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[00:00]
Guardian Announcer
This is the Guardian.
[00:10]
Fin AI / Quo Advertiser
Customers shouldn't have to start from scratch every time they need help. That's why we built Fin. Fin answers questions, helps buyers find what they need, and remembers the context from one conversation to the next. Learn more@finai Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 24. 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price. Competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com safety protect yourself now@aura.com safety.
[01:41]
Madeline Findlay
It's summer holiday season. You might be packing that pile of books by your bed, but will you actually get through them? Despite the rise of booktok, pilot pop stars launching book clubs and films like the Odyssey, inspiring us to return to the source material, surveys and studies show each year we're reading less, and it's led some to suggest we may even be entering a post literate age. But what do we lose when we stop reading? Today the benefits of being a bookworm
[02:17]
Jimmy Famarewa
are
[02:20]
Madeline Findlay
from the Guardian. I'm Madeline Findlay and this is Science Weekly. Ian, today you're going to tell me about the benefits of reading so that I feel horribly guilty every night when I pick up my phone instead of my book. But before we start, tell me about your relationship with reading and what book you're currently reading at the moment.
[02:45]
Ian
My relationship with reading? I mean, I suppose one way of putting it is enthusiastic but quite slow. I can't manage to read fast, which really annoys me. I don't read books at one time. I'll read one book at a time. The last one I finished recently was When We Cease to Understand the World by the Chilean author Benjamin La Patout. I'm reading a book called Brian at the moment, which is fantastic. By a guy called Jeremy Cooper. I'm gonna finish Brian quite soon. The next one is Comedians by Graham Green.
[03:21]
Madeline Findlay
Okay, so you've got quite a stack going.
[03:23]
Ian
I've got far more.
[03:24]
Madeline Findlay
You know what you're gonna read next?
[03:26]
Ian
Yeah, I've bought far more books than I will read. I'm better at buying books than reading books.
[03:31]
Madeline Findlay
Yeah, I've got a very similar problem, Ian. I've got a shelf full of books that I definitely should have read and look forward to reading at some point, but. But haven't yet quite got round to. Now we're going to talk about the benefits of reading, and there are obviously some big benefits in terms of being literate in comparison to being illiterate. You know, navigating the world, access to information. But just to start off, how has literacy changed our brains?
[04:02]
Ian
So one place I guess you could start with this is by looking at what's called the Flynn effect. So James Flynn was a philosopher and a psychologist, and he found that in the 20th century there was this really steady and substantial rise in. In IQ. So if you looked at like 100 years, IQ rose pretty much 30 points over that period. So the question becomes, well, why? Nothing is going to happen genetically over that period of time. So what could. Could be at work? Well, you know, obviously you could look at things like nutrition. Our nutrition has changed a lot in 100 years. But, you know, chiefly education. Right? Education has been a massive thing over the past 100 years. And if you think, well, okay, but what is it about education? Well, the core, I guess, of education is literacy. And at the core of literacy is learning to read. And so that is like a. Maybe a pretty good starting point to look at as to what literacy has been doing for our brains.
[05:03]
Madeline Findlay
And when we learn to read and write, the very first thing we have to master is the Alphabet. And as any parent, teacher, recipient of a card from a niece or nephew knows, it's not the easiest thing to do. Right. Take some time. So what does figuring out all these shapes do for us?
[05:28]
Ian
So I put this question to a guy called Volk Hertig, and he's an experimental psychologist, and he's at the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. He's done a lot of research into literacy and cognition, and he particularly works in. In India, where there's actually a quite a high rate of illiteracy, about sort of one in five. He was really interesting because he was saying, actually, if you look at the English language, there's, you know, quite a lot of things, we have to pay very close attention to these symbols. And in particular, there are, there are mirror symbols. So, you know, B and D obviously are mirror symbols. And so when you're learning to read, you have to be able to unpick and distinguish between these two. And at first we're really bad at that. You know, one argument might be that we haven't really evolved the kinds of brains to be able to sort a B from a D. Like, why on earth would we have? So then the question becomes, well, how are we doing it? What bits of our brain are we recruiting to do this job? Which isn't something that we've, you know, been evolved, you know, to, to over hundreds of thousands of years.
[06:32]
Falk
The answer that neuroscience has found is that we use networks in the brain that have been created that have evolved for a similar purpose, but slightly different purpose. And this is, for example, face recognition or object recognition. So if you think about, if you need to recognize faces, it's like recognizing some visual complex thing, and it has some similarity to recognizing visually the letters of the English Alphabet, for example. And interestingly, literate people are actually better in recognizing faces as well as other object categories.
[07:26]
Madeline Findlay
Okay. So once you've learned the Alphabet, you begin to combine the letters to learn words, and then those words, you know, become our expanded vocabulary. This all requires memory. So presumably literacy has some effect on our memories.
[07:44]
Ian
Yeah, and Falk thinks that memory is really where the main effect of reading lies. And if you think through, okay, well, why would that be? Let's take vocabulary. When you're reading a book, you're exposed to far more words than you're going to come across in a sort of, you know, your spontaneous conversation. Certainly far more than the words I'm exposed to in my spontaneous conversations. And so you're obviously having to learn a lot more words. You're having to remember what they mean. And readers do know more words than non readers. And so that is going to be exercising your long term memory. But it's not just long term memory. I mean, if you think also there will be effects on short term memory, because as you're reading, you need to hold in your mind, you know, what are the names, what are the stories of these people, what are the places, who's done what to whom? And folks said there's, you know, some evidence that readers are a little bit more resilient against particular neurological disorders like conditions like dementia. One of the theories behind that is that readers will have this sort of greater, what's called cognitive reserve is How
[08:50]
Falk
Falk puts it, people believe it's a bit like a spider web that is very tightly knit. And the more you read, the more words you can add to this spider web, the more tightly knit it is. And if for whatever reasons, maybe a stroke or illness, this network is damaged, the spider web, people who read a lot because of this more tightly knit net have more capacity or have more paths to compensate, and that they might delay some of the consequences of cognitive decline a bit.
[09:31]
Madeline Findlay
Ian, it's interesting there that you mention unfolding stories, because in our jobs we read and you write a lot of stories, and in that you have to follow or construct a logical argument. This, then that, then that, then that. That must play a role.
[09:49]
Ian
Yeah. And Fulke says that this, this really does seem to help with our sort of our logical thinking as to how one thing will go to another. And so all of those things are exercising your brain to understand, building a logical argument and building a coherent argument.
[10:05]
Madeline Findlay
And one of the most joyous things about reading is its ability to transport you to new worlds, to take you to different times, different places, also to allow you to see your own world from a totally new perspective. And I do think reading just really opens the mind.
[10:23]
Ian
Yeah. And Folk talks about this in his book. He. He explores sort of the abstract thinking that might be abstract worlds with all sorts of different ideas that we're not used to, and. And all the rest of it. One of the things I thought was interesting about, he was talking about when you look at sort of literate versus illiterate people, is that the illiterate people tend to be sort of. It's almost like they're living more in the here and now, and that they're often connecting things very much to sort of concrete things in the sort of real, often visual environment. And, you know, he's. He's done work on this himself and he was talking about, say if you, if you draw a circle, an illiterate person might say, oh, that's a plate or that's the moon. And say if you asked people to point out what the similarities are between, say, a fish and a bird, a literate person might say, well, you know, they're both animals, because we used to sort of abstract labels, we used to categorizing. But a literate person might say, well, you know, a fish lives in water, and if a bird was thirsty, it might. Might want some water. So that is the connection there. And so there is this sense that without the sort of literacy, you're constantly bringing things back to the world in front of you, which actually sounds really valuable. But I think you're not doing so much of this ability where you can have these more abstract thoughts
[11:55]
Madeline Findlay
coming up. Are we entering a post literate age?
[12:02]
Ian
Foreign.
[12:07]
Jimmy Famarewa
I'm Jimmy Famarewa, food journalist, restaurant critic and culinary obsessive. I've spent the past few months traveling around the UK trying the latest and tastiest food trends, all of them supercharged by social media. And now I'm going to share them with you. I've met Ramen fanatics in Colchester and Cardiff, dug into Moorish platters of Irish Chinese spice bags in Birmingham and Belfast, and gorged on banana and tahini brulee buns and oven warm scones in London and Stockport. This was all in service of my new Guardian YouTube show. It's called Feed With Me Jimmy Femarewa. Watch it on The Guardian and YouTube links in the show. Notes do not watch when hungry.
[12:51]
Aura Advertiser
Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.
[12:55]
Fin AI / Quo Advertiser
Running a business means you're always reachable. Until you're not. And the moment you miss that call, a competitor picks it up. That's why this episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Quo, the business phone system, built so you never miss an opportunity. All your calls, texts and voicemails live in one place. Anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history and respond fast. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2, trusted by over 90,000 businesses set up in minutes on any device. Keep your existing number, add teammates as you grow. No it. No hassle. Quo's built in AI agent, even handles after hours calls and books appointments so you're covered around the clock. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo Free plus 20% off your first six months at Quo.com tech that's QU-U-O.com tech.
[13:57]
Madeline Findlay
Ian, despite all the evidence that you've just described about the very many benefits of reading, I've read a lot of reports about the fact that we're doing it less. We're picking up fewer and fewer books and it's part of the reason we're having this conversation. I mean, are we putting down books for good?
[14:17]
Ian
There's certainly some evidence out there that people are reading less, but it's a little bit mixed, right? I mean, in 2025 there was a YouGov poll and it was quite staggering. It was a YouGov poll of Britons and it found that 40% of Britons had not read a single book in the past 12 months. A month or so ago there was a US survey out which said that a third of those people who took part were reading less than they were a decade ago. There's some other data pointing in the, the other direction. I mean, another survey of, of kids in the UK found that about one in five kids in their spare time would turn to reading. And that's actually up on last year. So I don't think it's all lost. I think what is interesting is to keep an eye on this and see what's going to happen with all the, the digital devices that we're now using and if that's going to lead to more sort of fragmented attention spans, people just not having the time for reading. But also, you know, it leads to this suspicion people have talked about, are we entering a, a post literate world where we are so obsessed and feel so much of our time watching like little clips on social media, listening to podcasts, watching short videos and Fog takes this point seriously and a lot of his concern is around how passive that is. Obviously, if you're reading a book, you're being handed the words, but your brain is building the world, whereas it's not the same whether you're, if you're just handed a movie or something like that. And he was also concerned about our interactions with AI and chatbots with them being passive as well.
[16:01]
Falk
The Flynn effect in the most advanced western countries or the countries with the best education systems, so that's mostly Scandinavian countries or countries like the Netherlands there the Flynn effect actually started to decline first and quite a long time ago, so maybe something like 20 to 30 years ago. And that already reflected some declining reading habits, followed by some declining literacy achievements. And that all happened even before the invention of generative AI and large language models, the ChatGPT, et cetera. That now everybody is using the. Given that it's probably very likely that literacy levels and, you know, cognitive abilities are going to decline. Yeah, probably massively.
[17:08]
Madeline Findlay
I mean, I am so guilty of that, Ian, that very often I'm like, oh, I'm going to read my book and then I get my phone out and I just find half an hour has passed. I've been looking at videos and yeah, it is pretty bad. And I'm not doing less reading because I'm reading a lot of emails every day. But I guess it's what we're reading and you know, I used to be a really, really big reader as a kid and as a teenager. But is it a use it or lose it situation. If I don't start reading again, am I going to lose it?
[17:44]
Ian
It does seem that if you're not using your brain in this way and the way that reading exercises it, those faculties are going to sort of are going to wane a bit, and you will, you know, have sort of less sharper cognition as a result of it. I mean, Falk was. Was telling me about these tests called PISA tests. Now, PISA tests are given to school children 15 years old around the world. They're chosen at random, and they sit these tests, and they measure expertise in maths, science, and reading. And in recent years, the reading scores in developed countries have been going down. Falk has this concern that if this is the way it's going, that we're just going to end up with these sort of weaker critical thinking skills, these weaker critical literacy as well, where we sort of can pick apart where there's power in writing and who's trying to achieve what from what's being written. So this can apply to nonfiction, like, to documents. Who's trying to steer me to do this and that. And those skills are more important than we might realize.
[18:48]
Madeline Findlay
Mm. They're really more important than ever before because we're kind of navigating this online landscape where we're having to kind of pick apart information really quickly and understand it. So having those skills feels very important today.
[19:03]
Ian
Totally. I mean, you want now to be able to tell whether you're being told the truth or not or whether what you're being told is at least sensible or not.
[19:12]
Madeline Findlay
After everything that you've explained, I definitely feel persuaded that I should put more effort into picking up that book at night before I go to bed. And I'm sure our listeners will feel that way as well. But if. If anyone isn't persuaded yet, maybe you could give your. Your elevator pitch for books. And maybe I'd love to hear as well about a book that's kind of changed something for you, that's given you something.
[19:39]
Ian
Okay. Well, I mean, most people will have had that experience where they're. That they're reading a book and they don't want it to end, and you're so immersed in the world that you don't want to be ejected back into the real world. And that immersion is when all this really interesting cognitive stuff is happening. Right. You're immersed in the story, you're immersed in the characters, you're following, everything that's happening, and it's really enriching your thinking. A book that works for one person won't work for someone else. But I would say you can never be unhappy reading Lucky Jim Kingsley amos book from 1950s. Very old book, but genuinely funny. And what's wrong with that? It shouldn't make it a lesser book. It's just utterly enjoyable. You know, I was talking to folk about it as well. You know, what are you reading? And he said, look, what's, what's really important on this is to just enjoy whatever it is, because if you enjoy the book, it's going to reinforce this habit of going back and reading another book. And when we chatted, he was saying, you know, he was getting quite into Murakami and you could tell that he was just really enjoying being whisked away to the other place. And that's what it's all about, right?
[20:53]
Falk
If we stop realizing actually what we are doing, that these are the best times. So there, there's also quite a bit of research on the psychology of enjoyment, of happiness. And reading is one of those things that can actually be very good to achieve that because it takes us into another world and then we stop thinking about what we are doing. We are switching off, forget all our worries in our daily lives and we get at the same time all these benefits without realizing. I think this is actual some kind of magic.
[21:46]
Madeline Findlay
Thanks to Ian and Falk, Hutig Fulke's book is the Perks of Being a Bookworm. And just to let you know, Science Weekly can now be found on YouTube. So if you fancy seeing us, as well as hearing us, head to YouTube and search Guardian Science Weekly. And that's it for today. This episode was produced by me, Madeline Finlay. It was sound, designed by Joel Cox and the executive producer is Ellie Bury. We'll be back on Thursday. See you then.
[22:25]
Jimmy Famarewa
This is the Guardian.
[22:36]
Guardian Announcer
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[23:06]
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Summary6 min read

Science Weekly – Episode Summary

Episode Title: We’re reading less. And it’s making us stupid
Date: August 11, 2026
Host: Madeline Finlay
Guests: Ian (science writer/reporter), Prof. Falk Huettig (experimental psychologist, Max Planck Institute)

Overview

This episode explores the decline in book reading and its broader repercussions on our brains, memory, and society. The discussion delves into the cognitive advantages of reading, its effects on memory and logical thinking, and why we're reading less. The guests paint a vivid picture of what might be lost if our reading habits continue to dwindle, and why now, more than ever, literacy and deep reading matter.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Benefits of Reading

Cognitive and Neurological Effects
- Madeline prompts Ian about his reading habits and the positive outcomes of literacy, noting the big benefits of being literate versus illiterate—navigating the world, accessing information.
- Ian introduces the Flynn Effect (04:02), where average IQ scores rose significantly in the 20th century, largely thanks to improved education and, most critically, enhanced literacy.
- Learning to read involves distinguishing between mirrored letters (like "b" and "d"), a task the human brain didn’t naturally evolve to do (05:28).
Reading and Brain Structure
- Prof. Falk Huettig explains that literacy co-opts visual brain networks originally evolved for face and object recognition (06:31):
  
  "The answer that neuroscience has found is that we use networks in the brain that have been… evolved for a similar purpose, but slightly different purpose... interestingly, literate people are actually better in recognizing faces as well as other object categories." — Falk (06:31)
Vocabulary and Memory
- The act of reading presents more vocabulary than we encounter in everyday conversation, challenging both long-term and short-term memory (07:43).
- Reading may offer resilience against cognitive decline and disorders like dementia by building a dense 'cognitive reserve':
  
  "People believe it's a bit like a spider web that is very tightly knit. And the more you read... The more tightly knit it is... and that they might delay some of the consequences of cognitive decline a bit." — Falk (08:49)
Logical and Abstract Thinking
- Reading stories trains us in logical progression and argument construction (09:48).
- Literacy fosters abstract thinking—a literate person can see commonalities and labels (like “animals”) that an illiterate person might not (10:23):
  
  "Illiterate people tend to be... living more in the here and now... constantly bringing things back to the world in front of you... but you're not doing so much of this ability where you can have these more abstract thoughts." — Ian (10:23)

Are We Entering a Post-Literate Age?

Declining Reading Habits
- Recent polls show that book reading is declining, with 40% of Britons having not read a single book in the last year (14:17).
- There are some positive signs among young people, but concerns about digital distractions persist.
Consequences for Critical Thinking
- Digital media consumption may foster more passive engagement, which lacks the cognitive depth-building benefits of reading (15:30).
- Prof. Huettig warns that declining reading correlates with falling IQ scores in advanced education systems, a trend already visible before AI and social media (16:00):
  
  "The Flynn effect... started to decline first and quite a long time ago... That already reflected some declining reading habits... even before the invention of generative AI... it's probably very likely that literacy levels and, you know, cognitive abilities are going to decline. Yeah, probably massively." — Falk (16:00)
Reading 'Use it or Lose it'
- Not reading regularly causes cognitive skills to fade, shown by declining reading proficiency in standardized PISA tests globally (17:43).
- Weaker reading skills risk weakening critical literacy—the ability to question sources, intention, and bias in what we read.

The Unique Joy (and Magic!) of Reading

Immersion and Enjoyment
- Real engagement happens when reading immerses us in other worlds, cultures, and perspectives—offering both pleasure and cognitive enrichment (19:38):
  
  "Most people will have had that experience where... they're reading a book and they don't want it to end, and you're so immersed in the world that you don't want to be ejected back into the real world..." — Ian (19:38)
- Choosing books that simply excite us is vital for reinforcing a reading habit—a book that brings joy is as important as one that brings knowledge.
The Magic of Reading
- Reading offers us psychological enjoyment and happiness by whisking us away, sparking imagination, and relieving daily stress:
  
  "Reading is one of those things that can actually be very good to achieve [happiness] because it takes us into another world and then we stop thinking about what we are doing... I think this is actual some kind of magic." — Falk (20:53)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------|-------| | 04:02 | Ian | "The core, I guess, of education is literacy. And at the core of literacy is learning to read." | | 06:31 | Falk | "Literate people are actually better in recognizing faces as well as other object categories." | | 08:49 | Falk | "The more you read... the more tightly knit [your cognitive web] is... people who read a lot... have more capacity or have more paths to compensate, and that they might delay some of the consequences of cognitive decline a bit." | | 10:23 | Ian | "Illiterate people tend to be... living more in the here and now... but you're not doing so much of this ability where you can have these more abstract thoughts." | | 14:17 | Ian | "In 2025... 40% of Britons had not read a single book in the past 12 months." | | 15:30 | Ian (summarizing Falk) | "Are we entering a... post literate world where we are so obsessed and feel so much of our time watching... clips on social media, listening to podcasts, watching short videos... And a lot of his concern is around how passive that is." | | 16:00 | Falk | "...Probably very likely that literacy levels and, you know, cognitive abilities are going to decline. Yeah, probably massively." | | 19:38 | Ian | "That immersion is when all this really interesting cognitive stuff is happening. Right. You're immersed in the story, you're immersed in the characters, you're following, everything that's happening, and it's really enriching your thinking." | | 20:53 | Falk | "[When we read,] we stop thinking about what we are doing. We are switching off, forget all our worries in our daily lives... I think this is actual some kind of magic." |

Important Segments & Timestamps

[01:40] Episode Introduction: Madeline introduces the decline in reading and opens discussion with Ian.
[04:02] The Flynn Effect and the role of literacy in rising intelligence.
[06:31] Prof. Falk Huettig on how reading brain circuits overlap with visual recognition.
[08:49] Reading as protection against cognitive decline—"cognitive reserve" ("spider web" analogy).
[10:23] Literacy enhances abstract, logical thinking.
[14:17] Declining book reading statistics.
[16:00] Falk warns of cognitive and literacy decline in wealthy nations, even before AI’s rise.
[17:43] 'Use it or lose it'—cognitive skills and the case for habitual reading.
[19:38] The immersive, joyous magic of books and why that's critical for both brain and happiness.
[20:53] Falk on reading’s power to generate happiness and personal magic.

Conclusion

The episode closes with a passionate call to read more—not just for pleasure, but for cognitive resilience, critical thinking, and happiness. Both Ian and Prof. Huettig emphasize choosing books that bring joy, as sustained engagement—however humble—is the gateway to all the neurological and psychological gifts reading can bring.

For further reading:

Prof. Falk Huettig’s book: The Perks of Being a Bookworm
Ian recommends: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Listen/Watch on: [The Guardian Science Weekly—YouTube or your favorite podcast app]

Loading summary

Transcript41 lines

[00:00]
Guardian Announcer
This is the Guardian.
[00:10]
Fin AI / Quo Advertiser
Customers shouldn't have to start from scratch every time they need help. That's why we built Fin. Fin answers questions, helps buyers find what they need, and remembers the context from one conversation to the next. Learn more@finai Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 24. 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price. Competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com safety protect yourself now@aura.com safety.
[01:41]
Madeline Findlay
It's summer holiday season. You might be packing that pile of books by your bed, but will you actually get through them? Despite the rise of booktok, pilot pop stars launching book clubs and films like the Odyssey, inspiring us to return to the source material, surveys and studies show each year we're reading less, and it's led some to suggest we may even be entering a post literate age. But what do we lose when we stop reading? Today the benefits of being a bookworm
[02:17]
Jimmy Famarewa
are
[02:20]
Madeline Findlay
from the Guardian. I'm Madeline Findlay and this is Science Weekly. Ian, today you're going to tell me about the benefits of reading so that I feel horribly guilty every night when I pick up my phone instead of my book. But before we start, tell me about your relationship with reading and what book you're currently reading at the moment.
[02:45]
Ian
My relationship with reading? I mean, I suppose one way of putting it is enthusiastic but quite slow. I can't manage to read fast, which really annoys me. I don't read books at one time. I'll read one book at a time. The last one I finished recently was When We Cease to Understand the World by the Chilean author Benjamin La Patout. I'm reading a book called Brian at the moment, which is fantastic. By a guy called Jeremy Cooper. I'm gonna finish Brian quite soon. The next one is Comedians by Graham Green.
[03:21]
Madeline Findlay
Okay, so you've got quite a stack going.
[03:23]
Ian
I've got far more.
[03:24]
Madeline Findlay
You know what you're gonna read next?
[03:26]
Ian
Yeah, I've bought far more books than I will read. I'm better at buying books than reading books.
[03:31]
Madeline Findlay
Yeah, I've got a very similar problem, Ian. I've got a shelf full of books that I definitely should have read and look forward to reading at some point, but. But haven't yet quite got round to. Now we're going to talk about the benefits of reading, and there are obviously some big benefits in terms of being literate in comparison to being illiterate. You know, navigating the world, access to information. But just to start off, how has literacy changed our brains?
[04:02]
Ian
So one place I guess you could start with this is by looking at what's called the Flynn effect. So James Flynn was a philosopher and a psychologist, and he found that in the 20th century there was this really steady and substantial rise in. In IQ. So if you looked at like 100 years, IQ rose pretty much 30 points over that period. So the question becomes, well, why? Nothing is going to happen genetically over that period of time. So what could. Could be at work? Well, you know, obviously you could look at things like nutrition. Our nutrition has changed a lot in 100 years. But, you know, chiefly education. Right? Education has been a massive thing over the past 100 years. And if you think, well, okay, but what is it about education? Well, the core, I guess, of education is literacy. And at the core of literacy is learning to read. And so that is like a. Maybe a pretty good starting point to look at as to what literacy has been doing for our brains.
[05:03]
Madeline Findlay
And when we learn to read and write, the very first thing we have to master is the Alphabet. And as any parent, teacher, recipient of a card from a niece or nephew knows, it's not the easiest thing to do. Right. Take some time. So what does figuring out all these shapes do for us?
[05:28]
Ian
So I put this question to a guy called Volk Hertig, and he's an experimental psychologist, and he's at the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. He's done a lot of research into literacy and cognition, and he particularly works in. In India, where there's actually a quite a high rate of illiteracy, about sort of one in five. He was really interesting because he was saying, actually, if you look at the English language, there's, you know, quite a lot of things, we have to pay very close attention to these symbols. And in particular, there are, there are mirror symbols. So, you know, B and D obviously are mirror symbols. And so when you're learning to read, you have to be able to unpick and distinguish between these two. And at first we're really bad at that. You know, one argument might be that we haven't really evolved the kinds of brains to be able to sort a B from a D. Like, why on earth would we have? So then the question becomes, well, how are we doing it? What bits of our brain are we recruiting to do this job? Which isn't something that we've, you know, been evolved, you know, to, to over hundreds of thousands of years.
[06:32]
Falk
The answer that neuroscience has found is that we use networks in the brain that have been created that have evolved for a similar purpose, but slightly different purpose. And this is, for example, face recognition or object recognition. So if you think about, if you need to recognize faces, it's like recognizing some visual complex thing, and it has some similarity to recognizing visually the letters of the English Alphabet, for example. And interestingly, literate people are actually better in recognizing faces as well as other object categories.
[07:26]
Madeline Findlay
Okay. So once you've learned the Alphabet, you begin to combine the letters to learn words, and then those words, you know, become our expanded vocabulary. This all requires memory. So presumably literacy has some effect on our memories.
[07:44]
Ian
Yeah, and Falk thinks that memory is really where the main effect of reading lies. And if you think through, okay, well, why would that be? Let's take vocabulary. When you're reading a book, you're exposed to far more words than you're going to come across in a sort of, you know, your spontaneous conversation. Certainly far more than the words I'm exposed to in my spontaneous conversations. And so you're obviously having to learn a lot more words. You're having to remember what they mean. And readers do know more words than non readers. And so that is going to be exercising your long term memory. But it's not just long term memory. I mean, if you think also there will be effects on short term memory, because as you're reading, you need to hold in your mind, you know, what are the names, what are the stories of these people, what are the places, who's done what to whom? And folks said there's, you know, some evidence that readers are a little bit more resilient against particular neurological disorders like conditions like dementia. One of the theories behind that is that readers will have this sort of greater, what's called cognitive reserve is How
[08:50]
Falk
Falk puts it, people believe it's a bit like a spider web that is very tightly knit. And the more you read, the more words you can add to this spider web, the more tightly knit it is. And if for whatever reasons, maybe a stroke or illness, this network is damaged, the spider web, people who read a lot because of this more tightly knit net have more capacity or have more paths to compensate, and that they might delay some of the consequences of cognitive decline a bit.
[09:31]
Madeline Findlay
Ian, it's interesting there that you mention unfolding stories, because in our jobs we read and you write a lot of stories, and in that you have to follow or construct a logical argument. This, then that, then that, then that. That must play a role.
[09:49]
Ian
Yeah. And Fulke says that this, this really does seem to help with our sort of our logical thinking as to how one thing will go to another. And so all of those things are exercising your brain to understand, building a logical argument and building a coherent argument.
[10:05]
Madeline Findlay
And one of the most joyous things about reading is its ability to transport you to new worlds, to take you to different times, different places, also to allow you to see your own world from a totally new perspective. And I do think reading just really opens the mind.
[10:23]
Ian
Yeah. And Folk talks about this in his book. He. He explores sort of the abstract thinking that might be abstract worlds with all sorts of different ideas that we're not used to, and. And all the rest of it. One of the things I thought was interesting about, he was talking about when you look at sort of literate versus illiterate people, is that the illiterate people tend to be sort of. It's almost like they're living more in the here and now, and that they're often connecting things very much to sort of concrete things in the sort of real, often visual environment. And, you know, he's. He's done work on this himself and he was talking about, say if you, if you draw a circle, an illiterate person might say, oh, that's a plate or that's the moon. And say if you asked people to point out what the similarities are between, say, a fish and a bird, a literate person might say, well, you know, they're both animals, because we used to sort of abstract labels, we used to categorizing. But a literate person might say, well, you know, a fish lives in water, and if a bird was thirsty, it might. Might want some water. So that is the connection there. And so there is this sense that without the sort of literacy, you're constantly bringing things back to the world in front of you, which actually sounds really valuable. But I think you're not doing so much of this ability where you can have these more abstract thoughts
[11:55]
Madeline Findlay
coming up. Are we entering a post literate age?
[12:02]
Ian
Foreign.
[12:07]
Jimmy Famarewa
I'm Jimmy Famarewa, food journalist, restaurant critic and culinary obsessive. I've spent the past few months traveling around the UK trying the latest and tastiest food trends, all of them supercharged by social media. And now I'm going to share them with you. I've met Ramen fanatics in Colchester and Cardiff, dug into Moorish platters of Irish Chinese spice bags in Birmingham and Belfast, and gorged on banana and tahini brulee buns and oven warm scones in London and Stockport. This was all in service of my new Guardian YouTube show. It's called Feed With Me Jimmy Femarewa. Watch it on The Guardian and YouTube links in the show. Notes do not watch when hungry.
[12:51]
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[12:55]
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[13:57]
Madeline Findlay
Ian, despite all the evidence that you've just described about the very many benefits of reading, I've read a lot of reports about the fact that we're doing it less. We're picking up fewer and fewer books and it's part of the reason we're having this conversation. I mean, are we putting down books for good?
[14:17]
Ian
There's certainly some evidence out there that people are reading less, but it's a little bit mixed, right? I mean, in 2025 there was a YouGov poll and it was quite staggering. It was a YouGov poll of Britons and it found that 40% of Britons had not read a single book in the past 12 months. A month or so ago there was a US survey out which said that a third of those people who took part were reading less than they were a decade ago. There's some other data pointing in the, the other direction. I mean, another survey of, of kids in the UK found that about one in five kids in their spare time would turn to reading. And that's actually up on last year. So I don't think it's all lost. I think what is interesting is to keep an eye on this and see what's going to happen with all the, the digital devices that we're now using and if that's going to lead to more sort of fragmented attention spans, people just not having the time for reading. But also, you know, it leads to this suspicion people have talked about, are we entering a, a post literate world where we are so obsessed and feel so much of our time watching like little clips on social media, listening to podcasts, watching short videos and Fog takes this point seriously and a lot of his concern is around how passive that is. Obviously, if you're reading a book, you're being handed the words, but your brain is building the world, whereas it's not the same whether you're, if you're just handed a movie or something like that. And he was also concerned about our interactions with AI and chatbots with them being passive as well.
[16:01]
Falk
The Flynn effect in the most advanced western countries or the countries with the best education systems, so that's mostly Scandinavian countries or countries like the Netherlands there the Flynn effect actually started to decline first and quite a long time ago, so maybe something like 20 to 30 years ago. And that already reflected some declining reading habits, followed by some declining literacy achievements. And that all happened even before the invention of generative AI and large language models, the ChatGPT, et cetera. That now everybody is using the. Given that it's probably very likely that literacy levels and, you know, cognitive abilities are going to decline. Yeah, probably massively.
[17:08]
Madeline Findlay
I mean, I am so guilty of that, Ian, that very often I'm like, oh, I'm going to read my book and then I get my phone out and I just find half an hour has passed. I've been looking at videos and yeah, it is pretty bad. And I'm not doing less reading because I'm reading a lot of emails every day. But I guess it's what we're reading and you know, I used to be a really, really big reader as a kid and as a teenager. But is it a use it or lose it situation. If I don't start reading again, am I going to lose it?
[17:44]
Ian
It does seem that if you're not using your brain in this way and the way that reading exercises it, those faculties are going to sort of are going to wane a bit, and you will, you know, have sort of less sharper cognition as a result of it. I mean, Falk was. Was telling me about these tests called PISA tests. Now, PISA tests are given to school children 15 years old around the world. They're chosen at random, and they sit these tests, and they measure expertise in maths, science, and reading. And in recent years, the reading scores in developed countries have been going down. Falk has this concern that if this is the way it's going, that we're just going to end up with these sort of weaker critical thinking skills, these weaker critical literacy as well, where we sort of can pick apart where there's power in writing and who's trying to achieve what from what's being written. So this can apply to nonfiction, like, to documents. Who's trying to steer me to do this and that. And those skills are more important than we might realize.
[18:48]
Madeline Findlay
Mm. They're really more important than ever before because we're kind of navigating this online landscape where we're having to kind of pick apart information really quickly and understand it. So having those skills feels very important today.
[19:03]
Ian
Totally. I mean, you want now to be able to tell whether you're being told the truth or not or whether what you're being told is at least sensible or not.
[19:12]
Madeline Findlay
After everything that you've explained, I definitely feel persuaded that I should put more effort into picking up that book at night before I go to bed. And I'm sure our listeners will feel that way as well. But if. If anyone isn't persuaded yet, maybe you could give your. Your elevator pitch for books. And maybe I'd love to hear as well about a book that's kind of changed something for you, that's given you something.
[19:39]
Ian
Okay. Well, I mean, most people will have had that experience where they're. That they're reading a book and they don't want it to end, and you're so immersed in the world that you don't want to be ejected back into the real world. And that immersion is when all this really interesting cognitive stuff is happening. Right. You're immersed in the story, you're immersed in the characters, you're following, everything that's happening, and it's really enriching your thinking. A book that works for one person won't work for someone else. But I would say you can never be unhappy reading Lucky Jim Kingsley amos book from 1950s. Very old book, but genuinely funny. And what's wrong with that? It shouldn't make it a lesser book. It's just utterly enjoyable. You know, I was talking to folk about it as well. You know, what are you reading? And he said, look, what's, what's really important on this is to just enjoy whatever it is, because if you enjoy the book, it's going to reinforce this habit of going back and reading another book. And when we chatted, he was saying, you know, he was getting quite into Murakami and you could tell that he was just really enjoying being whisked away to the other place. And that's what it's all about, right?
[20:53]
Falk
If we stop realizing actually what we are doing, that these are the best times. So there, there's also quite a bit of research on the psychology of enjoyment, of happiness. And reading is one of those things that can actually be very good to achieve that because it takes us into another world and then we stop thinking about what we are doing. We are switching off, forget all our worries in our daily lives and we get at the same time all these benefits without realizing. I think this is actual some kind of magic.
[21:46]
Madeline Findlay
Thanks to Ian and Falk, Hutig Fulke's book is the Perks of Being a Bookworm. And just to let you know, Science Weekly can now be found on YouTube. So if you fancy seeing us, as well as hearing us, head to YouTube and search Guardian Science Weekly. And that's it for today. This episode was produced by me, Madeline Finlay. It was sound, designed by Joel Cox and the executive producer is Ellie Bury. We'll be back on Thursday. See you then.
[22:25]
Jimmy Famarewa
This is the Guardian.
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