Podcasts vs reading (writing): where do people find time for it?
Reading provides what podcasts cannot: quotability and depersonalization
I have a confession to make. In my entire life, I have listened to only two podcasts from start to finish, and only because both were about my books. I could say it’s because I work with written words and because I am an intellectual and yada yada. Well, yes, I am, but it’s not the reason.
The actual reason is the passive aggression of acoustic space: acoustic space is time-locked—you can’t control it.
Hold on, aren’t ideas in writing also locked in a structure designed by the author that you cannot control, and if you miss, you miss? Yes, you can skim the text while reading, but you can also speed up or even fast-forward a podcast while listening. So why is it that reading gives you a sense of more time control than listening?
Self-paced and auto-paced media consumption
This characteristic of reading was observed by my friend and fellow media ecologist Corey Anton. This is how I described his finding in Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror:
“The capacity of literacy to facilitate theorizing relies, in no small part, on the “atemporality” of reading, as Corey Anton calls it. According to him, “books allow one to read at one’s own pace.” The content of reading is “seamlessly worked into the flow of consciousness” because “the text does not ‘go on’ without us.”[1] Anton suggests distinguishing between self-paced technologies, such as books, and auto-paced technologies, such as podcasts, films, and videos. He writes:
Communication technologies that run at a pre-set rate, which flow as it were and thereby demand that consciousness attend to them as they are flowing, are more psychically constraining and confining than self-paced technologies.[2]
The temporal constraints imposed by electronic formats that simulate orality immerse the user in an external environment, controlled by the source of broadcasting. Anton even implies that this submission to auto-paced technologies can explain the frustration often accompanying the consumption of electronic and digital media:
Could it be that there is an undiagnosed stress – an oppression of the mind – that comes from having to spend time within simulated environments that unfold at a rate not endemic to one’s own consciousness? Could it be that people have unconsciously trained their minds to obediently align to of auto-paced technologies and now experience a vague but pervasive sense of moving to other people’s rhythms instead of their own?[3]
Reading, on the contrary, adjusts the pace of information intake to the reader’s personal thinking rather than to someone else’s broadcast, thus integrating the content of what is read “seamlessly” into the inner space of the reader’s thought. Among all media, only books possess this quality, as Anton highlights. Reading is morphologically compatible with thinking.”
Yesterday, X/Twitter turned into a Respublika Literaria, for a moment
Something unusual happened on X/Twitter recently. Of course, somewhere deep or on the margins, it always hosts highbrow self-expression. But it is usually suppressed by rage bait, which is favored by algorithms due to its higher potential for engagement. But look at what the algorithms highlighted on March 18, at least for me:
It happened amid the debate on introspection, inspired by Marc Andreessen and, unrelatedly, by Colin Wright’s dismissal of podcasting and praise of writing and reading. Here are some excerpts:
Podcasting lets people speak vaguely about a topic while creating the impression of thorough treatment. I’ve often pushed back on something a podcaster posted on X, only to be told by their fans that it was “thoroughly addressed” somewhere in a three-hour podcast.
But when I listen to the relevant section, it doesn’t deliver. It’s often just more vagueness and dancing around the issue, avoiding making direct, falsifiable claims they can be held to.
There’s a reason many podcasters don’t write articles about the topics they discuss. Writing forces them to make coherent arguments without fluff. It forces them to connect every link between premise and conclusion. It forces them to cite sources accurately instead of speaking vaguely off the cuff.
It’s also easier to be misled by smooth-talking podcasters…
Podcasts are great. But anyone presenting themselves as a public intellectual and making serious, high-stakes claims about the world needs to do more than talk. They need to write. (Read the full manifesto, it’s great.)
Colin Wright also adds in the comment:
I’m a much better writer than I am a speaker. I prefer writing, especially because much of what I write about—critiques of gender ideology and a defense of the sex binary—requires a lot of precision. I write legal definitions, expert testimony, and scientific descriptions.
If I don’t say something perfectly, I pay a big price. In fact, all of society pays a price if I mess up! I actually welcome this arrangement. I want to be held to a high standard. I want my ideas to be attacked, because my goal is truth and clarity.
Three more arguments for reading books over listening to podcasts
Besides depth and thorough elaboration, there are three more solid arguments in favor of reading: quotability, cascading novelty building, and depersonalization.
1. Quotability.
Audio is not quotable. You can repeat something you heard and comment on it, but you cannot incorporate it into your own reasoning in a way that allows it to become a detachable thought that can also be used in the next rounds of knowledge building.
An oral idea can be reiterated to build upon only once, at most twice. An oral “Aristotle said that Plato said that Socrates said” retains historical value but loses the capacity for intellectual integration in the next rounds of abstract thinking. It just does not add up...
Written quotes can be layered, reused, and built upon. A quote can be cited again, combined with others, and integrated into ongoing arguments. In speech, a quote is usually used once in context and does not easily carry forward into further chains of reasoning. In writing, quotes compound; oral quotation serves only for a single reference.
2. The compulsion of novelty
Another restriction on adding up: orality is designed for repeating. Oral sharing was a collective mechanism of memorization, so in repeating what you heard, value comes from verbatim reproduction: the closer you repeat to the original, the better for collective memory.
A slight change and situational adjustment of what was heard are acceptable; they may even be deemed wordplay and valued for that, like a joke adjusted for a situation. But the reference must be recognized; it is valued for referencing back to the known, not for challenging it. Generally, oral repetition favors preservation and therefore precision. It serves to conserve, not to develop.
In the meantime, as the Soviet philosopher Michael Petrov noted, writing compels one to argue with what was written before. Orality is agonistic “in person,” so to speak, but literacy is intrinsically agonistic in ideas. In his 1966 Pirates of the Aegean and Individuality (a year before the term media ecology was even introduced by Postman), Petrov writes:
Writing, as a universal individual skill – as literacy – is inherently a blind creative force that mobilizes the entire population of the literates, whether they want it or not, for theoretical creation. Literacy sets up minds in mutual non-conformity and mismatching, forbids them to repeat each other, and requires each literate mind to produce a new text, a new opinion on any subject that has already been touched upon by the opinions of others. The transition of writing into literacy signifies an automatic transition to a new psychological disposition, a disposition toward seeking novelty, for each literate mind now has to identify the pre-existed attitudes towards reality, reject them as a-priory false or incomplete, and elaborate its own views completing “truth” – meaning constantly being in a creative mode of analysis of the present and a synthesis of the new.
In this way emerges private ownership over thought and its products: theoretical relationships with the world. This private ownership over thought monopolizes the right of truth-seeking and becomes an aggressive-creative mental force incapable of being satisfied by any existing theoretical system, constantly suspecting that truth – ultimate certainty – lies somewhere beyond the established system of relationships, beyond ritual. A never-ending ancient discord, the Hobbesian “war of all against all,” bursts out, in which the only victor is social memory which absorbs all newly arriving texts, meaning new theories of the world, unless it is trimmed or fenced by a Great Wall of censorship or policing measures such as the canonization of texts into a sacred scripture.
So, orality forces people to affirm or challenge others’ standing to maintain tribal hierarchy (better hierarchy means better survival), while in literacy, quotation drives intellectual challenge to dismiss or build upon. The precision of repetition in literacy is provided by default, by words recorded verbatim, so the cognitive energy is freed for something else, for reorganizing and revising. In literacy, the status game shifts into the space of ideas.
Podcasts cannot do this. Paradoxically, podcasts strengthen conformity within a tribe, while writing provokes nonconformity, even within a tribe. Aristotle had to be the first philosopher to write in prose to say, “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.” He dared to disagree with his elder and mentor, something unheard of in orality. This is what writing did to him.
The medium is the message. As Postman wrote, you cannot do philosophy in smoke signals, nor can you do it on television. And podcasts, we can add. However smart ideas are presented in podcasts, the focus will be on the interplay of status and personalities. And here comes the third argument.
3. Personalization in podcasting and depersonalization in writing
When commenting on what you hear or see, you are more likely to respond to performance than to content, as oral delivery naturally (hormonally) makes people react to whether they like or dislike those they listen to. It is extremely hard to overcome this social, “hormonal,” tribal pull and comprehend the real content behind the delivery. Orality is inherently relational, as opposed to writing, which is rational because it separates the Knower from the Known (Havelock) and largely disregards the personality of Foucault or Chomsky or whoever…
To demonstrate how personality influences the perception of content in writing versus speech, consider two quotes:
“We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”
“It’s time to rebuild our infrastructure and create millions of jobs, rebuilding roads, bridges, schools, and transforming our transportation and energy sectors.”
They are identical in meaning, aren’t they? And they will likely be received as closely aligned by a reader. But what if a reader were to learn, especially beforehand, that the first one is said by Trump and the second by Biden? Now, if these two ideas were heard from Trump and Biden, would they be perceived as similar (as they truly are)? With extreme effort, maybe, but largely no.
Only writing can clear the idea from personality.
(* Of course, for an attentive reader, “second to none” exposes Trump even in writing. It is excessive bragging, a feature of orality, the force that is strong with this one.)
Why podcasts grow while reading shrinks
There is a popular idea that podcasts replace book reading. It’s not entirely accurate: podcasts take time in the daily media diet that would be unlikely to be spent on books anyway. Podcasts are listened to while driving, doing chores, cooking, and so on, when hands are busy and cannot grab a device with a screen, but compulsive digital consumption dictates consuming something anyway, and this something becomes radio, music, or podcasts.
I do not drive a lot, but when driving somewhere, I listen to the radio—to open myself up to the world; and when driving back home, I listen to an old playlist that I almost never revise—to immerse myself back into introspection. Perhaps, if I make an effort and set up podcast listening in the car, I would listen to some; I would likely choose Douglas Rushkoff. I have never listened to his podcast Team Human, but I have heard him in person many times and like his wit and his artistic delivery very much. So I think sometimes, and then: hold on! Okay, I hear an interesting thought from Doug, and then what? How do I put it down in writing to be used afterward? I am driving.
I read to write; to write, I read. And so does everyone who supported Colin Wright in his podcast dismissal and praise of reading. It’s a very peculiar demographic, a contemporary Respublika Literaria. And that’s only partly bragging: in terms of orality vs literacy, Respublika Literaria was characterized by semi-literacy: the number of writers was roughly equal to the number of readers, meaning they wrote for each other. This was a condition that accompanied the invention of the printing press and was boosted by it into the scientific and religious revolutions. Now this fading gleam, this last convulsion of Respublika Literaria, is closing the Gutenberg Parenthesis, as we all write largely for each other, and it’s not us who make podcasts successful.
Podcasts, by the way, can be more or less literate. To convert a podcast or video from an auto-pacing medium to a self-pacing medium, with more control over time for the user, timestamps help. Essentially, timestamps are a cession of orality to literacy; they apply a table of contents to an audio or video format. Very helpful! (To at least skim what’s inside.)
But setting up timestamps and video chapters takes time, and that is not what this medium favors. Its strength is in the speed of production. Let’s say an expert is equally good at speaking and writing, but it takes him or her a day to write down and refine content that takes only an hour to tell in a podcast. In an environment where the speed of interaction defines everything else, the choice in terms of production is obvious. Go talk and be everywhere.
The ease of production opened the niche to billions of novices, creating a huge input for selection. The size of the input has provided the quality of the output; the best podcasters outperform leading TV shows on cable networks in terms of both audience reach and the relevance of agenda setting.
I wonder, though, if those millions of listeners really listen to their favorite podcasts from start to finish. If so, these must be enormous single spans of media consumption, like one or two hours of uninterrupted media consumption per user, comparable perhaps only to gaming. Where do people find time for it?
See also books by Andrey Mir:
The Viral Inquisitor and other essays on postjournalism and media ecology (2024)
Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect (2024)
[1] Anton, Corey. (2023). “Reading good books, further defended,” p. 122.