Artificial intelligence companies are reportedly purchasing millions of physical books, scanning them at industrial scale and, in many cases, destroying the originals to create training data for frontier AI models. While much of the public discussion has focused on copyright, this episode explores a far deeper question: what happens when humanity destroys its physical knowledge to build digital intelligence?

From the Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare to Darwin, Tolkien and Orwell, books have shaped civilisation for centuries. Yet books are more than collections of words—they are historical artefacts carrying the fingerprints, annotations and stories of generations. As AI models consume humanity's greatest works, are we preserving knowledge or losing something irreplaceable?

This episode presents both sides of the debate ...