Why does a sixty-year-old media theory resurface in the media every few years, while journalists ignore the great communication scholarship that has emerged in the meantime? More importantly, what effects does antiquated thinking have on the public understanding of our current digital discontent? In this episode, Cameron Naylor interviews our usual host, Mack Hagood, about his recent newsletter, “Oral Residue: A Zombie Media Theory Rises Again.” Marshall McLuhan and Walter J. Ong believed that all of human history is dividable into three eras: the oral, the literate, and the electronic. However, this kind of “Great Divide” thinking has long been criticized by scholars who study oral communication, literacy, media, and sound. In this episode we talk about the good, bad, and ugly of McLuhan and Ong’s long legacy.

Cited Media:

Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media (1964)

Walter J. Ong - Orality and Literacy (1982)

Raymond Williams - Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974)

Derek Thompson - Plain English (podcast episode with Joe Weisenthal) (2026)

Jonathan Sterne - The Audible Past

Harold Innis - works on communication theory

Eric Havelock - works on orality and literacy

Gerard Manley Hopkins - Poetry

Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey (8th century BCE)

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

0:44 Episode Overview

3:20 Introducing Mack Hagood

4:14 First Encounter with Ong

8:52 Discovering McLuhan

17:25 Why McLuhan Keeps Returning

25:49 Critiques of the Great Divide

33:36 The Ear as a Source of Terror

37:40 Closing Thoughts

38:33 Outro

Click here for the full transcript.

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Talking Back to the “The Oral Theory of Everything”