A Post-literate World & Tate Brothers Arrested (with Rose Horowitch)

Summary

Stay Tuned with Preet

Episode: A Post-literate World & Tate Brothers Arrested (with Rose Horowitch)

Host: Preet Bharara
Guest: Rose Horowitz, Staff Writer at The Atlantic
Release Date: July 23, 2026

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Overview

This episode centers on the decline of book reading in America, the cognitive and societal implications of a "post-literate" world, and the rise of alternative content consumption such as video and audio. Preet Bharara interviews Rose Horowitz about her viral Atlantic article, "The End of Reading is Here," unpacking her research on changing reading habits, cultural shifts, and the meaning of reading in today's society. The episode concludes with a listener Q&A about the Tate brothers’ extradition and a moving tribute to a legendary justice figure.

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Main Discussion: The Decline of Reading

Rose Horowitz’s Viral Article

• Genesis of the Article
  Horowitz began with earlier reporting about students— even at elite universities— arriving unprepared to read entire books (03:00). Her editors pushed her to broaden the inquiry and revisit the topic with fresh data and interviews.

• Key Findings from Research

  • Reading rates are down drastically:

    “The share of Americans who read a book or an article on any given day declined by 40% over the past two decades as of 2022… Fewer than half of all Americans read a book.” — Rose Horowitz (03:20)

  • Gambling is now a more popular leisure activity than reading; 57% of Americans placed a bet last year, more than those who read a book (04:34).
  • Declines are across the board: Young people and former demographic strongholds (retirees, women, college grads) are reading less (04:50).
  • The books being read are simpler with shorter sentences, and genres like YA fiction are surging in popularity, even among adults (05:42).

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Shifts in Reading: Format and Depth

Changing Nature of Content

• Sentences in bestsellers now are about 1/3 shorter than a century ago (05:42).
• Rise of YA and illustrated books; adults are often consuming literature initially targeted at younger readers (05:52).
• Not inherently “bad,” but a marked shift in literary culture.

Reading vs. Consuming Text

• Bharara asks if the problem is really a decline in reading, since people are reading emails, texts, and social media constantly (08:07).
• Horowitz distinguishes between quantity of words read and quality of attention and focus:

  “It makes it very difficult to focus on any one thing for an extended period… the type of reading that’s going away is the more extended, focused reading.” (08:46)

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Exploring Causes and Implications

Causes of the Decline

• The shift began with television (avg. household: 7 hours/day by 1985), then was accelerated by smartphones, streaming, and the internet (09:21).
• Modern digital content is more seductive and disruptive to attention, crowding out long-form, single-focus reading (09:48).

Nonfiction vs. Fiction

• Horowitz: Research shows some shared cognitive benefits, but fiction builds empathy, while nonfiction trains logic and sustained argument evaluation (10:56).
• Book genres have shifted dramatically—“dad books” (big nonfiction tomes) are less popular; “romantasy” (romantic fantasy), self-help, and YA dominate (11:45).

Video, Audio, and Reading

• Bharara questions the unique value of reading compared to podcasts or documentaries (12:45).

• Horowitz: Reading and writing involve deeper processing—writing forces the author to slow down and refine ideas; readers process complex language and self-pace, increasing retention and imagination (15:05).

  “When you read… you have to create in your mind what the author is intending… you have to visualize it all.” (16:30)

• Mention of cognitive science studies: When children watched animations, imagination-related brain regions were less active compared to audio+picture stories (15:50).

The Real Problem: Attention

• Not about losing literacy, but about erosion of attentional stamina and comfort with focusing (09:48, 30:06).
• Average attention span on a screen dropped from 2.5 minutes (2006) to 47 seconds (2021) (30:06).
• Correlated decline in American adults’ performance on logic and reasoning tasks (30:40).

“If we don’t practice [focused reading], it just feels more of a strain and is more difficult.” — Rose Horowitz (17:50)

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Societal and Cognitive Consequences

Will It Hurt Us?

• Evidence that continuous, sustained reading maintains important cognitive faculties— reasoning, executive function, background knowledge (39:32).
• Essential skills for professions that require lots of reading (law, academia, etc.) may be at risk for future generations (40:40).
• Potential for divide: A shrinking class of highly literate readers, and the majority drifting toward oral and visual media (19:45, 44:32).

Generational and Class Implications

• Those who still read do so with greater intensity—a “reader identity”—but their numbers are shrinking (19:45, 20:00).
• Reading aloud to young children strongly predicts later vocabulary, academic, and economic outcomes (38:51).

Impacts of AI and Technology

• Preet: AI’s generation of convincing but shallow, generic text may further erode discerning and critical reading (51:34).
• Horowitz:

  “If we become too reliant on AI, we sort of won’t develop those [powers of discernment and comprehension].” (52:40)

• She remains cautiously optimistic (“bullish or bearish? … I’m split. It really depends on how people use it.” — 49:02), emphasizing the need for conscious adaptation rather than panic.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “People who read are more invested in reading than ever before. When there was no TV or radio … if you could read, you were just reading.” — Rose Horowitz (01:16, restated at 19:45)
• “The type of reading that’s going away is the more extended, focused reading.” — Rose Horowitz (08:46)
• “We know that the average attention span on a screen, 20 years ago, was about 2.5 minutes… now it’s about 47 seconds.” — Rose Horowitz (30:06)
• “Practice makes perfect … the more accustomed we become to reading, it’s just gonna be easier. If we don’t practice, it just feels more of a strain.” — Rose Horowitz (17:50)
• “AI is almost creating this superabundance of really pleasing, polished text… we need our powers of discernment and comprehension even more than before.” — Rose Horowitz (52:40)

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:00 | Genesis of Horowitz’s article, declining student literacy | | 04:34 | Surprising data: Gambling surpasses reading as leisure activity | | 05:42 | Books getting simpler, bestseller sentence length shrinking | | 08:07 | Are we reading more words but of lesser quality? | | 09:21 | TV and smartphones crowding out reading, mechanistic causes | | 12:45 | Are podcasts and documentaries a good replacement for books? | | 16:30 | Brain scan study: animation vs. audio; implications for imagination | | 19:45 | “People who read are more invested than ever before…” | | 30:06 | Attention span statistics and implications for comprehension | | 38:51 | Effects of reading aloud to children on life outcomes | | 40:40 | Will workplace performance suffer from declining reading skills? | | 44:32 | Defining “post-literate society” | | 45:42 | How worried should we be—panic, or just adaptation? | | 49:02 | “Are you more bullish or bearish about AI?” discussion | | 51:34 | AI as generator of “superabundance” of compelling (but possibly misleading) content |

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Tone and Style

• Preet maintains a conversational, thoughtful tone, blending gentle skepticism with personal anecdotes (e.g., the Godfather films, reading speed struggles).
• Horowitz is measured, data-driven, and often self-deprecating, candid about reading slowly herself and conscious not to romanticize the past (“My editors would say shorter is better…”).
• The conversation is hopeful in conclusion—change is inevitable, and understanding is preferable to panic.

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Listener Q&A: The Tate Brothers Extradition Case

[55:00+]
Preet explains the British effort to extradite Andrew and Tristan Tate from Miami to the UK on serious trafficking and assault charges. He outlines the extradition process:

• Federal judge reviews legal eligibility and probable cause.
• If approved, the Secretary of State (now Marco Rubio) makes the final decision, weighing diplomatic and policy concerns.
• Political context: The Tates have supporters in Trump’s political circles, which could influence the outcome.

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Personal Tribute: John O’Malley (Legendary SDNY/District Attorney Investigator)

[57:00+]
Preet closes with a deeply moving tribute to John O’Malley, a detective famous for freeing the wrongfully convicted Bronx Six. He recounts O’Malley’s gift for justice and his enduring legacy in exonerating the innocent as well as prosecuting the guilty.

“Must run just as fast or faster to exonerate the innocent as to punish the guilty.” — Preet Bharara

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Summary

• Reading is down, focus-fragmented, and culture is shifting quickly toward video and audio.
• The few who do read remain fiercely dedicated; new formats may be populist, but may cost us deep comprehension and reasoning skills.
• The sky isn’t falling, but if we want to maintain what’s valuable about reading, adaptation and deliberate cultivation—especially in childhood education—are essential.

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For more, read Rose Horowitz’s article “The End of Reading is Here” in The Atlantic.

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Rose Horowitz]

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[Preet Bharara]

cafe and the Vox Media podcast network. Welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Preet Bharara.

[Rose Horowitz]

People who read are more invested in reading than ever before when there was no TV or radio even, and there was no other way to get information. If you knew how to read, you had to read. There was no other option. If you could read, you were just read.

[Preet Bharara]

Welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Preet Bharara. My guest this week is Rose Horowitz. She's a staff writer for the Atlantic, where she covers education. As recently as three years ago, she was the editor in chief of the Yale Daily News. She joins me this week to discuss her latest article, which has gone kind of viral. The End of Reading is here. That's coming up. Stay Tuned. Rose Horowitz, welcome to the show. It's great to see you and great to meet you.

[Rose Horowitz]

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about the piece.

[Preet Bharara]

So you wrote a piece that has a provocative title, kind of like the End of History, except the ending you're talking about is the End of Reading. And you say the end of Reading is here. I found this article endlessly fascinating. It's gotten a lot of attention. A lot of people in my world texted it to me or asked me about it. I think you've done some media on it. And I said to the team, we have to have a conversation with Rose because there's a lot of history in Here there's a lot of analysis. I don't know that I understand all of it. Why don't you give us, A, the reason why you thought this was a worthwhile topic to write about, and B, what the basic thesis is.

[Rose Horowitz]

So, you know, I started writing about this topic two years ago. I wrote a piece about students arriving at universities, even top universities in the country, unprepared to read full books because they hadn't been assigned them in middle and high school. And so my editors asked me to kind of revisit that topic. Look at, okay, if this is happening, if we know that there's a change happening in schools and in colleges, what does that look like more broadly? And so in this piece, you know, I really looked through a lot of data and interviewed so many researchers. And the story that emerged was that Americans just read much less than they used to. The share of Americans who read a book or an article on any given day declined by 40% over the past two decades as of 2022, which is the last year that we have really great data for fewer than half of all Americans read book on a book.

[Preet Bharara]

A book.

[Rose Horowitz]

You said a book. Yes, in the past year. And you know, what I argue in the piece is that this shift has a significance even more than what we can see right there in that data, that when reading first appeared in society, it fundamentally transformed the way people thought, their politics and their culture. And that now, as reading disappears, we can expect changes of the same magnitude, like changes in our consciousness, in the candidates that we elect, in what our culture values, values. And so that was what I was trying to get across.

[Preet Bharara]

I want to quote from your article and cite some other statistics because they're very sort of alarming in some ways, depending on your perspective on books. As you said, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. But you go on to say only 38% read a novel or a short story. This is an interesting fact. Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book. Last year, 57% of Americans placed a bet. You also say, because usually we're talking about young people, how young people suck so much, which I don't agree with, but that's usually the storyline. As you write, the decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most, retirees, women, and college graduates, have seen a collapse. And then you also say the books that people do read are simpler than they used to be. Do we have more illustrated books now than we used to. Is that part of your research?

[Rose Horowitz]

Well, so what I found is that, yes, the books that people read are simpler. You know, we know that New York Times bestsellers have sentences that are about one third shorter than they were a century ago. And, you know, what I was finding was really just a burgeoning popularity of young adult novels. The head of the New York Public Library was saying that. That young adult fiction is their most popular offering, even among people who are. Who are not young adults. So I think we're just seeing a real change when people do read in the kind of books that they're choosing.

[Preet Bharara]

I've got a series of questions in which I want to take a step back and have you explain or have the audience understand why we value certain things in the first place, rather than just assuming that a book of length has value. You said a second ago that the New York Times has sentences that are shorter. I have discovered over time that the difference between amateur writers often, and it depends because there are different authors of great repute, collect long sentences. I had a guest done recently who talked about a new trend of books, not a lot of books, but some books that consist solely of one sentence. Right. It's a complex long sentence that simpler writing and simpler vocabulary and simpler sentence structure and maybe even shorter sentences. Why is that necessarily a bad thing?

[Rose Horowitz]

So I think that's a good point, that we don't want to be sort of romantic about a specific type of writing or a specific time period in the past. My editors certainly would often say that my shorter sentences are better, that I should not be writing longer sentences.

[Preet Bharara]

I think writers learn that. That a variation in sentence length is the best.

[Rose Horowitz]

Right. And so what I think was the sort of statistics are showing, and. And as you know, we look at kind of bestseller lists in the past compared to today, is that it sort of denoted a time when people had the interest and kind of ability to make it through long, serious works of literature. You know, we do see a real change in the types of books that people are buying today. You know, children's book much more popular. And young adult fiction, as I said, is much more popular. And so that's not inherently a bad thing, but it is a real change to take note of and a real shift. Yeah.

[Preet Bharara]

Going back to sort of first principles, how are we distinguishing among types of reading? Because it's. At one point in your article, you do say that. That in fact, people are reading more words than they used to read because there's text, there's email There are other things. They're on social media, et cetera. So the eyes and the brains of people in 2026 are actually doing the act of reading as much as or more than they have before. So it's a difference in quality, I take it. What is the highest quality for purposes of the values we're trying to pursue, and what's the lowest?

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah, so, you know, you're right that I talk about in the article, how we might be reading more words than ever. And so I don't think this is a literacy crisis. You know, we clearly can still read. But I think that the shift that I was trying to point out is that as we're sort of bombarded with so many kind of snippets of text, it makes it very difficult to kind of focus on any one thing for an extended period of time. So I think that's sort of the type of reading that's going away is just the more extended, focused reading, and that sort of the shift that I was trying to point to.

[Preet Bharara]

So what's causing this problem?

[Rose Horowitz]

My reporting showed that this is something that's been going on for a long time. Sort of started with television, it seems, as television just crowded out the amount of time that people used to spend reading. And by 1985, the average American household spent seven hours a day in front of the TV. So that's a lot of time.

[Preet Bharara]

Sorry, how many hours?

[Rose Horowitz]

Seven.

[Preet Bharara]

I think it's 14. I think I spent 14 hours.

[Rose Horowitz]

Right. So that's just crowding out time that people might previously have spent on reading. And then we see with smartphones and broadband Internet and streaming, it's all just sort of more seductive, interesting, engaging than television is. So that kind of furthers. Further crowds out the time. And we also see that we just sort of become more accustomed to shifting our focus between different things. It's not necessarily that we can't pay attention, but we aren't used to paying attention. And so it just feels very uncomfortable to do that and to not flip over your phone or look at something else. So that's sort of the shift is first the change in how we spend our time and then in how uncomfortable it feels to focus on something for an extended period of time.

[Preet Bharara]

What distinction do you draw, or did the experts you spoke to draw between the decrease in reading of fiction novels versus the decrease in reading of nonfiction? Is there a difference to our brains, to our minds, to our society? Are those things equivalent or different?

[Rose Horowitz]

You know, the research seems to suggest that in some senses, they offer similar Benefits. But fiction would obviously be exercising empathy much more, whereas nonfiction would make you more accustomed often to going through a logical argument, you know, really kind of attending to different. The Wall Street Journal had a recent article about how dad books are dying out and how.

[Preet Bharara]

Wait, what are dad books?

[Rose Horowitz]

Dad books are the kind of, you know. Yeah, the heavy nonfiction history books that your dad gets on birthday or Father's Day.

[Preet Bharara]

I'm one of those dads.

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah. So those books are definitely finding fewer readers. Obviously, Romantasy has seen a huge surge in interest. So I don't know that category.

[Preet Bharara]

What did you call it?

[Rose Horowitz]

Romantasy. So that's like romantic.

[Preet Bharara]

I read so little that I don't even know what the books are called anymore.

[Rose Horowitz]

That's a lot of. It's like fairies and relationships and dragons. And so those books are really popular with tick tock and everything. And they've been real bright spots. We've also seen that self help is really popular.

[Preet Bharara]

So Romantasy. Yeah, is. Is, people might guess, is not my cup of tea. But true crime. True crime, I'm, I'm always told, is very popular. New forms of it on television, miniseries and podcasts. How's true crime doing in the bookstore?

[Rose Horowitz]

Oh, gosh, I would have to check. I would imagine that podcasts had sort of crowded out the books because there are so many good true crime podcasts. But I'm not sure if people are still buying that. It wasn't showing up on the bestseller list that I was looking at. But it's possible that it never sort of reached those heights. But it's still been very popular.

[Preet Bharara]

Let's take that example, and I have a few others that I may ask you about. Let's say you're listening to a high quality, intelligent, articulate true crime podcast versus reading sort of a mediocre or even a good true crime book. Or you've elected to watch on the History Channel. If the History Channel shows history anymore. Some people think it doesn't, but. But you're watching a, you know, high quality, intelligent, articulate series on the Civil War, and you've left the Civil War book that you got for your birthday on the shelf. What are we losing or gaining by doing one versus the other in your research?

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah, so it's a really interesting question because, you know, in one sense it's. Sometimes video and audio are better ways to take in information. You know, I was speaking to people who were saying it's way easier if you're trying to follow directions or something to be watching it. If you're looking up like wikiHow or something. So I don't think we wanna be precious about text in and of itself. The shift that I was trying to point to is that writing and reading are sort of a fundamentally different delivery system for information. When you write something down, it takes longer than when you're spe, so you are forced to slow down and think about it more. It separates you from what you're writing. And so you're able to look at it from a more detached way, go back to it and it'll be there and you can look at it and get new understanding. It's just a really different way of kind of sharing information. And so that was what I was trying to point to is it's not that like watching a podcast any one time is a problem or anything at all, but that overall, as our society sort of shifts to doing that more and more and away from reading, that that will lead to big changes.

[Preet Bharara]

But just so I understand the point that you were making a second ago about the, the process of writing, you're talking about the author. Yeah, right. Are we to infer from your point that, that a book can be more likely to be superior because the act that the author has to go through in detaching from the subject matter makes it something of higher value than, than a TV show or something different?

[Rose Horowitz]

I, I was more meaning to say that when people are writing, that's something versus making a video or speaking. And then when you're reading, I think one of the real differences is that one we know people tend to use more complex language and sentence structures in their writing compared to their speaking. So you would be taking in more complex language. And then I think real differences are that video is self paced. It just kind of keeps going. Obviously sometimes people speed it up or slow it down and you could technically rewind it, but you're much less likely to go back 10 seconds and make sure that you didn't miss something than you are when you read. Our eyes just naturally go back a paragraph, we review it. You don't even really notice you're doing it. So you're more likely to take in something. It's easier to take in something that's a little bit more complex if you're rereading it. I spoke with a researcher who took images of children's br as they took in a story first when they were looking just at static pictures and listening to an audio recording, and then as they were watching an animation. And what he found is that when these kids were watching an animation. They used the parts of their brain associated with learning and with imagination, much less. And his thinking there was that. Because so much is already there for you in video. It has the sound, it has all the action, it has the tone of my voice, it has just everything. You don't have to. To create in your mind, like to imagine what the author or actor, speaker is intending as you do when you read. And you have to visualize it all, which I found interesting. It's sort of why I think when you watch a movie of a book that you read, you can feel like it was casted wrong. That's because you've imagined something and you've like created your own movie.

[Preet Bharara]

My daughter does not like a lot of. A lot of movies for that reason. And she's a. Has always been a voracious reader. But just so. So I understand more. I'm asking a lot of maybe dumb questions. The problem here in the reduction of reading is either or both of the following. Is the question, is it A, that we are sort of learning more and getting less knowledge, or B, the reduction in reading is causing us to lose some skill or cognitive faculty? Or is that not the right question?

[Rose Horowitz]

So I think it's more B. It's definitely an area still of active research. But when I was talking.

[Preet Bharara]

People are writing books about this.

[Rose Horowitz]

People are writing books about this.

[Preet Bharara]

People's gonna read them.

[Rose Horowitz]

I know. And people are constantly doing, you know,

[Preet Bharara]

studies, podcasts about this stuff. Not. Not books, Rose.

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah, it might. It might get more views. So I think what we know with our brain is that it gets better at what we spend time doing. That's the whole, you know, practice makes perfect. And so the more accustomed we become to reading, it's just gonna be easier. It's gonna feel easier. We're gonna have more background knowledge to aid and comprehension. We're gonna be more used to kind of reasoning through something, doing that logical deduction. And whereas if we aren't really asking ourselves to do that, it will be harder. It's not to say that we. I don't think anything is permanent. And it's not like we're losing the ability to read at all. But if we don't practice, it just feels more of a strain and is more difficult. Yeah.

[Preet Bharara]

How's the Atlantic doing? It is a long form publication that has been around for 100 and how many years?

[Rose Horowitz]

169 years.

[Preet Bharara]

You're always bragging about that. And your article is extraordinarily good reading. Smart, informative, but not Short. Aren't a lot of people reading your article?

[Rose Horowitz]

Yes, as the writer, I can say that it is not. It is not short.

[Preet Bharara]

And I mean, I don't mean to give sort of an anecdotal, silly rebuttal, but there's a lot of interest still in long form. You know, it may not be War and Peace, but these are substantial writings that you're involved with and that your publication is involved with. How do you think about that trend in either direction?

[Rose Horowitz]

Right. I think it's such an important point and because if you look, there are all these positive signs for reading. New bookstores are opening all the time. Last year, print book sales were higher than they were a decade ago. You know, you're right that people read this 8,500 word article about how nobody reads.

[Preet Bharara]

But what I was wondering that.

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah, right. So if you look at all of these sort of anecdotes or selective data points, I think you can really make a picture that, okay, reading is not in trouble. But I think as I was digging into this more and looking at the data, what we find is that the people who read are more invested in reading than ever before. When there was no TV or radio even, and there was no other way to get information. If you knew how to read, you had to read. There was no other option. And so it wasn't really possible to be a reader or not be a reader, because if you could read, you were just reading. And so now as it becomes something where you don't have to read, you could get a lot of your information through video or audio. The people who read are really leaning into that identity more. They actually spend more time reading each day than they used to and they seem more devoted to text. You know, I sort of note in my article that it's probably going to be people who would feel that they fall into that category, who really making it to the end. And I thought that was a really interesting kind of dynamic to think about. Okay, as we have this sort of smaller and smaller minority in society that's really dedicated to text, what happens to them?

[Preet Bharara]

So there are a couple other theories that I think you refer to. One is a broad based theory. People are just too busy to read now. People have multiple jobs, people have to make ends meet. There has been a trend over the last number of decades for both parents to do more parenting. People trying to get to the gym, I think more. So there's just less time to read. So that's point one. And then somebody once told me, a serious person of Letters, who is and was himself a publisher, said that when Donald Trump became the president, he began reading less fiction and other stuff because he was too consumed and upset about the news. Do either of those two things ring true based on your research and reporting?

[Rose Horowitz]

So I think with the second one, it's something that I've heard anecdotally, but I didn't see it showing up in the data so much. People are definitely getting less of their news through reading, and I think we see higher rates of kind of news avoidance or getting news on social media. In terms of the first one, I mean, I definitely think getting busier is an element of it. And that was what I was trying to get across with the new technologies that it seems to be that those were sort of what was crowding out reading. But of course, for every person, it would look very different of what they're devoting their time to.

[Preet Bharara]

I was thinking when I was reading the article, and then you reminded me when you talked about characters that are imagined in someone's head and the difference in quality and the intellectual experience or cognitive experience versus the entertainment experience of one form versus the other. And the example, as a dad who gets dad books of my vintage might not surprise you would point out you could choose to read the Godfather.

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Preet Bharara]

Or you could watch two of the three Godfather movies, but not the third. Not the third. I think this is not a controversial position. And this is usually the reverse of what is normally true. The delta in the quality of the book versus the movie is quite large. Do you have advice, Rose Horowitz, on whether or not someone should rather read the Godfather book or watch the movies for their brain?

[Rose Horowitz]

Well, okay, so I've seen those two movies and I've read the book. And I agree with you that the Godfather movies are better than the book. Though I did really like the book

[Preet Bharara]

is page turning, but it's. But what did you read? What did you do first?

[Rose Horowitz]

I watched the movies first.

[Preet Bharara]

Right. So did I. Yeah. They made the author a lot of money.

[Rose Horowitz]

They. And I mean, they were fantastic. And so I think that cognitively it doesn't really matter in that individual time, which when you do in terms of like a long term effect on your brain or anything. You know, I spoke with one cognitive scientist who was like, everything that happens to us changes our brain. So if you watch the Godfather movie or you read the book, that's not gonna be a hu. And as I said, there are times where it makes much more sense to get information from video or audio. But I think that it's more on a societal level, on a continual level like what are we doing day in and day out? And that sort of switch from books and articles to movies and just short form videos and everything. That is the big change. But yeah, definitely everyone should see the Godfather one.

[Preet Bharara]

Okay, so here's my non serious question. Just started taking apart the pieces of your of your research. Could one solve the problem a little bit by watching foreign films in languages they don't speak or understand so that they have to watch the film but read the subtitles? Is that reading?

[Rose Horowitz]

That's interesting. Well, I mean the challenge with that is that you just are constantly kind of flicking between two things like that is hard in terms of shifting your attention. I'm not sure.

[Preet Bharara]

Dexterous. I don't know. I have no idea.

[Rose Horowitz]

I think you're asking questions that I didn't even think to ask. I think it's the sort of attempted multitasking does not tend to be the best. It is interesting that people actually seem to use subtitles even on not foreign films. I do this when I watch Netflix. I always have subtitles, even when it's in English, which I know is no,

[Preet Bharara]

that's an increasing trend because it's hard to hear.

[Rose Horowitz]

It's a Gen Z thing. I don't really know why we do it, but I think that maybe it's like cause I'm also scrolling on my phone or something and it's a second screen situation. But I don't think that would solve the issue because that sort of distracted reading is what I think we actually are doing. We are reading on our phones while we're also seeing a caption as we look at a reel or seeing subtitles or something. So I don't think we need to practice that that it's more the undivided attention rating.

[Preet Bharara]

I'll be right back with Rose Horowitz after this. Support for the show comes from Upwork. There comes a point in every business owner's journey where you might need to hire outside expert help quickly. But how to find the right person and where to find them aren't often easy answers to come by. Don't worry, Upwork makes it simple. Upwork is a one stop platform to find, hire and pay expert freelancers across more than 125 categories of talent. With their help, you can start filling skill gaps, launch projects faster and scale support wherever you need it without committing to full time headcount. You can browse profiles, review people's past work and get help help scoping the role and when it comes to operational stuff like contracts and payments, upwork has a handle on all of it. That way you can actually spend more time planning your next move. It's free to sign up, and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upwork.com upwork.com

[Rose Horowitz]

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[Preet Bharara]

It strikes me from this conversation and then from some other anecdotal things, one of which I'll mention, it's an attention problem, right? It strikes me that the difference between and you tell me if I'm wrong, the difference between reading a very long sort of pulpy beach novel versus reading something short like the Stranger, right by Camus, who won the Nobel Prize. We're not so worried if you're reading that short thing versus that long thing, and maybe it's preferable, maybe it's not. But the problem is not only in the world of books. I don't know if you saw this. Matt Damon talks about how at production meetings for movies, but I think more even for miniseries on streaming networks that the writers have to build in more than they ever did before, repeated explanations of what just happened in the plot because people are watching the shows while also scrolling on X or TikTok or whatever, and they can't follow the I mean, they've literally, to use a phrase, lost the plot. Is that phenomenon related to this phenomenon or are those two different things?

[Rose Horowitz]

So I think it definitely is. We know that the average attention span on a screen 20 years ago was about two and a half minutes and that five years ago it was about 47 seconds. So I definitely think this is in large part problem of attention and people just aren't accustomed to paying attention to one thing for an extended period of time. At the same time we do have some evidence that American adults ability to answer logic questions and answer reasoning questions has declined over the past 20 years. So I think, think that that's also a factor that we don't know the exact causes of but that we are seeing some sort of reversals in scores on some of those IQ tests and as we go between generations.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah, I just think about the attention issue. If your mind is wandering while you're doing a thing, does that make you, does that make you less smart? Does it make you not want to do the reading because it takes too long to get through it? And is the attention problem solvable in some way based on your research or are we just toast?

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah, so I think it's a couple things. Definitely you would find that if you aren't paying attention or don't want to pay attention, you're not going to obviously take in and comprehend as much. So then it will sort of be a self fulfilling cycle of. It will be harder to comprehend more over time because you just really need that background knowledge to be able to understand things. So that's one challenging element of it. I think the, the positive thing about attention is that it doesn't seem like it's something where there's a change in our brain and we physically couldn't pay attention. It's more just what we're used to and how it feels. And so that's sort of heartening that it's definitely something that could be reversed. It's not like there's been an irreversible change that's taken place in our brains or anything thing.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah. Again, just further point, talking about the visual arts movies and such, I think there's this scene from Scent of a Woman and so Scent of Woman came out a long time ago, before you were born.

[Rose Horowitz]

My parents are obsessed with it and they really, they really want me to watch it.

[Preet Bharara]

Is that the one? Scent of a Woman. Al Pacino plays a blind former military guy, right?

[Rose Horowitz]

Yes.

[Preet Bharara]

And he says hooha a lot. Right.

[Rose Horowitz]

I haven't seen it, but that checks.

[Preet Bharara]

Okay. You Gotta see it. And at one point, he makes fun of the younger character in the film whose name I'm now forgetting, and says something like, you and your MTV generation, you have no attention. So he was not talking about reading as stealing our attention. And this is before smartphones, but I think he was talking, not to overly intellectualize it, but talking about fast editing. And then my other anecdote about that is, I have two boys that I tried to make watch the Godfather 1 and 2 with me during COVID and they were teenagers at the time. The older one watched the first one, said, that was awesome, and continued the marathon and watched the second one with me. My younger one dutifully and politely watched the first one and then was like, I'm out of here for the second one. And I don't think it was because he didn't like the plot, although I'll ask him. Him. It was just. The editing was very slow. It was very slow. So this idea that you have to figure out a way to keep people's attention is not just one about books, which is why I'm sort of wondering what you think about the larger question of attention deficit and whether or not that portends your next writing assignment.

[Rose Horowitz]

No, it's funny. I've actually written a piece about film professors finding that their students really don't want to sit through films or really struggle to sit through films. And so it definitely, I think, is a broader thing. And, I mean, you find that with older movies, and you also find that with older books. You know, if you read it, it's like the pastoral scenes go on for

[Preet Bharara]

so much longer than I. I skipped the scenes. That's not uncommon, is it?

[Rose Horowitz]

I don't know if there's data on that.

[Preet Bharara]

Let me ask you, do you.

[Rose Horowitz]

Do you.

[Preet Bharara]

Do you skip the descriptions?

[Rose Horowitz]

I don't skip the description.

[Preet Bharara]

Do you skip anything?

[Rose Horowitz]

Only if I was, like, in school, had to have a reason that I had to get through it and finish it by a deadline. But if I don't have a deadline for reading, I wouldn't.

[Preet Bharara]

So. So if there was some sort of unimportant or not central subplot that you found tedious, you'd be diligent enough and read it anyway. No skipping for Rose.

[Rose Horowitz]

I. Well, this is why it takes me forever to read anything, because. So that's. I mean, I'm slow, so that's. I gu. The. The trade off that I have.

[Preet Bharara]

Let's talk about that for a second. I have done pretty well professionally. People are surprised to hear they Must be surprised to hear you say it. And we're like many decades apart in age. One of the reasons I started reading less, you become busy. I am very slow also. And although I will sometimes skip the descriptive scenes of novels, and I don't read nearly as many novels as I used to, there's close to zero novels. But for me to undertake a thick volume is a huge commitment of time and I have always envied people. So my daughter, I also have a daughter who's an incredibly fast reader and in multiple years, when she was in high school made the commitment that she would read a hundred books In a year, 100 non school books in a year, and she did it.

[Rose Horowitz]

Oh my gosh.

[Preet Bharara]

I could never, I could never, I could never, I could never. I would be in the grave. Grave. Is there anything to the idea that we're not teaching people to read quickly enough? Because we're trying to teach them to read slowly, to take everything in and that's counterproductive. Does that make any sense? What's the relationship to ability to read quickly and reading?

[Rose Horowitz]

We definitely find that. I think things, yeah. Get easier the more you practice them. And I think in my life when I read slowly, a lot of that is that I am getting distracted. And so after I read a couple pages, I'll just like turn over my phone, just make sure that I don't have any new emails that I have to answer. Interesting.

[Preet Bharara]

Trying to see if there's something more interesting going on in my phone. Probably.

[Rose Horowitz]

I know. So I think that for me is the real hindrance. I mean, we know that if you know more, you'll be able to read faster because you'll just kind of have more fluency. But in terms of training people specifically to read faster, I, I don't know that that is. I mean, I guess it depends on what you want to select for, but I don't know that that has been the thing to select for or even who's to say what's better if you read something and it takes you a long time and you feel like you really get more out of it versus if you're rushing through something. I know a lot of times when I had to finish a book in a couple days for school, I didn't take in as much. So I think it just depends on the context there and what is important to select for, depending on what you're hoping to get out of the book.

[Preet Bharara]

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm not sure how I feel about predictions about, about the bad things that arise from adults not reading as much or not reading as well or all of that. The one thing, and I'm not a scientist and I'm not a reading scholar, but I have taken as an article of faith, based on myself, my own household and anecdotal experiences of other people, is that for children, and I mean toddlers, when they're, even before they're toddlers, infants. And I've seen a number of studies on this, although I don't know them off the top of my head, that one of the single greatest determinants of how they will do in school, what their economic mobility will be, and all sorts of other things is were they read to when they were even in the crib, did they have picture books, did they read along, did they read at a young age, beginning at a few weeks old into I guess maybe toddlerhood and beyond? And then people who are children when they become a little bit older, who read prolifically, all end up doing better in many, many other ways. It strikes me that the synopses are functioning better, they're likely to have better vocabularies. And most importantly, although maybe this is not going to be important, important for much longer, the direct link between quantity and quality of reading as a child and ability to write well is a very strong one. Does all of that make sense and compute based on your inquiries?

[Rose Horowitz]

That definitely does. I think the research suggests that being read to as a young child pays dividends down the line. I know that with the researcher who I spoke to, who was doing brain imaging with young children, he found that children who had been read to more and had sort of spent less screen time in the house, they were more accustomed to using the parts of their brains that were associated with executive function and with language. So we definitely know that if you are read to more, you'll know more words, you'll know more just background knowledge and that'll make it just much easier to go through school and everything. So it definitely is something that is very advantageous.

[Preet Bharara]

So you're not a lawyer, obviously, but I am. I am. And literally like the practice of law, almost no matter what subdivision of law you're in, even if you're a transactional lawyer, then you're reading hundreds and hundreds of pages of tedious sorry to my transactional partner friends, but complicated, difficult, non Shakespearean, non Hollywood type plot driven reading. And if you're a litigator, you're reading cases. I mean, you know, when these Supreme Court cases come down, for example, that I on this podcast More normally than this kind of discussion, we try to break it apart. You know, they go on for, for scores of pages. Some of them are the size of books or novellas at least. Is this going to affect people's ability to do their job, jobs that they don't read as well, and they have attention problems in areas like the law or otherwise? Is that one of the concerns we should have about the economy and about the labor force?

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's an interesting question. You know, we do find that reading, particularly when people are older, it's really important as a way to maintain cognitive faculties. It can be very useful in that. And so, you know, and certainly when reading scores go down, there's some research suggesting that that has an economic cost later on. And I mean, don't we already see with people relying more on artificial intelligence to read or write for them in the workplace? And that can obviously have a lot of effects at the same time, there are still people who read and everything. So we could see sort of a greater division there.

[Preet Bharara]

So until like. So when was Gutenberg, do you remember off the top, you. Your head?

[Rose Horowitz]

The 1400s, I think.

[Preet Bharara]

So that's like not that long ago because we in our, in our. And I think in our current species form have been around for a couple of hundred thousand years and obviously there's reading before Gutenberg, but not widespread reading. Is there any comfort to be taken from the. I guess not. As I'm about to say this out loud, if we go back to the reading levels of the middle age. The middle Ages, is that so bad? Because. Because Gutenberg is fairly recent. And as you write super fascinating part of your article about cognition and about how we're built and how we're hardwired. We're not hardwired to be readers. Talk about that for a minute.

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah, no, I think that's a really interesting element of it is that people often think, oh, literacy and reading is innate or inevitable. But actually it's sort of this aberration. It's weird that this happened like 6,000 years ago in human history. And as you say, that is not very long ago that reading was first invented in an even shorter time period since it has been widespread and with the printing press and once literacy rates got higher. So it's actually something that's quite unusual. And that was the point that I was trying to make in my piece. I think there is comforting. It's more just that there are things that we can learn from what the world was like before and that we could. That we can see ourselves going more towards now a more oral society and kind of a less literate one. I think that that was the point that I was trying to make was that we really could see this age of reading being just a blip between oral and digital ages and then some new technology.

[Preet Bharara]

Is any of the blame name belong at the feet of the authors of, of some of the things that, that we are saying we're supposed to be reading? And in particular, I'm very directly pointing a finger at academia.

[Rose Horowitz]

Do you mean because it's just so it's like too convoluted or something?

[Preet Bharara]

It's convoluted, it's jargony and often not well written. It's often not well written. Should we try to help the authors of the world write with greater clarity and brevity and not just cause everyone else to have a greater attention span and get off their phones? It's not quite a serious question, but you know, indulge me.

[Rose Horowitz]

Right. Well, I mean, I'm sure my editors would demand that I say that, yes, people should write with greater clarity and brevity, myself included. So I think that, that certainly there is an element that there's a lot of bad writing out in the world. But at the same time, what's so funny about this age is that we actually have unprecedented access to written works. You know, you could read things that were written at any time period, and you can just pull it up on your computer or phone. And so there certainly are options if we so desire to read. There's enough good books and articles out there.

[Preet Bharara]

So you talk about post literacy, post literacy world. What do you mean by that?

[Rose Horowitz]

So what I meant by that was sort of a world where writing and text is not really a primary way that people spread information, derive culture, entertainment, kind of news, meaning that will be something that's done much more through video and audio. And so that was what I was trying to get across. Just more of a societal shift in how we share information and how we communicate.

[Preet Bharara]

What's the level of concern? People hate it when I do the following on a scale of 1 to 10, about these conclusions that you've drawn from talking to a lot of experts. Should we be highly alarmed, like a 7 or an 8 because the trend line is bad? Or is this, as you very honestly point out, that at the advent of all sorts of technologies, AI is the latest, people say the world is about to end. And that was true with television, that was true with radio, and that was true with Movies. Movies. And people were afraid of the book. Speaking of Gutenberg, lots and lots of people thought that that was going to be terrible. And so maybe this will pass. Where are you on the scale of assigning worry to this issue of nobody's reading anymore?

[Rose Horowitz]

Yeah, no, I mean, it's funny, I quoted in the piece, an article The Atlantic published 126 years ago where the author was really nervous about what the rise of the newspaper was going to do to people's willingness and ability to read books. So I definitely wanted to cognizant that in 126 years, I could look back at.

[Preet Bharara]

You were very honest about that. I thought that was good. So what do. So what do you think about that?

[Rose Horowitz]

So I think, I think I'm more optimistic probably than people might think. I don't think we're gonna go back to a kind of reading age. I don't see people actually reading, you know, those rates going back up just because they have been declining for so long. But I don't think that we should inherently be worried about it. I think that in a more optimistic. We should. You know, the world is always changing. These things have changed before. And so it should more be like, let's go into it with full understanding. That was what I was trying to get across. There's always this period when there's new technologies of upheaval and revolutions and confusion and we have to get a handle on it. And then how do we figure out what we want the world to look like with this new one? And so it's not inherently bad, but we also shouldn't shy away from it or pretend that it's not happening.

[Preet Bharara]

And, and what's your concern level about AI, specifically here? And then generally otherwise. And, and your generation, you're, you're a recent Yale grad, so I can, I can infer your age a little bit. And, and I've been, I've, I've been reading with, not with delight, but with some bemusement about commencement speakers who start talking about AI and, and people start booing them. And I, I have a kid in law school and a kid in college, and I haven't really talked about this at any length with them. So let me, let me start with you before I venture to talk to them about it. How are you feeling about it?

[Rose Horowitz]

Well, I think there are so many different elements of the question, you know, on a kind of like, employment level and an existential risk level that I think I'm less equipped to answer. But I guess from reporting this story, I feel that I can talk more on a sort of cognitive, intellectual level level. And in that sense, I think I'm of two minds about artificial intelligence. You know, I note in the piece, and we see in kind of early studies and from speaking with experts that generative AI use kind of without a lot of guardrails and intentions with using it, it can very easily, you can become overly reliant on using the AI to write for you and then to do your thinking for you, and you don't go through the effort of figuring out what you think. And so I think that is a big concern, just that, you know, people kind of won't develop their powers of discernment and form their own opinions quite as much. At the same time, you know, I think we do see a lot of important scientific and intellectual advancements in AI. So I don't want to sit here and say that it's like wholly bad. I think there could be opportunities. But it's again, where it's. We don't exactly know how to use this technology and there are certainly risks that we have to get a handle on on.

[Preet Bharara]

So are you. So I couldn't tell from that answer, are you more, more bullish or bearish on AI?

[Rose Horowitz]

Well, I, I always worry about everything, but I don't know, I can't put it into one. I think I'm, I'm split. I think it really depends on how people use it. Yeah.

[Preet Bharara]

Do people, do you think people understand how good. And by good I mean does how articulate. If we're talking about the world of writing, whether it's a legal brief, maybe a poem, maybe not a poem, but at least a legal brief or a summary document of a deposition. Speaking for my profession, when people point out flaws in it like hallucinated cases, I always want to say, say this is the least good it will ever be. And to me it's like, so people who poo poo it and are not thinking about the consequences have their head in the sand a little bit, as I'm sure there are people. This is well before your time, but video games have been around not quite as long as Gutenberg. And I was a young person when video. And there was, I think it was the first or one of the earliest video games games called Pong. And it was basically table tennis. And it was very simplistic screen. And I think back on that because there are certainly people like, well, this is stupid. This is not very interesting. This is not very challenging. Yeah, this is the worst. It will Ever be. And now you have whole incredibly complicated CGI and now AI video games. I don't have a question there, commenting on how good. I mean, I've tried this a couple of times. I don't know if AI, if you tell it to write a novel as good as the Old man in the Sea, can it do it? No. Can it do it in 10 years? I don't know. Probably not. But what do I know? But if you tell it to write a paragraph describing a street that your character walks down in Tokyo, and you give it this, I'm guessing, because I'm not writing such a book, and you. And you give it the surrounding style and details, and you give it a lot of information about how you want that paragraph. It will write a very, very, very good paragraph. Is that good or bad?

[Rose Horowitz]

Bad. Well, so that was what I was trying to point out in my article is like, there's that irony that so much of AI's output, at least currently, is text and that it is very kind of convincing to us. It's. It's often, like, better than what, you know, human would just write in. You know, there was a study where, you know, MFA candidates were choosing between, you know, human text and AI text that had been trained on an author's corpus. And. And they. They preferred the AI text, you know, in many cases. And so. And as you say, you know, we've seen it improving so quickly. So in that sense, that was what I was really nervous about, is that AI is almost creating this superabundance of really kind of like, pleasing, polished text that may be wrong, contain mistakes kind of buried deep in it. It could be, you know, it could be. Be inaccurate or misleading or something. But it's also kind of looks so nice to read that we actually need our powers of discernment and kind of comprehension even more than we might have previously. And so if we become too reliant on AI, we sort of won't develop those. And so that's the kind of concern that I have, you know, as I. That I try to point to in the article.

[Preet Bharara]

So I've kept you long enough. Congratulations on. On the article. To the audience, I will say, remind them again. It's called the End of Reading is Here. Wait till you've read this before you end your reading. It's in the Atlantic. Rose Horowitz, thank you so much and good luck, and I wish you the best in your career.

[Rose Horowitz]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Preet Bharara]

My conversation with Rose Horowitz continues. For members of the Insider community. To try out the membership, head to staytuned.substack.com again, that's staytuned.substack.Com after the break, I'll answer your questions about the recent arrest of Andrew Tate and what the extradition process looks like. And I hope you'll stay to the end when I pay tribute to someone who did as much for dinner justice as anyone I've ever known.

[Rose Horowitz]

Introducing Meta Glasses. You have questions. They've got answers.

[Preet Bharara]

Hey, Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

[Rose Horowitz]

Lima. How do you say where's the restroom in Spanish? Dondes Talvano. Hey, Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich? Technically, no. Spiritually, yes.

[Preet Bharara]

Hey, Meta, what should I do with my life?

[Rose Horowitz]

That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think? Ask anything with the new Meta glasses. Priceline negotiator. It's me, the Priceline negotiator.

[Preet Bharara]

We don't need the jingle twice. What about a third time? Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how

[Rose Horowitz]

Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights and rental cars. Seems like you decided. Yeah, but I didn't mention that. You can save up to 60% off

[Preet Bharara]

hotels in the Priceline app. Time to be the timeline. Fine.

[Rose Horowitz]

No one deals more deals than.

[Preet Bharara]

Please stop.

[Rose Horowitz]

Touche. Priceline. Priceline.

[Preet Bharara]

Howdy, shoppers. Fire up that propane grill and settle

[Rose Horowitz]

in for a new season of Hulu's

[Preet Bharara]

hit animated series, King of the Hill. Hank and Peggy are staying active in retirement. That's a garbage.

[Rose Horowitz]

You will not have to lift a finger.

[Preet Bharara]

Bobby and Connie hard launch their relationship.

[Rose Horowitz]

Now that we're dating, it's important your parents know I'm a man.

[Preet Bharara]

And the alley guys are.

[Rose Horowitz]

Well, they're still the alley guys.

[Preet Bharara]

Yep. Watch the new season of the Hulu original series, King of the Hill, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. This has been a paid advertisement. Now let's get to your question questions. This question comes as a substack comment from Christian. Could you talk about the Tate brothers and the process of extradition to foreign countries? Christian, that's a very interesting question. I will say that I've made it this far on the podcast without having to talk about the Tate brothers. But I guess that had to end sometime. For listeners who may not be familiar with Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, they are two of the most polarizing social media personalities in the world. Andrew first gained public attention as a professional kickboxer and a contestant on the British version of Big Brother. He later built an enormous online following by flaunting his wealth and promoting an intensely misogynistic brand of masculinity. But even worse, according to prosecutors in Britain and Romania, the allegations against the Tate brothers go far beyond their online race rhetoric. Romanian authorities have accused the Tates of human trafficking and forming an organized criminal group to sexually exploit women. That case is currently still pending. They also face a separate and growing criminal case in Britain. British prosecutors had previously authorized 21 charges against the brothers, involving three alleged victims. Recently, the Crown Prosecution Service announced 38 additional charges, charges involving four more alleged victims. Andrew now faces 32 additional charges, including rape, facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation, assault, and offenses involving child pornography. Tristan faces six additional charges, including rape, sexual assault, and facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation. That's a lot of counts. And now Britain, of course, is seeking to extradite the Tates from the United States. States. Last Saturday, U.S. marshals arrested them in Miami pursuant to a federal warrant connected to the British request. So, per your question, what happens next? Well, first, a federal judge must determine whether the brothers are legally eligible for extradition. A magistrate judge in the Southern District of Florida will consider whether a valid extradition treaty applies, whether the alleged offenses fall within that treaty treaty, and whether Britain has presented enough evidence to establish probable cause. So there is a substantial amount of due process that's afforded people in the extradition process in this case. The first two considerations seem to be met, since the U.S. of course, does have an extradition treaty with Britain, and these offenses would fall under it. The real debate will be over the third prong, probable cause. If the judge concludes that the requirements have been satisfied, the judge will certify the brothers as extraditable. But even that does not automatically place them on a plane to Britain. The case would then move to the second stage, which is a little bit unusual, where the final decision on surrender rests with the Secretary of State, currently Marco Rubio. The secretary has broader discretion than the judge and may consider diplomatic, diplomatic, humanitarian, and foreign policy concerns in deciding whether to surrender an extra dai t in this case, the brothers. And that's where the situation could become politically complicated. Andrew Tate has been an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump and has cultivated relationships with people in Trump's orbit. Donald Trump Jr. For example, has publicly criticized the legal proceedings against the brothers in Roman Mania. President Trump himself has not publicly offered a clear opinion about the brothers, but the lawyer for the Tates has denied all the allegations and expressed confidence that they will not be extradited. He recently posted on X saying, quote, we are confident that once a competent judge sees the facts and once the Department of Justice confronts this egregious abuse of its own authority, Andrew and Tristan Tate will walk free. America does not do Britain's political dirty work, end quote. So what Secretary Rubio will do is anyone's guess. But the case has not reached the State Department quite yet. The Tate brothers remain in federal custody in South Florida. They made their first appearance before a federal magistrate judge last Monday and will be due back in court next week. So for now, we'll have to wait and see how the extradition proceedings unfold. Stay tuned. I want to end the show this week to talk about a man who I loved and admired and who passed away last week. His name was John o'. Malley. Now, if you've listened to this show for a while, you have heard me tell his stories, if you've read my book Doing justice, you've read about him, too. John was a legendary NYPD homicide detective in the Bronx. Bronx. And then a legendary investigator in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. He was 73 years old. And if you do know his name, it's likely because of a singular story of heroic exoneration, a story I've been telling for 10 years. John was born on October 20, 1952 in the Bronx, which tells you a lot about about him. He spent more than two decades as a detective with the nypd, most of it working homicides in the Bronx. And he was widely known as a detectives detective. When he retired from the NYPD, he came over to the SDNY as a criminal investigator in the 1990s. And that's where he stayed for the rest of his career. Countless prosecutors, myself included, became better lawyers, lawyers, better investigators, and frankly, better people because we got to work alongside John o'. Malley. John died after a long and tough illness. But how do you suppose a man like John o' Malley found out that he was sick? Well, I'll tell you one day, as was his practice, because this was the kind of guy he was. He was once again at the doctor's office, office donating blood. By his own rough count, he had donated 103 pints of blood to that point. 103. And on pint number 104, they rejected him. Now, who rejects a pint from an Irishman? But there was a problem when they tested John's blood. And that's how he learned that he had leuke. That's how a man who had spent his entire life giving, giving to the city giving to victims, giving to cooperators, giving pint after pint of his own blood. Found out he was sick. But he fought hard. And at first, he beat the cancer. John was nothing if not tough. In fact, about a year ago, he was declared cancer free. But the cancer came back. Back last December. And by this spring, just a few weeks ago, John was in hospice care at his home. I had more respect for John Ali than for almost anyone I ever worked with in law enforcement. I had complete faith in his judgment, in his instincts, in his sense of right and wrong. John did a lot of extraordinary things in his career. He put away some of the most violent people in New York York at a time when violence reigned. He built cases against gangs and shooters and made this city a lot safer. But probably the most important thing John o' Malley ever did was to free innocent people from prison. Not what you usually think of when you think cop. I wrote a chapter about a case in Doing Justice. Dateline did an episode about it called the Bronx Tale. It's the case of Eric Glisson and five others. It's worth a minute to remember. In 1995, a livery cab driver named Baith Diop was shot and killed on a street in the Bronx. The NYPD arrested six people for that murder. One of them was a young man named Eric Glisson. Another was a young woman named Kathy Watkins, a mother who did not even know her co defendants. All six were convicted, convicted on the shakiest evidence and sent away for 25 years to life. But all six were innocent. Years later, John was at SDNY, sitting across from two cooperators who casually mentioned that back in the mid-90s, they had shot and killed a cab driver in the Bronx. John filed it away in that legendary steel trap memory of his. Then, years after, after that, a letter arrived. It was a letter Eric Glisson had written from prison at Sing Sing, addressed generically to the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. In the letter, he pled his innocence. And that letter, by some small miracle, somehow wound up on John Omalleys desk. And John connected the dots that nobody else had connected connected in 17 years. So what did John do? He went to Sing Sing to see Eric listen. He looked him in the eye, he shook his hand, and he said, in effect, I know who did this, and I know it wasn't you. In 2012, Eric Glisson and Kathy Watkins walked out of prison. The rest of the Bronx, six were freed as well. 17 years, years gone. But they got their lives back because a Bronx detective named John o' Malley refused to let it go. As I wrote in my book about the case, quote it is inspiring that a person would take the time to read a letter that wasn't addressed to him, would open his mind to believing what was in the letter, would have the wherewithal to connect the assertions to things that he personally knew from years earlier. Earlier would visit the letter's author, would personally research the case, would read the trial transcripts, and would be aggressively headstrong about the release of these convicted people, even if it meant casting aspersions on fellow investigators, fellow cops, and a fellow prosecutor's office. I'm not sure how common it is for someone to become so personally invested, or how common it is for someone who has dedicated his life to collaring bad guys and supporting fellow law enforcement officers to be just as adamant about getting someone sprung from prison. End quote. That case had a big impact on me. It's the reason for a mantra I have repeated many times. Must run just as fast or faster to exonerate the innocent as to punish the guilty. So I don't know anyone who ever did more for justice than John o'. Malley. When I heard that John had gotten sick again, I found myself scrolling through my phone looking for old text messages from John, and this one struck me. It was after John listened to the podcast we did about the Glsen case, and he wrote, I'm blown away how Bronxy my accent is. I had no idea. Idea I have to work on that. That made me laugh out loud. That was John o'. Malley. Pretty Bronxy. A couple of weeks ago, just a few days before he passed away, I went to go see him at his immaculate home in Pearl river with my friend Mimi Roa. And though he was a little weaker and a little thinner, to us he seemed like the same old John. He told a lot of old war stories about good guys and bad guys, and we laughed and we tried not to cry because we knew that we were saying goodbye. Towards the end of our visit, John said to me and Mimi something about going to heaven just in passing. But then he paused, as if he were being presumptuous, and he just at least I hope that's where I'm going. Well, I will say this, Brother John. I'm not Catholic, I'm not Christian, and I may have a quibble or two with God. But if there is a heaven and people get to go there when they leave this place, then that's where you are. And that's where you're sleeping tonight. May you rest in peace. John o' Malley well, that's it for this episode of Stage Tuned. Thanks again to my guest Rose Horowitz. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics and justice. You can reach me on Twitter or BlueSkyeetBarara with the hashtag AskPreet. You can also call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338, that's 83399, Preet. Or you can send an email to letterscafe.com stay tuned is now on substack. Head to staytuned.substack.com to watch live streams, get updates about new podcast episodes and more. That's staytuned.substack.com Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe in the Vox Media Podcast Network. The Executive Producer is Tamara Sepper, the Deputy Editor is Celine Rohr, the Supervising Producer is Jake Kaplan, the lead Editorial Producer is Jennifer Indig, the Associate Producer is Claudia Hernandez, the Audio and Video Producer is Nat Weiner, the Senior Audio Producer is Matthew Billy and the Marketing Manager is Leanna Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. Special thanks to Tory Paquette and Adam Harris. I'm your host Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.

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