What Television Shows

Dear Friends — for our week on the meaning of show, I give you an audio of an article I wrote a couple of years ago, on what the archaeologist in me discovered when Debra put in my Christmas stocking a copy of the TV Guide from 1957. This, I think, is one of the most startling things I’ve ever written about American life. It’s also an article you can profit from even a few minutes of, because what I saw in that record of one week of television, two years before I was born, says more about America at that time than many a tome of historical or political analysis. I meet it not only with wistfulness but with hope, because what was, in human life, can be again, if not in outward form, yet in its spirit and essence. Every moment is a fork in the road, and the acceptable time is always now!

The text of this week’s podcast appeared in Touchstone Magazine (2021)

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