hey it is Ezra we're taking a couple

days off for Thanksgiving but we have

here one of my absolute favorite

episodes of the show recorded in

November 2022 about how reading changes

the brain about how the ways in which we

absorb information shifts how we

understand it what we can do with it and

how we think going forward this was

recorded a bit ago I think it is only

more relevant now we'll be back with a

new episode on

Friday

I'm Ezra Klein this is the Ezra Klein

[Music]

show here is the thesis of this

conversation put simply how we read is

as deserving of attention as what we

read maybe even more so and how we read

it has changed dramatically in just a

few short years and that means our minds

the way we think and interpret and

reflect on the world they've changed too

and at stunning speed literacy is an

experiment humankind ran on itself that

we ran on ourselves pretty recently

actually and it has had remarkable

wondrous results it has changed us and

it has Chang our

Societies in recent decades the shift to

thinking and reading amids a cacophony

of digital information and dialogue and

text that is another experiment we're

running on ourselves and it is also a

seismic one and it is ongoing and it is

early and we don't know how it will turn

out we

don't but people are trying to figure

that out Maran wolf is a professor at

UCLA School of Education and information

studies and she's one of the world's

leading experts on how reading works in

and even more importantly how it works

on the brain how it Chang changes the

brain she's the author of PR and the

squid the story and science of the

reading brain and of reader come home

the reading brain in a digital world

among other

books and don't worry she's not someone

who thinks we can or should turn back

the clock to try to return to some kind

of pre-digital reading Utopia that's not

possible nor was it a Utopia and and I'm

not that person either my whole career

my whole life is built on digital text

her idea is something different

that we need to understand what

different kinds of reading do to our

minds and then we need to develop in

ourselves and our children what she

calls a biliterate brain and as you'll

hear here she's just a lovely person to

listen to and to think

alongside as always if you have guest

suggestions feedback things you think we

should read my email is as reclin show

at NY

times.com maryan wolf welcome to the

show ah what a pleasure it is to be able

to talk to you not just write letters to

the New York Times in reaction to your

essays write a lot of angry screeds that

that that damn Ezra no anger actually

total appreciation for the essay you

wrote in August the medium really is the

message well I appreciate that and we're

going to talk about mclan and the

mediums are the messages but I want to

start here you argue in reader come home

that reading is a quote unnatural

process tell me what you mean by that

well one of the Striking insights that I

had if you will a tiny Epiphany when I

first began to write about reading which

was in 2007 it was a book called PR and

the squid the story and science of the

reading brain I

realized that there was nothing in the

brain brain not a single Gene not a

single region that was specifically

there for reading that's very unlike all

the other processes that are actually

Incorporated in Reading language Vision

cognition effect if you think about

language that is a natural process

there's a genetic program in which it

infolds there's nothing like that for

reading we were never meant to read but

what is amazing is that the brain does

have this almost semi- miraculous

capacity to make new circuits within

itself using the processes that are

genetically there but in new ways so

what the brain has is a capacity to make

novel circuits and the invention the

human invention of reading required a

new circuit so the brain very gradually

learned how to connect parts that were

there for other reasons and made a new

circuit that became the first underlying

Network for reading very simple symbols

you know 6,000 years ago but it was

never the case that we were meant to

read which has real implic ations now e

the reason why it is essential to

understand it's unnatural is that that

circuit that is formed that novel

circuit is plastic and that's what makes

it very different from the other

wonderful processes we were given by

Nature well one of the things I want to

get at here before we get into

plasticity and and

flexibility but without getting too deep

into the Neuroscience one of the things

that your book emphasizes and that you

convinced me of is it reading is a very

misleading term because it's singular

and you make this point that reading is

not one thing at all it's many things so

tell me a bit about that

multiplicity so I will return a little

back to Neuroscience only as a way of

scaffolding what I'm going to say and

that is when we first learn to read we

have this most basic circuit it's just

putting together the visual processes

that identify a letter or a character

with a word with what we know about the

word so it's putting vision and language

together that's one form of reading

that's a very basic form of what we

could call decoding but from then on

according to our environment we begin to

elaborate that circuit and so we become

prepared if you will to read in totally

different ways from that very simplified

form of reading which we call decoding

and the more we know the more we add to

that circuit so the more we have as

background knowledge we are preparing

that circuit to grow in ever more

sophisticated ways now the most

interesting aspect for me about reading

is that it's continuous it's evolving

it's based on everything that went

before or it can be a very primitive way

of using that decoding circuit so that

we just are skimming the Top If You Will

of the processes and we get the

information and we have a very basic

content but if over time

we have begun to elaborate this brain so

that it includes deep reading the

unnatural apex of the achievement of

reading is what deep reading provides

and that means there are different

levels in which we can participate in

the text we can use our ability to take

on another perspective to read in a

whole different way we are entering

almost like the theory of Mind of

another and also their feelings this is

a totally different form of reading than

the one that we are talking about when

we are saying we read you know for

information now I can go and will go

further into what's even if you will

deeper than critical analysis and

empathy but the acral of all these more

sophist phisticated processes means that

we can read at multiple levels we can

read with our attention simply skimming

the surface and that's part of why

Nicholas Carr used the term shallows

that's why some my colleagues in Norway

even talk about the shallow wi

hypothesis many many of us have if you

will regressed to that earliest form of

reading which we are barely skimming the

surface of what we read barely

consolidating it in memory and we are in

fact reading less of what is there as a

result I'm I'm really trying to decide

if I want to keep the structure I'd

intended here or or or jump around a bit

so let me say this because maybe it's a

good way of signposting where I'm going

for everybody listening I'm interested

in your work and I'm interested in this

conversation because I'm interested in

the States you can achieve while

reading and we talk about reading

typically in terms of the content as if

the question of reading is what you read

and what your work is getting at is that

at least as important a question is how

you read the process by which you read

the distractions the physical formats

the qualities and levels of attention

you bring and this gets to something

that that you pointed out a minute or

two ago which is

plasticity talk a bit about

plasticity and its relationship to

reading the most important two words

that I will use in this next part of the

discussion are attention the quality of

attention and insight epip

there is a quick line

between

attention and shallow memory that is

possible because we have a plastic brain

it doesn't tell us exactly what to do

rather this

plasticity is

dependent on the medium in which we read

the language or writing system

orthography in which we read and even

the educational background that taught

us how to read in particular ways now I

bring us back to the two words attention

and

insight plasticity means that the way we

read will be

reflecting the

affordances of the the medium this was a

point that mclan made his student uh

Walter Ang made certainly Postman made

as you indicated in your August essay

all of these people were onto the basic

principle that how we read on a medium

changes what we discern what we

comprehend now I'm going to push just

slly this plasticity into the

affordances of digital versus print the

affordances of the digital screen are

really exciting they help us skim the

extraordinary voluminous nature of

information that's out there skimming is

a defense mechanism that's very useful

we can handle so much information and

your job Esra and mind involves 6 to 10

hours a day of sampling information if

you will making sure we're aware but how

we are reading it will change the nature

of what we have

absorbed and many people are asking me

in fact I did an NPR program on why

people don't feel the same immersiveness

in the reading experience and it's very

simple because the

affordances of the digital medium which

enhance the speed in which we're reading

and focusing on vast amounts of

information

multitasking and being entertained if

you will being engaged at that level all

of that actually takes

away from the ability to use the full

full circuitry the full circuitry which

includes using your background knowledge

to infer to deduce the truth value to

feel what that author is feeling in a

work of fiction to understand a

completely different perspective all of

that takes time the print mediums

affordances Advantage the giving the

allocation of time to words Concepts in

a way that when we skim we simply don't

have the same amount of time to process

so plasticity changes the nature of

attention attention is very

sophisticated and complex but the amount

of attention that we have is going to be

influenced by all the distractions that

you you just discussed as you framed my

question but it will lead ultimately to

the demition of the time necessary for

the insights at the

end I want to step away from for a

minute the digital versus print because

before we get there I want to get a

little bit more into this idea it's not

just that mediums change us I was

thinking about this language it's that

habits change us it's that what we do

again and again changes us so you you

have the term in your book use it or

lose it for something maybe as unnatural

as you put it as reading maybe a way of

thinking about it is build it or lose it

but give me some examples of skills that

we can

strengthen or that we can weaken

depending on how we read we develop you

call it habits I call it

mindsets in which we develop a way of

doing things with our background in

print we developed a very particular

mindset that you possess Ezra and I as

what we were if you will formed that's

how we were formed as

readers I call This Moment In Time

technologically a hinge moment as we've

move to the other side of that hinge

moment we have made our habit of reading

ing largely on screens so

imperceptibly we are developing a

mindset or habit of reading in a

particular way that by and large is

based on a kind of skimming reading

again because of all the information we

have to process in any given day so the

habit or mind mind set is now so largely

influenced by us reading on screens that

we take that mindset even back to print

we can build habits of mind a kind of

reading that's after the innermost

landscape of our thinking whether we

call it the sanctuary of reading PR

always had something amazing to say

about everything he saw the heart of

reading as the place where we go beyond

the wisdom of the author to discover our

own how do we build a habit of Mind in

which we decide from the start of

whatever we are reading what is the

purpose if the purpose is my shallow

email then I will skim with no guilt at

all but if my intention or my purpose is

to really understand something at ever

deeper levels of its complexity or to

perceive the beauty of that carefully

chosen word when we are reading for that

purpose for beauty

for understanding at the deepest level

then we have to really figure out how to

use either print out and use print or

how to ensure that we can read on any

medium with the Deep reading processes

as our

goal so I want to pause on that PR quote

because it's really the heart of this

conversation

too there's a state I get in less and

less these days but in part because of

the way my world works and my phone and

my computers I now associate it with

plane

flights because nobody can call me and I

don't buy

Internet it's a state that I only seem

to access when reading and only when

reading without distraction for a long

period of time it's very strange and it

is one of my most loved states where on

the one hand I seem very focused on the

text at the same time my thinking

becomes expansive and

associational to the point of PR where

you the wisdom goes beyond the author

and into your own I seem to get flashes

of insight that can unlock whole

problems or open whole new avenues for

myself it's meditative but

epiphanic and every time I get off of a

plane I say to

myself I'm gonna do that more I'm gonna

do that more I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna

have quiet time with a book and this was

so valuable and I got like three months

of intellectual work done in 4 hours and

and then I don't and so first I want to

ask

you what is that state what is happening

to me in that place where you enter into

this almost Fugue state of of reading

and

insight that you were not in when you

opened the book well first I'm so glad

that you understand your own insight and

I want to give you two completely

different perspectives on this so you

and I are going to do what the brain

does we're going to do some heavy duty

interactive associations of two

different perspectives on on your

question the first one is

Aristotle Aristotle was writing about

what makes a good society and he said

there are three lives to a good Society

the first life is the life of

productivity and knowledge and cruel of

information the second life that is and

in the Greek sense Leisure entertainment

one has to have that but he said the

third life that is

essential is the life of reflection he

use the word

contemplation now that is a perspective

let's call it the Aristotelian

perspective in which the

contemplative is going missing and we

don't realize how important it is to

Insight just the same thing that you

experienced on a plane

RIT large RIT across everyone where are

our best insights where are we going to

have the space and time to give that

Next

Generation the full sum of our wisdom so

that's the real stilian perspective the

second one is a more cognitive

Neuroscience one and there was this one

amazing set of researchers who were

trying to deal with you know what's the

AHA experience what's the inside

experience we have and what they found

was that the brain was activated

everywhere it would seem all these

different regions in this both

hemispheres well I find the humor in

that actually very helpful in

understanding what you are talking about

because it illustrates that when we

reach that state we are activating all

we know and going Beyond it we're making

new connections and those new

connections are the basis of Novel

thought and that's what we want for

everyone to have as a piece of what it

means to learn to read it's a mistake

done by our educational system that

sometimes we are you know emphasizing

One Thing versus another but we should

all share the goal that that reading

Sanctuary that innermost

landscape that's where we go when we

read our best and that's what reading

gives us it gives us both our best

thoughts but it also is one of the best

forms of

communication with others best thoughts

it's

communicative and it's solitary and

that's its own

[Music]

[Music]

Miracle you ran an interesting

experiment maybe that's a little bit too

Grand a word for it but an interesting

test on yourself around this tell me

about reading Herman hess's magas Ludy

again yes so before I went to the

Neuroscience I had two degrees in

English and I really thought I would

study compet especially RKA Herman Hessa

it was a grand grand scheme for my life

and then I discovered the political

reality of literacy and a Peace Corp

like thing

before I made the big switch to see

literacy as a basic human right and

pursue it to the end of my

days I read Herman hea with such love

and affection I read everything I

thought I read everything and glass bead

game AUST Ludi glass

perinel that was my favorite it was

probably why he got the Nobel Prize for

literature and it represented for me the

Quest for knowledge so I decided since

I'm writing and telling everybody else

what terrible people they are by not

reading books in the way that I think we

should I thought I would test Myself by

going back to M Ludy because I certainly

knew the plot and I certainly knew there

wasn't going to be any murder or sex or

anything else to distract me I could

just immerse myself and so I did and

utterly

completely failed to be able to even

read the first part of the book it felt

sluggish I think I said something like

cuso going across my cereal hemispheres

it was like how could he have gotten a

Nobel Prize I wouldn't have given a

Nobel Prize for this and I put the book

back so I tried again I went back just

at a personal Peak at myself and I

thought I would try again and so I only

allowed myself to read a few minutes a

day for a

while and basically Ezra what I had to

do is slow myself down I thought I was

reading online and in print with the

same immersive qualities as I had as a

English major but I had lost that I'd

lost my most beloved home and I hadn't

known it so it took about two weeks

before I could get the pace necessary

that would match the book I found my

home again and then I read it another

time and that was finally the time in

which I could remember the pleasure of

just deep diving into another world and

being there with no distraction but it

took real work to recover that Ezra I

had not realized how how far I had

strayed from that form of reading

myself I wonder if there isn't an answer

to what I think is a should be

understood as a quite profound mystery

of our age in

that and this is a a suspicion I I've

had for a bit so we live in this age in

which one of the fundamental scarcity of

all of human civilization and existence

has been lifted which is information the

amount of information any individual

being had access to a hundred years ago

to say nothing of a thousand was so

minuscule so bounded compared to what is

possible for us to know now to share now

to access now and so you would think

having lifted the constraint on what we

can know and what we can

share that you would see

something economic

growth the depth of our

democracies our societal wisdom and

humaneness

accelerate right something of the early

utopian beliefs about the internet would

come true instead you look around and

growth is not faster than it was 50

years ago we do not seem more wise our

politics is not more elevated to say the

least and I think what you're saying and

and what's I think many people have

sensed might be at least a partial

explanation we made it possible to have

so much more

information in a way that made it

impossible or more difficult to reflect

upon and develop insights upon that

information and as such we we increased

information but reduced

judgment and so as you say we're we're

not passing on our our best thoughts but

it's also weirdly why the information we

have access to isn't creating some

civilization

wide betterment because it turned out

the information was never enough it's

what we did with it what we thought

about it the connections we made with it

and we've degraded those

capacities at wide scale even as we've

increased

connectivity and quantity of what we can

know so the very bombard the very volume

is causing people

ultimately to go only to The Familiar

sources of that information and then

they become calcified into thinking in

those if you will reduced terms which by

and large this is the term used by many

people is part of the confirmatory bias

characteristic that's happening with

information you go to your familiar

Source you don't try on other

perspectives it's too much so you become

instead of more informed informed only

about one

particular perspective on that

information you are not using your

critical analytic capacities to discern

truth and therefore you are totally

susceptible to miss and

disinformation and

ultimately

demagoguery everything I have done which

was meant to be an apologia for reading

led me to a darker Insight which is that

the very Act of reading has become so

degraded because of the bombardment of

information because of the affordances

of the particular medium

and because we have become all all of us

cognitively

impatient we don't want to spend the

time let me hold you there because I

want to I want to question the word want

and I want to bring this back in a way

to

neuroplasticity you talk at times about

the opposite of cognitive impatience

which is cognitive

patience but when we exist in a digital

world in particular that is so constant

L assaulting us with

novelty what I understand happens to the

mind is it begins to expect and even

crave

novelty and so this is one of the the

places where I have a real fear about

myself about my sons about my society

that we are training ourselves or

training our minds away from cognitive

patience which isn't just maybe it is

for some people a virtue but it's also a

capacity can you talk a bit about that

dimension of it the part that's not

about what we want to do but about what

our brains become used to doing there's

a term that people use in this area

called the novelty

bias and that's a reflex that goes all

the way back to our hunter gatherer days

in which to see what was unusual was to

preserve our life whether it was a

predator that we were able to avoid or

make a strategy to avoid or whether it's

something that we could eat and not be

poisoned but survival

itself dependent on that novelty

reflex now that novelty reflex is now

being

hyperstimulated from infancy on and I

make a

really hard point with my pediatric

colleagues like Barry Zuckerman and John

Hutton from Cincinnati all of these

people are really trying hard to insist

we don't endure our children to

distraction and Novelty because they are

complete victims to the novelty reflex

anything distracts them and they are

becoming

hyperstimulated so even though you were

talking about cognitive patience being

formed I will say it's being

malformed disformed from the start by

parents not realizing that these screens

are not babysitters but that they are

shaping the demand for attention and

Novelty in our young so your statement

about cognitive patience being a

capacity that can be learned is

something that I really want to help

parents and Educators understand we all

have a role to play we have a role to

play in being a model but we have a role

to play in what we expose our children

to and how many hours and when so it's a

capacity that I think our educational

system of the future and the present has

to really figure fig out and we haven't

figured it

out I was thinking about this reading

your book so I have a I have two sons

one's one-year-old and one is almost

four and I was thinking about how for my

four-year-old it isn't his

distractedness that worries me it's his

focus and I say this because um

particularly since he got a brother

screen time rules are not what they once

were in my house and it's not that he's

on all the time but

but it's so noticeable with a little kid

there's so little he can pay attention

to for long

periods except the

screen I was reading in in this

wonderful newspaper that hosts this

podcast there was a a feature about Coco

melon which is this show of functionally

animated nursery rhymes that like two

and threeyear olds love uh and adults

hate but they talk about in this feature

how they have set up a room the the

place that makes Coco melon where they

will have a kid watching the show and

set up next to it is another screen that

shows an adult just doing normal

household tasks just sort of wandering

around doing whatever you do in the

house and if the

child becomes distracted from cocoa

melon by what the adult is

doing they go back to the edit and they

amp up the interestingness the cuts the

whatever makes a Coco melon episode

interesting and it was so dystopic right

the the level of

engineering I mean the hyp saturation of

the colors the constant cuts and so I

mean a little bit like you know hypers

sugary cereal or whatever what his

system is learning to find worth paying

attention to right like how hard it is

for the world to measure up to that as

it is for me I'm going to bring this to

me in a second so don't I'm not just

putting this on little kids but I know

every time I put them there it is

training right it is training about

what's interesting and and what's not I

mean in a weird way like the natural

state of the kid should be distracted I

can't have him distracted all the time

because I sometimes need to like clean

dishes but it is really unnerving it's

unnerving and it's

also there's a certain unconscionable

aspect that has happened and that is

that those of us who really believed

that and I know you and I actually

believed similarly 10 12 years ago that

the forces of the good would Prevail

with this medium and this culture but

what has happened is that prophet and

other

motivations have not just made sure that

engagement was taking place place but

that the same formula that casino

gamblers use to give intermittent

reinforcement plus those ways of

Engagement so that the child is addicted

but what you said and I return back to

your child is that he can't focus the

same in the ways that you would hope and

that's because he's hypers stimulated he

is being molded the same things that are

making a gambler addicted in a very

small way that's happening with our

children so those of us who are studying

this from the a neuroscience Viewpoint

like John Hutton we can tell you I can

tell you right now what we call the

goldilock study where a parent reads a

story the same story is then in an audio

form and just heard by the child this is

a three-year-old or a 4-year-old or it's

animated in a

screen well you know that they are

paying very close attention to that

screen but what you don't know is if you

do or look at the activation of the

language regions of the brain under all

three of those

circumstances language is being

activated most by when a parent or

caretaker is reading that same story the

passivity is gone out the window there

is an interactive nature to it and there

is a use of their language knowledge and

their background knowledge that's coming

to Bear more

forcefully in that print situation and

more passively in the screen situation

and so of course you have differences in

concentration you have differences in

attention Walter Benjamin said that

boredom is the hatch bird of the

imagination well our children the first

thing they do after they go off the

screen is say I'm bored but this is not

volter benin's boredom this is boredom

that seeks to if you will assuage its

need for hyp stimulation by getting

more this is something that we must feel

figure

out it's funny I think there's something

almost comforting about putting this on

the kids and I I promise I won't spend

the whole time we have together on

parenting but this was something

that occurred to me in an unpleasant way

reading reading your your chapters about

children which is it's easy to talk

about the way kids growing up with

modern

screens like I grw up with TV streaming

is totally different because anything

can be on at any minute like the iPad is

like a whole another level of Engagement

for my son but it's true for the parents

too I was thinking about how my

engagement with

screens means that there's always a

possibility of something at least

plausibly really interesting and kids

are often uh no offense to them quite

boring they need you to sit around doing

a lot of things that are not the most

engaging thing that I could possibly

imagine doing and I as a parent and

basically all the parents I know you

know will sometimes collapse to the

screen

because I too like am hooked into the

novelty and as such I am not there

playing make believe or reading or

whatever it might be that isn't the the

way this acts on children I guess is

what I'm saying is not just because we

put the kids in front of the screens but

because we put the the parents want to

get back to their screens too to the

point that now I try if I go to the

playground with them I don't bring I try

not to bring my phone unless for some

reason I need it because I can't stop

myself exactly exactly which is also

very strange you are as addicted as

anyone we all are what I'm trying to get

out with this question is you were just

bringing up how different it is for the

child to have the parents attention and

the parents are inattentive too what

does that mean for children so they are

being given a constant model and if you

look at children you'll see that they

are among other things great imitators

so one of the more horrifying aspects of

that goldilock study that I told you

where parents came in and read to their

child or they saw other well one of the

things that happened was that John

Hutton saw some of the parents reading

to their child and then turning every 30

seconds to check their

email and this was like the perfect

example the very Act of being a

caretaker an interactive reader to your

child is being

disrupted by the addiction of the parent

to social media or whatever is on their

phone this is a part of reality that

parents need to face in themselves if we

are to model then we must model not only

good uses of Technology but good uses of

time itself that isn't devoted or

distracted by

technology let me ask you about how we

use our phones because there's something

a little paradoxical here on the one

hand we're reading more words than ever

I mean we're constantly reading words in

some ways it's a paradise for readers

for reading but this gets a bit at this

idea that we talked about at the

beginning that reading is not any one

thing and we mentioned earlier scanning

and I'd also bring into play here

scrolling the fact that the moves while

you're looking at it what have you

learned in your research and the

research of your colleagues about what

is different when we're reading in this

scanning scrolling way that that phones

and screens demand I've been doing a lot

of work with colleagues like Naomi Baron

who has an Oxford book called How we

read now my colleagues in Norway in the

--ad network and we're all trying to

understand what are these

characteristics of skimming scanning

scrolling and one of the things that is

most obvious is that your ability to

comprehend and sequence detail when

you're skimming or scanning goes out the

door now one of the things that goes out

the door along with it is called

comprehension monitoring now when we're

reading let's say print by and large

this is not noticeable to yourself but

you're checking you've gone left you've

gone right you you're always going a

little ahead but you're also going back

to check this comprehension monitoring

is not going to be at the four when what

you are doing is in fact trying to get

to the end you are missing monitoring so

you are missing

sometimes very important details in a

plot or in an essay so there are several

things that contribute to that the first

is the speed with which you are

accustomed to skimming scanning

scrolling now remember the IM movement

people are studying this and they're

seeing that's what most of us are doing

when you're skimming and scrolling you

can

easily just stay at the level of the tip

of the iceberg because you are being

hastened along not poised to think about

what you're reading so as a bit of an

experiment when I was reading your book

I alternated between reading chapters in

the physical book the paperback and on

my Kindle which is actually where I do

most of my reading and I love my Kindle

because my memory is trash and we'll I

guess we'll talk about that and the

ability to highlight and keep all my

highlights centrally located and

searchable is really valuable to me but

I did really notice something that that

you just said when I was reading the

book in

paper which is I noticed how much more

often I went

backwards how much easier it was and

more natural it was somehow to move

around in the book on the Kindle five

sort of zoned out on something it's lost

I'm pass that I'm going forward it's

it's not obious impossible to go back

and sometimes I do but I I noticed how

much more often in the book I moved

backwards as well as forwards or noticed

that I had lost attention for a little

bit that there was something about the

physicality of it that made moving

through the space of it different in

ways that I suspect probably did help my

comprehension when you ask me where

something is in a book I have a visual

sense it's on the bottom third of the

page it's about a fourth way through and

of course I write all through my book so

I have a visual spatial image for some

of the things that are most important in

what I read and there is no way we do

that on screen or audio and I use both

and I listen to books but we don't

monitor you can go back I mean just as

you said you can go back but you never

do and so things go missing and the

things that go missing May in some

instances be the most important facts or

details to understanding the plot or

understanding the

argument but let me take the other side

of this because what I said about the

Kindle is also

true memory is a very weak

facility now there's some evidence

that's gotten weaker and you can go back

to I don't is it Socrates or Aristotle

who says that that writing is going to

be bad because then we're not going to

remember anything right the recipe for

forgetting yeah maybe if we never had

writing I'd have an amazing memory and I

wouldn't feel this way but there are

real advantages to digital text and so

is maybe some of this that we're just in

a transition time you know it took a

long time to figure out how to read

figure out how to do books for a long

time most people couldn't read and you

know books were reserved for the elite

and we are still learning about digital

text but there are very very clear

advantages and that as we are able to

develop them more deeply we will you

know recognize it just as it's better to

have writing and reading than to not

it's much much much much better to have

these digital worlds than to not I mean

are you and I just

cranky you know are we the equivalent of

our parents or like the VCR is too

complicated and it's always distracting

me you have often quoted or have at

least recently often quoted mclan and

mclin's basic Protege was this amazing

scholar Walter an and he I think said it

better than I can said the problem is

not orality oral culture versus

illiterate

culture the problem is figuring out what

to do when we are steeped in

both and that's how I

conceptualize what I call this hinge

moment between the

Technologies represented rudely by a

literate versus a digital culture

there's no going back we are much better

served by thinking about what Ang said

what do we do for those steeped in both

and so my job as I conceptualize it is

to be not Cassandras or or someone only

talking about the negative aspects of

digital but to say we must not be

ignorant of what we are disrupting or

diminishing and so for almost all my

lectures I end with something that will

say preserve as we expand and that's

what my goal for others is to understand

what we are disrupting and to figure out

ways to build habits of mind habits of

the reading mind that we can use with

purposefulness whatever medium we're

on is part of the issue here that we

have operated with the wrong metaphor so

I wonder whether we have gotten too into

what I think of as the The Matrix Jack

theory of learning I have always wanted

the thing in the Matrix where they put

the little needle in the back of your

head into the Jack and then you know

Kung Fu there's so many books I've have

said to people that I want to have read

the

book and it took a long time it's

actually Nicholas Carr's book that began

to the shallows it began to make me

think differently about this but to

realize that it was the time I spent in

the book that really mattered there was

a a quote from Sam bankman freed that

was making the rounds s bankman freed

being the um former head of of FTX is

crypto exchange it collapsed and he says

in there that he's very skeptical of

books he thinks mostly books should not

be books they should be six paragraph

blog posts and somebody who's written

both a book and more six paragraph blog

posts that that I can count even when

the book is expanding an idea that could

be shorter some of its value for the

reader actually the time spent there

wrestling and I wonder if the the point

of this a little bit isn't that we think

much too much about the information we

pass on to ourselves or or teach

children in schools and not enough about

the states that we're spending time in

and as such the circuits in the mind

that we are deepening and strengthening

versus letting languish that like we've

gotten too hung up on products as

opposed to

process I think that you are putting

just a

beautiful metaphor if you will for

what's important and it's not

information we need facts this is the

Aristotle's three lies but we need

contemplation and we have forgotten our

need for it but we also need something

else and it's the isotope hope of

knowledge or Insight is feeling that's

so important I've been reading Herman

Hessa again and one of the things he did

at the end of his life was write a poem

about books and he said all the books in

the world will not bring you happiness

but build a secret path towards your

heart let's not forget the heart as we

battle what is best for the mind because

the heart the effective aspect of

reading is one of the most beautiful

things that leads to that inner

Sanctuary but it's part of what happens

on the journey to Insight the feelings

that we have the feelings that an author

elicits to us that's a form of knowledge

we need heart and brain

as we look at what reading gives us and

what we

experience when we're reading or

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not I'm going to ask a couple questions

here about ways forward but one of them

is about this I mean if you're listening

to this conversation and you're thinking

oh you know I also have lost some of

this

faculty what does the training program

to ReDiscover it look like what what is

the the Maryanne wolf plan for

refreshing your deep reading skills look

like so you might laugh but I call it

bookends the bookins to a day and I'm

very serious about the two ends of the

day now with a one and a four-year-old

Ezra I don't know how I feel guilty

telling you this but I begin my day with

meditation and then reading at least 20

minutes a philosophical or theological

or spiritual or sometimes political

something that will absolutely take me

out of myself and Center me completely

Center my thinking slow it down It

prepares me

for if you will clearing the deck of

whatever detrius from the night or even

the day before and readying myself with

a particular mindset for whatever the

Day brings

and then at the end of the day I do two

things that may or may not be helpful to

people especially people with young

children and that is I have to find a

way for the world of imagination to take

me away from the work of the day

sometimes it's films sometimes it's

novels but it has to be something truly

in the world of imagination for me and

then I end that because I don't want to

be on a screen at the very end of my day

I often end it with some essay by Mont I

mean that sounds really strange but he

was the first essay writer and those

essays are sometimes really funny

sometimes really boring but whatever

they are they give me a kind of piece

that I find

um in very few places Wendell Barry

Marcus

aurelus those are the kinds of people

who make me

feel the peace at the end of the day is

something that that is really well well

worth striving for so I end and I begin

each day with

books I'm honestly skeptical of reading

practices that are about the end of the

day maybe it's cuz I have young kids as

you mentioned but my reading at the end

of the day I do it I mean I fall asleep

looking at my Kindle basically every

night but it Associates Reading with

sleep and I don't get anywhere deep with

it um in fact I I've had to learn that

if I'm going to do real deep reading it

has to be possible sometimes for me to

fall asleep for 20 minutes during the

day so I'm actually curious about

practices that are not about the end of

the day or the beginning of the day

because they're also for a lot of people

those are not plausible times to have

the energy to make this a priority like

if you really want to do this in the way

that people work out in the way that

they learn a new hobby if you want to

make this part of your

week to ReDiscover or retrain yourself

as a deep breeder what does it take is

it just doing it is it something more

than that like what what is the what is

the version of this that is not in the

corners of your time that's such a good

question for everyone because there are

such individual differences about what

helps us return to that Center that

inner lscape and I leave it to the

individual I have the advantage of

having my children grown I can do this

sort of book ending my day but the real

point isn't the book ending the real

point is to remember to

restore the what is it Lura said that

ancient soul of a child I think each of

us have this busyness that just we

assume we are the

indispensable managers of our days and

times when really we aren't giving

ourselves just the tiniest break in in

being a manager but rather being just a

thinker with a heart and a mind and a

soul and so what I would suggest is if

anyone can find a secret place in their

day a secret Corner maybe it's 10

minutes maybe it's 20 where they can go

off whether it's with a book or with

music or with something that will just

give them a chance to remember who they

are who their best selves are that's not

a book in that's finding a corner of the

day to find ourselves I actually do it

with music sometimes instead of reading

um I've discovered a composer a k

composer named Yuma and I will play a

haunting piece and it will elicit for me

something similar so again there's these

individual differences reading leads to

this Apex but other things can too let

me ask you about a another proposal you

make the book this one more far-reaching

which is the biliterate brain and the

ways in which we should be encouraging

and explicitly teaching a biliterate

brain what is the biliterate brain so I

want to actually state that in my work

I'm using the term biliterate in a very

particular way to refer to mediums it

begins in a parallel between digital and

print exposure in which in the beginning

print is the medium of choice to

surround that child especially in the

0er to two and then 2 to five period

digital can be there but like another

teddy bear not something used as a

reward or as a punishment of any sort

neither but just as something that is

part of the environment the landscape

never as a babysitter but that there

would be reading every single night to

the child from the parents or caretakers

every single night and then between 5

and 10 Again print being the dominant

medium but the parallel is that our

children in Reggio Amelia in Italy just

shows how this can happen they can learn

programming and coding and all these

wonderful cognitive capacities that go

with digital they can do that

simultaneously but that they're doing

parallel tracks They Come Together when

the aspects from digital can be

complimentary to books and print but not

dominate reading between 5 and 10 at

somewhere between 10 and 12

13 My Hope Is that teachers across the

world will really have this aim of deep

reading processes of critical analysis

and empathy being at the core of what we

teach our children Tommy kater from

Israel has this program called islands

of understanding for that age group and

I so admire her because what she's doing

is she's putting literacy and the study

of empathy together and this is what I

really want us to do as we then teach

our children to use those deep reading

processes on the screen again always

asking what is the purpose never using

print or digital aimlessly but

purposefully so that those deep reading

skills the inner Sanctuary is a

well-known landscape to the individual

child and to us so I really have a great

deal of Hope my colleague Marina bears

in Boston at Boston College talks and we

have had long discussions together about

the different cognitive capacities that

are being advantaged by these different

mediums and we shouldn't be thinking

about them as being either in

competition or in Conflict but learn

them and then learn and teach teachers

to help integrate them in whatever

reading the child is doing past 10 when

they're fluent we

hope let me ask about the other side of

this and and for adults so I already

asked you how someone might ReDiscover

retrain their their deep reading

Tendencies but a lot of us most of us

maybe are going to and do spend a lot of

time staring at a screen skimming with

distractions

everywhere and to the point of the

biliterate brain there is doubtlessly

good in that as well as bad it's easy to

focus I think on on on the bad but

surfing a lot of information being able

to see a lot of different things picking

through

things how do you think

about doing that well a suspicion I have

I mentioned earlier that maybe we're

just in this lag time this is all very

new and maybe you know we'll look

forward 20 50 100 years and people will

look at us think oh they were terrible

at using that they had no idea what they

were doing right in terms of training

using building what is good about these

functions how do you think about or how

do you for

yourself try to manage your digital

reading your Digital Life to get the

best out of it as opposed to the worst

out of it the first thing I do is

understand the purpose of whatever I'm

reading why am I reading this and there

I would say 60% of my day with the

digital reading I do is to find out

whether I should or should not do

something more by and large I don't but

if in the skimming scrolling that I do

like everybody else I realize this is

something I really need to understand I

really need to do something about then I

become a different reader if I don't

have access to print I completely slow

myself down I make sure I'm taking notes

and I physically take notes I am full of

notebooks and I know I could use this

this note cap taking capacity on the

screen I do not I find that the actual

act which is also true for children the

graphomotor ACT helps my memory and

consolidation and so while 60% I don't

do anything differently from anyone else

all those things that I consider

important I either print out or I take

very careful notes and I am aware after

that experiment of how vulnerable I am

like everybody else to the quick skim

when it's it's useful great when it's

not useful then I have to act

differently and read

differently so then let me ask you what

is always our final question here which

is what are three books that have

influenced you that you would recommend

to the audience I'm sure this one will

be very easy for you oh this is so

horrible I told Annie that I was not

gonna obey your rules but I will try to

stay within the limits first is my

favorite novelist American female

novelist and that's Marilyn Robinson her

Gilead home Lia Jack the trilogy Gilead

is one of the most beautiful novels I

think of the 20th Century 20 21st c yeah

I think I think Gilead is in my top five

books I I don't know how many times I've

read it in fact I was with Marilyn

Robinson once in a car and we were

reciting Emily Dickinson poems together

and she's just an astonishing

astonishing person so that's my first my

second is my friend Gish Jen who

unbelievably can write even about

dystopia with a sense of humor and wit

that was in her book The resistors but I

would really actually want to say that

my favorite was her book World in town

in which like few other people she helps

us understand what it means to be in a

different culture and to have the same

goals for Humanity but from a completely

different stance and so those would be

two that I suggest the third will be

very difficult for me because it's

something between Wendell Barry standing

by words and John Dunn the Theologian

loves mind which is essays on

contemplation so those three are were

really hard for me to do but those are

the ones I have come up with I like that

somewhere between three and three and

nine but those are wonderful suggestions

didn't say Middle March and my children

if I don't say Middle March will say Mom

you lied to Ezra Klein Middle March is

your favorite book so I have to say that

at the end I love it uh maryan wolf your

book is reader come home thank you very

much thank you Ezra a true pleasure

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the E clan show is produced by emmaa AGA

Annie Galvin Jeff geld and Ro Karma fact

checking by Michelle Harris Kate

Sinclair original music by Isaac Jones

mixing by Jeff gal audience strategy by

Shannon busta and special thanks to

Kristen Lynn and Christina

simusi

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