WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.720 --> 00:00:03.919 Of course, our supermarket has a cheesemonger. Our sells the 2 00:00:03.919 --> 00:00:06.799 milk of nineteen different mammals. What does yours of an 3 00:00:06.919 --> 00:00:09.599 entire aisle dedicated to venison feel my curtains? Guess where 4 00:00:09.640 --> 00:00:12.560 they're from. Our supermarket has a granola launch. Ours has 5 00:00:12.599 --> 00:00:15.400 a sorbe changer, Molly and soul to library. We're having 6 00:00:15.439 --> 00:00:18.280 our honeymoon and ours have another feel of my curtains. Oh, 7 00:00:19.199 --> 00:00:23.359 has your supermarket got notions? If so, switch to Aldi, 8 00:00:23.679 --> 00:00:25.760 where you'll get all the quality with none of the 9 00:00:25.839 --> 00:00:30.519 madness the prices. You'll love Aldi. It's not complicated. Oh hey, 10 00:00:30.559 --> 00:00:34.439 it's that book on your bedside table. Just just wondering 11 00:00:34.439 --> 00:00:36.719 how you been Ali Ward. And here we are. We're 12 00:00:36.799 --> 00:00:41.479 listening to words about reading words. Let's get into the 13 00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:44.240 science of reading. It exists, and our expert wrote a 14 00:00:44.280 --> 00:00:47.439 book titled The Science of Reading. So here we go. 15 00:00:47.640 --> 00:00:49.359 Now this guest is a professor of history at the 16 00:00:49.439 --> 00:00:52.679 University of Chicago and a Department Chair of Conceptual and 17 00:00:52.920 --> 00:00:56.520 Historical Studies of science, and their book is the Science 18 00:00:56.520 --> 00:01:00.560 of Reading, Information, Media, and Mind in Modern America. But 19 00:01:00.600 --> 00:01:02.799 we'll chat about times and places in other parts of 20 00:01:02.799 --> 00:01:06.120 the globe. As well, and also even how reading things 21 00:01:06.120 --> 00:01:08.319 like smut can improve your life. But before we get 22 00:01:08.319 --> 00:01:10.359 into it, quick, thank you to folks who submitted questions 23 00:01:10.359 --> 00:01:13.280 for this via Patreon. At patreon dot com Slashmologies where 24 00:01:13.319 --> 00:01:16.079 you can join for one dollar a month. And also 25 00:01:16.120 --> 00:01:18.359 if you need a shirt if you're not wearing one 26 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:20.560 right now, or you need a bathing suit or hat 27 00:01:20.760 --> 00:01:24.079 ologiesmirch dot com is linked write in the show notes. Also, 28 00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:26.480 thank you to everyone who leaves reviews of this show 29 00:01:26.599 --> 00:01:29.680 on their podcast apps, which helps so much and it 30 00:01:29.719 --> 00:01:32.719 costs you nothing and I read them all, such as 31 00:01:32.760 --> 00:01:37.000 this freshly penned one from Liz sixty forty six, who writes, 32 00:01:37.159 --> 00:01:39.319 I work at a factory for eight to twelve hours 33 00:01:39.319 --> 00:01:41.519 and you make it so much better. I love learning 34 00:01:41.519 --> 00:01:44.760 new and random things. Well, hey, thank you for taking 35 00:01:44.799 --> 00:01:48.719 your internet dad to work, Liz sixty four eighty six. Also, 36 00:01:48.760 --> 00:01:51.920 there was one review left by Muglitz, who wrote, beeped. 37 00:01:52.359 --> 00:01:54.760 No teacher is going to play bleeped episodes in a classroom. 38 00:01:54.920 --> 00:01:59.599 That's risky and imo inappropriate. Three stars. Well, good news, Mouglitz. 39 00:01:59.799 --> 00:02:03.560 A arsmologies episodes aren't even bleeped, they are carefully trimmed 40 00:02:03.599 --> 00:02:06.799 to avoid anything kid in appropse, and they have their 41 00:02:06.840 --> 00:02:09.759 own show with their own feed. We just launched it 42 00:02:09.879 --> 00:02:12.400 a couple of weeks ago. So if anyone wants episodes 43 00:02:12.439 --> 00:02:14.840 of oologies that are totally safe for classrooms and a 44 00:02:14.840 --> 00:02:17.879 little shorter, please go to the show notes or your 45 00:02:17.879 --> 00:02:20.840 podcast app and click on the show's smologies. It has 46 00:02:20.879 --> 00:02:23.759 a colorful new logo with a fish and a frog 47 00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:26.080 and a bird. Subscribe there to get those as well. 48 00:02:26.120 --> 00:02:29.520 So Muglitz check ausmologies. You'll love them. I give them 49 00:02:29.560 --> 00:02:34.319 five stars. Okay. Anagnosology I have found exactly one time 50 00:02:34.479 --> 00:02:36.919 in the literature, but it's legit enough and it comes 51 00:02:36.919 --> 00:02:39.639 from the Greek for reading, so there you go. And 52 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:43.479 anagnosology is not to be confused with a previous episode 53 00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:46.319 we did on agnetology, which is about ignorance, which is 54 00:02:46.360 --> 00:02:48.520 also excellent. It's linked in the show notes. But this 55 00:02:48.639 --> 00:02:52.439 here term anagnosology. It appears in the nineteen seventy six 56 00:02:52.520 --> 00:02:56.520 book The Rustle of Language by this French literary theorist 57 00:02:56.719 --> 00:03:00.960 Roland Bartes. Roland Barth know how to say his name, 58 00:03:01.159 --> 00:03:04.479 but I do know how to say anagnosology. Reading where 59 00:03:04.479 --> 00:03:07.240 did it come from? How long have humans been doing it? 60 00:03:07.400 --> 00:03:10.719 How do our eyes move across a page? Our e books? Books? 61 00:03:10.879 --> 00:03:13.319 Is listening to an audiobook reading? How do we focus 62 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:17.280 on books better? Is bead reading real? What about font choices? 63 00:03:17.439 --> 00:03:21.599 Why was printing illegal? And what is he reading these days? 64 00:03:21.639 --> 00:03:22.120 So poor? 65 00:03:22.120 --> 00:03:25.800 A cup of tea at the perfect temperature. Sit back 66 00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:28.639 in a wing back chair to crack open this convo 67 00:03:28.759 --> 00:03:34.120 with professor, author and an agnosologist, doctor Adrian. 68 00:03:33.919 --> 00:03:55.879 John's Adrian Jones, he his so. 69 00:03:55.879 --> 00:03:58.159 Right before we started, Adrian mentioned that he lives in 70 00:03:58.199 --> 00:04:01.520 this historic home once owned by a famed Chicago journalist 71 00:04:01.560 --> 00:04:03.639 and screenwriter. But I cut that part out because I 72 00:04:03.639 --> 00:04:05.919 didn't want you to know exactly where Adrian lived. I 73 00:04:05.919 --> 00:04:07.919 thought that'd be creepy. But the person who used to 74 00:04:07.960 --> 00:04:10.719 own his house described himself as a youth who quote 75 00:04:10.719 --> 00:04:20.759 haunted streets, brothels, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, 76 00:04:20.800 --> 00:04:24.279 banquet halls, and bookshops. This was a former owner, and 77 00:04:24.360 --> 00:04:27.720 Adrian and his wife bought the Victorian home years ago 78 00:04:27.800 --> 00:04:29.319 and they fixed it up. What a life do you 79 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:29.839 ever feel like? 80 00:04:29.879 --> 00:04:29.959 His? 81 00:04:30.040 --> 00:04:32.639 Ghost is there when you have writer's block urging you. 82 00:04:32.639 --> 00:04:35.600 To I wish for it. I mean, the man could 83 00:04:35.639 --> 00:04:37.920 write like a machine, so you know, I wish, I 84 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:40.360 wish I could do with it sometimes, you know. 85 00:04:40.519 --> 00:04:43.560 I interviewed a quantum ontologist who wrote a book about 86 00:04:43.759 --> 00:04:47.839 what is real when it comes to theoretical physics, and 87 00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:51.279 he was a cosmologist, and he said that in writing 88 00:04:51.319 --> 00:04:54.360 his book, he had to use a Pomodoro method, and 89 00:04:54.399 --> 00:04:56.199 he had to write, and then he had to go 90 00:04:56.319 --> 00:04:59.480 sit and read fiction, any kind of fiction, and then 91 00:04:59.560 --> 00:05:03.360 you'd go right, he said, Without reading fiction, without input, 92 00:05:03.399 --> 00:05:06.839 he had no output. And do you find that as 93 00:05:06.839 --> 00:05:08.519 a writer? Is there a word for that when it 94 00:05:08.560 --> 00:05:10.759 comes to your research? 95 00:05:10.839 --> 00:05:13.160 Well, I actually don't find it. I find that when 96 00:05:13.199 --> 00:05:16.240 I'm doing the writing part of what I do, I 97 00:05:16.319 --> 00:05:21.680 basically have to stop reading anything that isn't directly related 98 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:24.399 to what I'm doing because I get distracted and if 99 00:05:24.399 --> 00:05:27.480 I'm not sort of completely immersed in it, then it 100 00:05:27.519 --> 00:05:29.680 takes me a long time to get back immersed into it. 101 00:05:30.079 --> 00:05:31.600 And the other thing is that what I'm trying to do, 102 00:05:31.759 --> 00:05:35.759 I basically I'm a sucker for telling stories. So what 103 00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:39.839 I tend to do is I probably shouldn't confess this, 104 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:42.639 but I get really interested in these kind of weird 105 00:05:42.680 --> 00:05:45.160 dead people and try to follow them in a kind 106 00:05:45.199 --> 00:05:49.519 of detective story manner, and then all of the kind 107 00:05:49.519 --> 00:05:51.600 of rationale for why I'm doing it gets tacked on 108 00:05:51.639 --> 00:05:52.279 it at the end. 109 00:05:55.720 --> 00:05:58.920 Is there a word for those rabbit holes that because 110 00:05:58.959 --> 00:06:00.639 I did that to a recent you found out that 111 00:06:00.839 --> 00:06:04.160 Amelia Earhart's dad lived around my neighborhood, and before I 112 00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:07.600 knew it, I was absolutely sucked down a knemonic tube 113 00:06:08.079 --> 00:06:11.600 of research. Are there brain chemicals that do that to us? 114 00:06:12.240 --> 00:06:15.360 I'm sure that neuroscientists settle this down, but I don't know. 115 00:06:16.319 --> 00:06:18.199 But I find personally that if I don't keep myself 116 00:06:18.240 --> 00:06:20.160 immersed in it, then I lose the thread and it 117 00:06:20.199 --> 00:06:21.879 takes me a long time to get the thread back. 118 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:24.480 And you know, what can I say? I mean, I'm 119 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:27.279 lucky enough that I have tenure at the University of Chicago, 120 00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:28.839 so I can do what I actually want to do, 121 00:06:30.519 --> 00:06:32.560 and so I can do this kind of slightly self 122 00:06:32.600 --> 00:06:35.360 indulgence saying of following weird dead people around. 123 00:06:36.240 --> 00:06:38.519 It's one of my favorite things to do, because you really, 124 00:06:39.439 --> 00:06:42.319 because they're dead too, you can't infringe too much on 125 00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:45.240 their privacy. You can just find out where they left behind. 126 00:06:45.759 --> 00:06:47.600 Yeah, it's a tolerable thing to say, but it's much 127 00:06:47.600 --> 00:06:49.040 better to work on dead people than it is to 128 00:06:49.079 --> 00:06:49.959 work on living people. 129 00:06:50.399 --> 00:06:54.399 Doctor Adrian Johns, however, is an alive person chatting with 130 00:06:54.439 --> 00:06:57.439 me from his book lined study. Tell me a little 131 00:06:57.439 --> 00:07:00.040 bit about your history. Were you a library kid. I 132 00:07:00.120 --> 00:07:02.199 know you have a bookshelf right behind you full of 133 00:07:02.240 --> 00:07:04.160 like amazing ancient looking books. 134 00:07:04.519 --> 00:07:06.040 So I come from the UK, as you can tell 135 00:07:06.079 --> 00:07:09.600 from the accent. And when I went to university, which 136 00:07:09.639 --> 00:07:11.000 was at Cambridge. 137 00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:12.800 Oh fancy fancy. 138 00:07:12.439 --> 00:07:14.959 In the nineteen eighties. I was originally going to be 139 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:19.279 a scientist, physicist and then chemist. But in Cambridge, when 140 00:07:19.279 --> 00:07:21.680 you do sciences as an undergraduate, you don't do a 141 00:07:21.720 --> 00:07:24.399 degree in physics or chemistry or something. You do a 142 00:07:24.399 --> 00:07:27.759 degree in this field called natural sciences. One of the 143 00:07:27.800 --> 00:07:31.160 options within natural sciences is history of science, and I 144 00:07:31.199 --> 00:07:34.600 got obsessed with that and so that ended up being 145 00:07:34.600 --> 00:07:36.680 a PhD, which is about the relationship between the printing 146 00:07:36.680 --> 00:07:38.120 revolution and the scientific revolution. 147 00:07:38.399 --> 00:07:40.199 Can you tell me a little bit about the process 148 00:07:40.240 --> 00:07:43.720 of when you set out to write your book, what 149 00:07:43.759 --> 00:07:45.600 were some things that you really felt like you wanted 150 00:07:45.600 --> 00:07:48.519 to convey to the public. How did you narrow down 151 00:07:48.560 --> 00:07:50.279 when you're talking about the science of reading, where do 152 00:07:50.319 --> 00:07:52.160 you even start to narrow down what you include. 153 00:07:52.279 --> 00:07:55.160 That's a good question, because it's in principle, like an 154 00:07:55.240 --> 00:08:02.360 awfully large, rather amorphous subject, because so pretty widespread acceptance, 155 00:08:02.439 --> 00:08:07.480 at least in principle that reading experiences are themselves historical, 156 00:08:07.600 --> 00:08:10.040 that they change over time. So what it is to 157 00:08:10.040 --> 00:08:13.480 read a heavy hardback Bible in sixteen hundred is different 158 00:08:13.480 --> 00:08:15.319 from what it is to read an ebook Bible net. 159 00:08:15.800 --> 00:08:18.040 And the way that we get to understand what it 160 00:08:18.199 --> 00:08:20.839 was to be alive in the culture of say sixteen 161 00:08:20.920 --> 00:08:24.680 fifty or fifteen fifty is to go and read the 162 00:08:24.680 --> 00:08:27.680 newspapers of sixteen fifty. The effort was to try to 163 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:32.399 really come to grips in a serious way with the 164 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:37.879 historical disconnects and connects in the trajectories of reading practices 165 00:08:37.919 --> 00:08:40.240 over the years, and how they've been thought of and 166 00:08:40.279 --> 00:08:46.679 manipulated actually by people like teachers, research scientists, propagandists, people 167 00:08:46.720 --> 00:08:47.080 like that. 168 00:08:47.639 --> 00:08:49.360 I'm just going to do my job here. I'm going 169 00:08:49.440 --> 00:08:53.240 to ask this very smart person a possibly not smart question. 170 00:08:53.639 --> 00:08:56.240 Can you give me a very brief timeline of when 171 00:08:56.279 --> 00:09:00.200 did people start reading? How long have we been reading? 172 00:09:00.679 --> 00:09:03.720 And I imagine there was a giant jump at the 173 00:09:03.759 --> 00:09:06.279 advent of the printing press. But how long have human 174 00:09:06.320 --> 00:09:09.960 beings been looking at symbols and saying that's what that means? 175 00:09:10.320 --> 00:09:12.039 Well, that's not a dumb question at all. That's a 176 00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:15.879 very hard question. But it goes back, you know, thousands 177 00:09:15.879 --> 00:09:18.120 of years, and it partly depends on what you mean 178 00:09:18.159 --> 00:09:20.399 by reading, of course, on what you mean by symbols. 179 00:09:20.720 --> 00:09:23.559 There was a report like six months a year ago 180 00:09:23.879 --> 00:09:30.480 of somebody who claims to deciphered marks in cave paintings 181 00:09:30.679 --> 00:09:33.960 that they actually mark things like the reproductive cycles of 182 00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:37.519 animals that these cave dwellers were living around and hunting 183 00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:40.600 and so forth. There you have something that maybe counts 184 00:09:40.639 --> 00:09:42.960 as reading. And there's a bit of competition here actually 185 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:47.679 between Egyptologists and experts in the Fertile Crescent that where 186 00:09:47.679 --> 00:09:50.799 in fact you start to see writing as such, depending 187 00:09:50.799 --> 00:09:54.080 on which done you believe, it's either in Egypt or 188 00:09:54.159 --> 00:09:59.879 in you know, roughly Syria, Iraq area in you know, 189 00:10:00.200 --> 00:10:01.440 three four thousand BC. 190 00:10:02.080 --> 00:10:06.279 So human beings started being around three hundred thousand years ago, 191 00:10:06.600 --> 00:10:10.799 and historians debate but have landed on reading being roughly 192 00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:12.679 six thousand years old. 193 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:15.039 The earliest things, as I understand it, that we have 194 00:10:15.720 --> 00:10:21.279 are often actually very mundane documents. They're things like records 195 00:10:21.399 --> 00:10:26.679 of grain transactions, things like accountancy. Yeah. Basic, they're pretty 196 00:10:26.759 --> 00:10:29.240 much yeah yeah, So it's not it's not like the 197 00:10:29.279 --> 00:10:31.159 first Book is written as the Bible or something. It's 198 00:10:31.200 --> 00:10:33.919 it's pretty basic stuff, which means that there was something 199 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:38.879 like a cadre of people who were skilled at producing 200 00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:42.759 and interpreting these documents. And the early documents are often 201 00:10:42.879 --> 00:10:45.480 they're not sort of paper, they're you know, clay tablets 202 00:10:45.519 --> 00:10:47.519 and things like this. If you ever see them in museums, 203 00:10:48.159 --> 00:10:50.559 I mean, obviously I don't understand cano form or something, 204 00:10:50.600 --> 00:10:52.519 but you look at them and you wonder how somebody 205 00:10:52.600 --> 00:10:54.720 can possibly have made sense of them because they're tiny 206 00:10:55.399 --> 00:10:58.320 and they're very close packed the inscriptions on them. So. 207 00:10:58.399 --> 00:11:02.080 Cuniform is a style of written language developed by Samerians 208 00:11:02.120 --> 00:11:05.279 and was now south central Iraq at least thirty five 209 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:09.000 hundred years BC. It's thought to be the oldest form 210 00:11:09.080 --> 00:11:12.559 of writing and surviving tablets, and there's a lot of them. 211 00:11:12.559 --> 00:11:17.399 Actually they resemble clay slabs indented with a tiny wedge 212 00:11:17.399 --> 00:11:22.320 shaped impressions. They kind of look like patterned geometric tattoos. 213 00:11:22.320 --> 00:11:25.639 They're just dazzling and really beautiful, even though they're just 214 00:11:26.519 --> 00:11:30.320 a femera from someone's day job, like five thousand years ago. 215 00:11:30.519 --> 00:11:33.080 The other place where you see this incidantly is on seals, 216 00:11:33.600 --> 00:11:37.559 so things that mark out property, that kind of thing. 217 00:11:37.600 --> 00:11:41.120 You know, in ancient Iraq and ancient Suberia, you have 218 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:46.559 these cylinder seals that in a certain sense are writing 219 00:11:46.559 --> 00:11:49.600 their inscriptions and they carry meaning. Then it's not so 220 00:11:49.639 --> 00:11:53.720 clear that they're characters as such. They're more like emblems 221 00:11:54.759 --> 00:11:56.879 something like that. So it goes back an awful long way. 222 00:11:57.120 --> 00:11:58.759 And actually one of the reasons why that's an interesting 223 00:11:58.799 --> 00:12:02.039 question for my people in the twentieth century is that 224 00:12:02.159 --> 00:12:04.039 when they were trying to figure out what reading was 225 00:12:04.080 --> 00:12:05.679 and what it had been in the past, they asked 226 00:12:05.679 --> 00:12:08.559 that question and they go back and they start worrying 227 00:12:08.600 --> 00:12:10.600 about things like Egyptian hieroglyphics. 228 00:12:10.879 --> 00:12:15.000 So those cylinder seals imagine an empty toilet paper roll 229 00:12:15.279 --> 00:12:19.039 but made of carved stone, and then when rolled onto clay, 230 00:12:19.399 --> 00:12:22.840 it makes this cool picture so those date back potentially 231 00:12:22.960 --> 00:12:27.840 nine thousand years but Egyptian hieroglyphics and Caineiform are closer 232 00:12:27.879 --> 00:12:31.519 to five thousand years old, and hieroglyphics Adrian told me 233 00:12:31.679 --> 00:12:35.399 have language experts all upside down, wondering is it better 234 00:12:35.440 --> 00:12:38.480 for our brains to learn from pictures? And for more 235 00:12:38.519 --> 00:12:41.039 on that, you can enjoy the Egyptology episode or for 236 00:12:41.080 --> 00:12:44.679 a modern take, the two part Curiology episodes on emoji, 237 00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:46.720 which are linked in the show notes. But yeah, in 238 00:12:46.840 --> 00:12:51.360 terms of writing systems, you've got alphabetic symbols that represent 239 00:12:51.639 --> 00:12:55.759 phonics or sounds. There's also abjab writing systems like Arabic 240 00:12:55.799 --> 00:12:59.519 and Aramaic and Hebrew, and those emit nearly all vowels 241 00:12:59.559 --> 00:13:01.919 and they let the reader figured out like a little puzzle. 242 00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:07.879 There's also syllabigraphic language, and those symbols represent syllables. And 243 00:13:07.919 --> 00:13:11.559 then there's logographic, which is when a character or shape 244 00:13:11.679 --> 00:13:15.360 has already a specific meaning. And according to studies like 245 00:13:15.879 --> 00:13:19.320 universal brain systems for recognizing word shapes and handwriting gestures 246 00:13:19.399 --> 00:13:22.399 during reading and reading at the speed of speech, the 247 00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:26.399 rate of eye movements aligns with auditory language processing. All 248 00:13:26.480 --> 00:13:29.039 of those types of reading use three parts of the 249 00:13:29.039 --> 00:13:32.639 brain in tandem to assign meaning to shapes. 250 00:13:32.919 --> 00:13:36.159 It's a question that's been asked repeatedly over the decades, 251 00:13:36.960 --> 00:13:42.000 and particularly with reference to Japanese and Chinese, and also 252 00:13:42.080 --> 00:13:45.519 with reference to Hebrew. Also Braille is the other thing 253 00:13:45.519 --> 00:13:48.600 that people have picked up on. And the thing about 254 00:13:48.600 --> 00:13:53.279 those character sets is that they're not aphonumeric. They're more 255 00:13:53.360 --> 00:13:57.879 like no words per character than phonological characters. And you 256 00:13:57.919 --> 00:13:59.320 also read them in different directions. 257 00:14:00.159 --> 00:14:02.120 Yes, I was going to ask about that. Yeah, which 258 00:14:02.159 --> 00:14:02.840 way are you going? 259 00:14:02.960 --> 00:14:05.799 So one of the questions that these scientists had have 260 00:14:06.480 --> 00:14:12.240 is is it more efficient faster to read horizontally left 261 00:14:12.279 --> 00:14:15.320 to right, or to read right to left, or to 262 00:14:15.399 --> 00:14:18.480 read down to apple upt to down, Yeah, or even 263 00:14:18.519 --> 00:14:21.120 to do this thing that in some ancient descriptions you 264 00:14:21.159 --> 00:14:23.840 see where you read horizontally, but you read as if 265 00:14:23.879 --> 00:14:25.960 you're an ox and plowing a field. So you go 266 00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:27.879 left to right and then turn around and go right 267 00:14:27.919 --> 00:14:29.240 to left, left to right. 268 00:14:29.639 --> 00:14:33.559 What is there a name for that. I've never heard 269 00:14:33.559 --> 00:14:35.159 of that in my life. But yeah, you just keep 270 00:14:35.200 --> 00:14:38.120 going like you're in a queue at Disneyland or something, 271 00:14:38.240 --> 00:14:41.879 just winding right. And so, yes, the word booster feed 272 00:14:41.919 --> 00:14:45.919 on actually does come from the Greek meaning ox turn, 273 00:14:46.440 --> 00:14:49.840 and when you flip around and you're reading from right 274 00:14:49.879 --> 00:14:53.639 to left, the opposite that English usually goes. The letters 275 00:14:53.799 --> 00:14:57.320 are also in backward order. And I tried reading a 276 00:14:57.320 --> 00:14:59.360 sample of this just to see what it was like, 277 00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:03.320 and for so reason, it just instantly churned my stomach, 278 00:15:03.759 --> 00:15:07.519 like being on a vessel in the Drake passage in 279 00:15:07.559 --> 00:15:11.480 the middle of a typhoon. Just waves of ick. But 280 00:15:11.600 --> 00:15:14.279 I have no sea legs when it comes to the 281 00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:17.679 ox and field of the written word. So English is 282 00:15:17.720 --> 00:15:20.679 written left to right, top to bottom, and that is 283 00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:25.519 called sinstra dextyl from left to right, and languages run 284 00:15:25.559 --> 00:15:30.600 the opposite way, like Arabic alphabet languages are dextro sinistra 285 00:15:31.039 --> 00:15:33.480 going the other way. But there are of course other 286 00:15:33.559 --> 00:15:36.879 forms of reading that go top to bottom in vertical rows, 287 00:15:37.080 --> 00:15:41.679 like Mongolian and Vietnamese and Chinese, Japanese, Korean. And there 288 00:15:41.720 --> 00:15:45.639 are some theories of why languages tend to literally go 289 00:15:45.919 --> 00:15:48.200 one way or the other, like left to right, if 290 00:15:48.240 --> 00:15:52.320 you were chiseling in stone versus top to bottom, if 291 00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:55.360 maybe there was a factor of ink strokes drying on 292 00:15:55.559 --> 00:15:58.799 bamboo again, people still debate that. I think it's interesting, 293 00:15:58.840 --> 00:16:01.480 But yeah, ancient Greek they looped back and forth like 294 00:16:01.840 --> 00:16:05.360 beasts of burden, boostrophodonically. 295 00:16:04.879 --> 00:16:06.879 In which case you can you could imagine an argument 296 00:16:06.919 --> 00:16:09.159 for that being like an incredibly efficient way of reading, 297 00:16:09.200 --> 00:16:11.039 because you don't have to kind of track back each 298 00:16:11.080 --> 00:16:13.919 time you start a new line of fresh These are 299 00:16:13.960 --> 00:16:16.679 certainly questions that have been asked. As far as I know, 300 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:20.240 there isn't much in the way of completely definitive answers 301 00:16:20.240 --> 00:16:20.600 to them. 302 00:16:20.759 --> 00:16:25.600 When the printing press came into history, was there just 303 00:16:25.639 --> 00:16:30.159 an exponential jump in terms of who was reading and 304 00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:34.519 who was given access essentially to knowledge and language. 305 00:16:35.039 --> 00:16:37.039 Yeah, I think so. I think that's a fair thing 306 00:16:37.080 --> 00:16:41.159 to say. You know, the quantitative increase in the amount 307 00:16:41.320 --> 00:16:45.919 of paper with words on it that circulates is enormous, 308 00:16:46.039 --> 00:16:48.559 because you can print roughly a thousand impressions a day 309 00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:50.960 on an early pan press, and if you imagine what 310 00:16:51.039 --> 00:16:54.600 it took to just write out that in a scriptorium, 311 00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:56.120 the difference is a lot. 312 00:16:56.320 --> 00:17:01.320 So a thousand copies a day versus handwriting like ten 313 00:17:01.679 --> 00:17:05.640 by a flickering candle and no headphones, no podcasts to 314 00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:10.160 keep you company, just misery. So the popularization of movable 315 00:17:10.200 --> 00:17:13.319 type in the printing press gave quite a boost to reading, 316 00:17:13.559 --> 00:17:15.480 starting in around the mid fourteen hundreds. 317 00:17:15.640 --> 00:17:17.640 And the other thing is that because you can produce 318 00:17:17.759 --> 00:17:20.440 much more, things are much cheaper by and large, so 319 00:17:20.480 --> 00:17:24.000 it's also accessible in that sense. So yes, there's that. 320 00:17:24.279 --> 00:17:26.039 But the other thing is that this is something that 321 00:17:26.079 --> 00:17:31.319 we tend to forget because of accidents of survival. Most 322 00:17:31.400 --> 00:17:34.640 of the stuff that early printers produce is not books 323 00:17:34.720 --> 00:17:35.079 like this. 324 00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:38.920 Right Adrian casually holds up in nearby hardcover book. 325 00:17:39.160 --> 00:17:43.920 It's like individual, small, ephemeral sheets of things like indulgences, 326 00:17:44.400 --> 00:17:47.599 bills of lading for ships, tickets, proclamations, things like that, 327 00:17:47.960 --> 00:17:50.960 almost all of which vanish, so we don't have those, 328 00:17:51.480 --> 00:17:54.079 and books are in a certain sense parasitic on that. 329 00:17:54.640 --> 00:17:56.599 So printing really started to take off in the mid 330 00:17:56.720 --> 00:18:00.359 to late fourteen hundreds, and it was great for the 331 00:18:00.359 --> 00:18:04.599 Bible business. But interestingly enough, some governments did not love this, 332 00:18:05.119 --> 00:18:09.559 and by fifteen sixty three any printing in France without 333 00:18:09.960 --> 00:18:14.279 royal permission was not only illegal, but it was punishable 334 00:18:14.359 --> 00:18:19.079 by death. So your your zene could cost you your life. 335 00:18:19.319 --> 00:18:25.400 Monomie and Spain in the sixteen hundreds, colonizing spree forbid 336 00:18:25.480 --> 00:18:28.319 paper making in any of its new territories. They were 337 00:18:28.359 --> 00:18:32.920 like reading, don't worry about that, now, what is the 338 00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:35.359 most banned book of all time? I was so curious, 339 00:18:35.400 --> 00:18:37.880 and I'm glad that you are too. So it's nineteen 340 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:41.720 eighty four by George Orwell. And this is a futuristic 341 00:18:41.799 --> 00:18:46.119 dystopian novel was published in nineteen forty nine about, of course, 342 00:18:46.200 --> 00:18:52.240 a governmental big Brother exercising totalitarian control via the thought police. 343 00:18:52.359 --> 00:18:55.640 And it's so banned. This book has been banned up 344 00:18:55.640 --> 00:18:59.839 and down. Interesting, all right? And here in the US, 345 00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:02.400 the list of banned books you may have been hearing 346 00:19:02.480 --> 00:19:06.640 in schools and public libraries is growing, and according to 347 00:19:06.759 --> 00:19:10.200 the American Library Association, from twenty twenty two to twenty 348 00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:13.759 twenty three, there was a sixty five percent surge of 349 00:19:14.319 --> 00:19:19.200 challenged or banned books, and the number of titles censored 350 00:19:19.240 --> 00:19:23.440 at public libraries increased by ninety two percent over the 351 00:19:23.480 --> 00:19:26.799 previous year. Most of the top challenged or banned books 352 00:19:27.119 --> 00:19:31.400 wound up on lists because of LGBTQIA plus content, and 353 00:19:31.839 --> 00:19:35.279 as the late professor and sci fi writer Isaac Asimov 354 00:19:35.400 --> 00:19:39.480 famously said, any book worth banning is a book worth reading. 355 00:19:39.880 --> 00:19:42.640 So reading what they don't want you to read. It's 356 00:19:42.680 --> 00:19:45.119 not just a nice way to enjoy an afternoon. It's 357 00:19:45.160 --> 00:19:50.440 also an active protest, very quiet, very mellow, chill protest. 358 00:19:50.799 --> 00:19:53.000 But yes, back in the Renaissance era. 359 00:19:53.279 --> 00:19:55.799 So people are doing probably a lot more reading. But 360 00:19:56.599 --> 00:19:58.359 we also need to remember that a lot of manuscript 361 00:19:58.440 --> 00:20:01.519 stuff has been lost. I think that there's a kind 362 00:20:01.519 --> 00:20:07.839 of myths about how scarce manuscript writing was pre printing. 363 00:20:08.240 --> 00:20:10.599 It was actually probably more common than we think. But 364 00:20:10.680 --> 00:20:13.240 still I think there is a big jump, and you 365 00:20:13.359 --> 00:20:18.920 find by quite early, like fifteen twenties, fifteen thirties, that 366 00:20:19.960 --> 00:20:23.440 knowledge of what one might think of is fairly arcane. 367 00:20:23.799 --> 00:20:29.039 Issues about say, scriptural meaning, scriptural quotes, things like that 368 00:20:29.720 --> 00:20:31.599 goes quite far down the social scale. 369 00:20:31.880 --> 00:20:35.079 Arcane is one of those words that's always a mystery 370 00:20:35.079 --> 00:20:37.200 to me, and I feel like very few people use 371 00:20:37.240 --> 00:20:39.359 it or know it. So I looked it up and 372 00:20:39.400 --> 00:20:43.480 it means something that is a mystery and known to 373 00:20:43.599 --> 00:20:47.400 very few people. So there you go. Arcane is arcane. 374 00:20:47.519 --> 00:20:50.759 But his point is that by the sixteen forties, according 375 00:20:50.759 --> 00:20:53.839 to records of troops in the English Civil War. 376 00:20:53.880 --> 00:20:57.279 We find that quite ordinary buff coated soldiers, as Scrumber 377 00:20:57.279 --> 00:21:00.920 would have said, are able to bandy quote about scripture 378 00:21:01.039 --> 00:21:05.039 around with quite a lot of facility. So they're at 379 00:21:05.079 --> 00:21:10.319 home with a world of print by then. Certainly it's 380 00:21:10.319 --> 00:21:13.880 not that there's one jump and then you're into modernity, 381 00:21:15.160 --> 00:21:18.880 because you're still dealing with a world of hand craftsmanship. 382 00:21:19.400 --> 00:21:22.440 So you go from no handprinting to handprinting, which takes 383 00:21:22.480 --> 00:21:25.559 you up to roughly one thousand impressions a day, vaguely right. 384 00:21:25.880 --> 00:21:28.359 But then there's another big shift in the nineteenth century 385 00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:31.160 when you get industrial printing in and that takes you 386 00:21:31.240 --> 00:21:33.880 up by maybe another couple of orders of magnitude. So 387 00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:36.160 The Times, which is the first paper to be printed 388 00:21:36.359 --> 00:21:40.200 using steam in the early nineteenth century, they start printing 389 00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:43.359 something like ten thousand copies an hour. Oh my gosh, 390 00:21:43.640 --> 00:21:45.799 that's a big that's a really big difference. 391 00:21:45.839 --> 00:21:48.640 Yeah. So yes, The Times was founded in London on 392 00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:52.759 January first, seventeen eighty five, and then we just careened 393 00:21:53.240 --> 00:21:57.759 toward modems and monitors when the digital giant of the 394 00:21:57.799 --> 00:22:02.279 net was officially birthed on Newary first, nineteen eighty three, 395 00:22:02.759 --> 00:22:06.359 and we went from reading on wet clay, to thatched 396 00:22:06.799 --> 00:22:11.680 flax fibers, to stretched animal skin, to shoot up woodpulp, 397 00:22:12.559 --> 00:22:17.000 to now reading each other's daily journals via pixels from 398 00:22:17.000 --> 00:22:20.079 across the world on our toilets. And then do you 399 00:22:20.200 --> 00:22:24.119 have to track also how the internet then is another 400 00:22:24.200 --> 00:22:24.839 big jump? 401 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:26.920