, I think those are a great place to start. Again, I mentioned Aesop's Fables before because I just think there's such good stuff in these books, and we can sometimes forget how good they are and how how how they enrich your understanding. I mean, of of just how people behave now. Human nature has not changed. And Aesop told his stories using animals as stand ins for humans. But I would say the two resources that are available to families, that are easiest if you don't have a home library and you don't know what to get out of the libraries, go back to the beginning, read foundational stories and and check the reading lists from the schools where you admire their curriculum. |
| Ashley | Well, we've talked a lot about screens, and, I love this quote from Jonathan Haidt book Anxious Generation, where he talks about how children today are under protected online and over protected in the real world. And this is a topic very dear to my heart because I have five children and I'm trying to raise them, to be independent and to, to use freedom responsibly. But it's hard, in a world where, you know, people have to call child Protective Services on kids for playing in their front yard, but you have a book coming out about this called Free Range Girl. I'm very excited about this book. Can you give us a little sneak peek of the book and what inspired you to write this? |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | Yeah, definitely. I so my book is not really about the phenomenon of free range childhood. I leave that to the experts like Lenore Skenazy. Of of Let Grow, the organization that tries to help parents like you and the parents as I was, to, you know, to give their children some freedom of, you know, some risk, some freedom and reward that you get, you know, because as, as Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukyanov have pointed out, so. Well, children are antifragile. They actually benefit from a little adversity. I mean, obviously we don't want to, you know, terrible things to happen. Although you know, you got to take some risks. So maybe a terrible thing will happen now and then. But Free-Range girl is really about my own experience. I was, it was about my experience going back to the land with my father, in 1976, 77. Buy back to the land. That was a whole movement where people wanted to leave city life and for various reasons, settle in the countryside and work with their hands and raise their own vegetables and grow their own animals and that kind of thing. So a kind of homesteading movement, such in popular in American history from now, now and again. And it was a big thing in the 70s. So in 1976, I was in those days, I'm, I'm an only child or I was an only child. My father subsequently had two other children. But, I was growing up an only child from a broken home as my father used to put it, in kind of Mark Mark sympathy. I don't think he was very sympathetic, actually. So Free-Range girl is really. It's a it's my attempt to capture the experience of what it was like back in the world before any screens except television screens. There weren't even women. There were computers. They existed. But most of us didn't have anything or had no concept that they were coming to be part of our lives. In 1976 77, it was a completely different world. And so in Free-Range Girl, what I do is I describe what it was like for me going back to the land with my dad at the age of 12, to live on a homestead that he was building in Maine with his own hands. He built, he built he, when I say with his own hands, I mean, I mean it. He didn't have any power tools except for a a gas fired, chainsaw. But everything else, he had to use hand tools because there was no electricity where we were. So he built this extraordinary, you know, farm with a menagerie of animals that we had. And I got to live there with him. And it was it was the ultimate free range experience. I, describe in the book how, you know, sometimes, obviously, if you take risks, you are going to have some negative things happen. And some negative things definitely happened. There was one incident when I was, presented with a gas stove and didn't know how it worked exactly and blew my eyebrows off. And, there was another experience where I spent a week in the hospital after riding, bareback on a horse that, panicked. And so, you know, there were there were some ups and there were some conspicuous downs, but it was a very rich time. And one of the really striking contrast to me between then and now, one of the reasons I really wanted to go back to that time was not only the amount of freedom that that children had wi freedom and responsibility, you know, we all had jobs, we all had chores. We but we could also just go places and do things. But life was very tactile back then, and it was much less mediated than it is now. And I see the childhood that is going on. And, you know, of my own children and now my own grandchildren, you know, these just much more mediation. So we in the 70s, if you wanted to turn something on, you had to crank a knob or press a button or pull a lever or something. But we didn't. There was no swiping, you know, there was not this smooth screen and this fast response from things. It was really it was kind of mechanical, kind of clunky. There were a lot of smells and textures. You use your hands a lot. It was it's just a vanished world. So what I really wanted to do was to write down what it felt like. And I, I dedicate the book to my grandchildren, George and Philip and Lucy, because them coming into the world now really made me reflect on the world of then. |
| Ashley | That's beautiful. Well, I really look forward to reading that. And thank you so much for coming on today to help us try to launch Summer off. Right. For our listeners, whether you have children or not, it's never too late, as I think you're one of the ones who's pointed out it's never too late to pick up a book and start living a life that is blessed by the richness of literature. So, Megan, where can our listeners find your work and who's publishing your book? Where can they find your book when it comes out? |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | Okay, so, you could there are various places you can find me. I write for the Wall Street Journal books pages. I also write for free expression, which is the Wall Street Journals. It's run by the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal. It's an online newsletter, that can be easily accessed. Go to Free Expression and there's a free you can get a free subscription to that. I write there every couple of weeks. I also have a website, Megan Cox Good Income, and that has information about where you can buy The Enchanted Hour, and also a link to think there's I'm not sure how many links there are yet for Free Range Girl, but it's coming out in October. My publisher is Moorhouse of Free Range Girl, and October 20th is when the memoir will publish. Preorders are available now on Amazon. And of course, every author loves people who preorder because it's it makes an immense difference in the prospects for a book if there are preorders. So I would I would treat everyone listening to consider pre-ordering Free Range Girl. Yeah that's it. And there's a link that I can be found through my website. You can contact me directly through the website. |
| Ashley | Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Megan, for coming on the show today. |
| Meghan Cox Gurdon | Thank you for having these really fun. |