The Art of Manliness - The Idea Machine — How Books Changed the World (and Still Matter)

00:00:00.000 So earlier this year, Kate and I started a substack.

00:00:02.160 It's called Dying Breed.

00:00:03.440 It's a place where we can write about things

00:00:04.720 that wouldn't be a good fit for art of manliness,

00:00:07.160 but we wanted to write about and share anyway.

00:00:09.440 Each week, we publish two articles there.

00:00:11.680 First, there's Kate's wonderful Short Sunday Firesides.

00:00:15.000 It's a great way to start your week off

00:00:16.420 with some reflection.

00:00:17.620 And then we have a longer form article

00:00:18.820 that explores topics like luck, success, media theory,

00:00:22.820 the intersection between technology and life,

00:00:24.620 how to use technology in a meaningful way.

00:00:26.700 When you subscribe, you get access

00:00:27.780 to over 300 articles in the archive,

00:00:29.160 including all of Kate's Sunday Firesides,

00:00:31.340 plus articles like 20 Lessons from 20 Years of Marriage,

00:00:33.960 co-written by Kate and I,

00:00:35.380 what Kierkegaard can tell us why professional sports

00:00:37.440 and life can seem so boring.

00:00:39.340 We have articles on luck,

00:00:40.720 what philosophers think about luck,

00:00:42.560 a tour of our home office, and a lot, lot more.

00:00:45.560 Plus, when you subscribe, you can comment

00:00:46.920 and connect directly with Kate and I

00:00:48.400 and other Dying Breed readers.

00:00:50.140 It's just $5 a month or $50 a year,

00:00:52.820 and your subscription is a great way

00:00:54.220 to support the work we do at Art of Manliness.

00:00:56.360 We'd love to see you there on Dying Breed.

00:00:57.920 Head to dyingbreed.net and become a member today.

00:01:01.260 That's dyingbreed.net.

00:01:03.040 Thanks so much for your continued support.

00:01:04.580 We really appreciate you.

00:01:13.440 Brett McKay here,

00:01:14.480 and welcome to another edition

00:01:15.540 of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:01:17.980 Books are everywhere.

00:01:19.480 They're so common, they're easy to take for granted.

00:01:21.740 But my guest argues that they're worth fully appreciating

00:01:24.320 because the book isn't just a container for content,

00:01:27.180 it's a revolutionary technology

00:01:28.500 for shaping culture and thought.

00:01:30.480 Joel Miller is a former publishing executive,

00:01:32.560 an editor, a book reviewer,

00:01:34.180 and the author of The Idea Machine,

00:01:36.120 how books built our world and shape our future.

00:01:38.700 Today on the show,

00:01:39.580 Joel argues that to appreciate the power of the book,

00:01:41.620 you have to look at its design,

00:01:43.260 how it's constructed,

00:01:44.420 how we interact with it,

00:01:45.560 and how its evolution transformed the way we think,

00:01:48.120 learn, and communicate.

00:01:48.960 He walks us through a fascinating history

00:01:51.120 of the book as a physical object,

00:01:52.980 from Augustine reading under a fig tree,

00:01:55.040 to medieval monks introducing word spacing and punctuation,

00:01:57.800 to the printing press's world-altering explosion

00:01:59.660 of information.

00:02:01.040 We also explore how novels change

00:02:02.480 our emotional and social intelligence,

00:02:04.380 how silent reading birthed individual interpretation,

00:02:06.940 and why, even in an age of video and AI,

00:02:09.640 books still matter.

00:02:11.200 After the show's over,

00:02:12.020 check out our show notes at aom.is slash books.

00:02:18.960 All right, Joel Miller, welcome to the show.

00:02:30.040 Yes, thank you so much for having me.

00:02:31.660 So you got a new book out called The Idea Machine,

00:02:34.420 and this is a book about books,

00:02:36.820 and you argue that books are idea machines,

00:02:40.240 and that to truly appreciate them,

00:02:43.060 and think about how amazing they are,

00:02:45.040 you have to understand books as hardware.

00:02:47.340 What do you mean by that?

00:02:48.960 Well, I think we tend to think about books

00:02:52.520 like the content in them.

00:02:54.700 We think about the information in them.

00:02:56.300 So we tend to think about books as software,

00:02:58.600 but in reality, books are both software and hardware,

00:03:02.700 and the reality is that the physical format of the book,

00:03:06.100 the way that you interact with the book,

00:03:08.220 has a very important impact on what we get out of it,

00:03:13.120 what it enables us to do, and how it's used.

00:03:15.800 And you can kind of trace that all the way back

00:03:18.480 to the very earliest days of books,

00:03:20.540 all the way until the present.

00:03:23.220 And we're going to do a history of the development of the book

00:03:25.700 as the format, the hardware that we have now today,

00:03:28.720 because it's a really interesting history.

00:03:31.320 But what are some of those benefits?

00:03:33.200 Like, what's the benefit of having this thing

00:03:35.320 that you hold in this rectangle that has pages?

00:03:37.580 What's the benefit of consuming content in that way?

00:03:41.940 Well, I start the book with the story

00:03:44.200 of Augustine in the garden.

00:03:46.580 There's this classic story out of the Confessions

00:03:48.800 where Augustine is distraught,

00:03:51.780 and he walks off to a garden.

00:03:54.960 He's got a copy of St. Paul's letters with him,

00:03:57.920 and his friend Olypius is also with him.

00:04:01.040 And he doesn't want Olypius to see that he's crying.

00:04:03.820 He's just kind of, like, completely wrecked.

00:04:06.100 And he wanders off to another corner of this garden.

00:04:09.180 He sits down under a fig tree,

00:04:10.460 and he just begins to weep.

00:04:12.300 And while he is in that state,

00:04:14.720 he hears over the wall of an adjoining villa

00:04:18.180 the phrase tole lege, Latin for take and read.

00:04:21.880 And he remembers his copy of his book.

00:04:23.940 So he runs back to the bench where he dropped it off

00:04:26.940 and picks it up, and he opens the page at random,

00:04:30.080 opens the book at random,

00:04:31.020 and he lands on a page, lands on a passage

00:04:33.440 that completely upends his life.

00:04:36.440 It salves his troubled spirit.

00:04:38.560 It solves the kind of quandary that he's in.

00:04:42.100 And there's a very interesting detail

00:04:43.620 in that passage of the Confessions

00:04:45.900 where he says, after that,

00:04:47.340 I put my finger or some other marker

00:04:49.520 in the place to, like, hold what he found.

00:04:53.080 And that's like a completely throw-off line

00:04:55.700 that you wouldn't necessarily think about

00:04:57.540 until you recognize that the book is also hardware

00:05:00.520 as well as software.

00:05:01.500 Because what that enabled him to do

00:05:03.280 was then go back to that line.

00:05:06.380 It enabled him to share it with Olypius, his friend.

00:05:10.100 And you can imagine just the benefit

00:05:12.340 of being able to do that,

00:05:13.620 not just with one book,

00:05:14.780 which, of course, he did at that moment,

00:05:16.120 but with an entire library.

00:05:18.860 To be able to mark the finding within a book

00:05:22.220 enables you to do it across the book,

00:05:24.840 multiple citations within a book.

00:05:27.980 It enables, in other words,

00:05:29.080 a kind of critical engagement with that text

00:05:31.020 that would otherwise be unavailable to you.

00:05:33.580 It also enables you then

00:05:34.940 to take all of these different marks that you have

00:05:37.200 and compare them with other books,

00:05:39.340 which enables an even deeper level

00:05:41.280 of critical engagement

00:05:42.400 and now a new level of synthesis

00:05:44.200 where you're able to take ideas from one place

00:05:47.160 and ideas from another place

00:05:48.340 and put them together.

00:05:49.880 And if you couldn't go back and find them,

00:05:51.340 you'd never be able to do that.

00:05:52.680 So that's like a really simple example

00:05:54.160 of how the format itself,

00:05:57.000 the function of the book,

00:05:58.620 enables you to do more with it

00:06:00.520 than merely interact with content.

00:06:02.940 Yeah, and you contrast that to, like, say, scrolls.

00:06:05.800 Before we had the CODIS,

00:06:07.700 we'll talk about this,

00:06:08.620 like the book format that we have today,

00:06:10.320 there was some organization in scrolls,

00:06:12.560 but it was a lot harder.

00:06:13.640 They were just cumbersome

00:06:14.620 and you couldn't do that sort of marking

00:06:15.980 the way that Augustine did.

00:06:17.600 Well, correct.

00:06:18.300 Like, Augustine was able to open a book

00:06:20.640 with essentially random access.

00:06:22.940 So with a codex,

00:06:25.200 that's the style of book that we have today,

00:06:27.140 which is basically, you know,

00:06:28.660 a bunch of pages bound within two covers.

00:06:31.280 And with that format,

00:06:32.740 you're able to open a book at random.

00:06:35.040 You can't do that with a scroll.

00:06:36.920 If you're a Gen Xer like me,

00:06:38.840 the nearest comparison would be

00:06:40.420 when you went to Blockbuster

00:06:41.800 and some fool didn't rewind the VHS,

00:06:44.200 you know,

00:06:45.100 and you were stuck having to rewind the thing

00:06:47.320 to go back to the beginning.

00:06:48.260 You just started wherever the thing was left.

00:06:51.020 And that's how a scroll worked.

00:06:53.220 There wasn't the ability to sort of navigate the text

00:06:56.220 anywhere near as easily as with a codex.

00:06:59.640 Well, you mentioned video.

00:07:00.900 That's one reason why I'm not a big fan

00:07:02.540 of even online video,

00:07:04.020 because you can't jump to different parts.

00:07:05.940 I mean, YouTube has done stuff

00:07:07.020 where they kind of add these chapter things,

00:07:08.820 but it's still hard to get to this one specific thing

00:07:11.800 in this one part of this video.

00:07:13.260 You know, same thing with podcasts.

00:07:14.440 I mean, I like podcasts more

00:07:16.020 because at least I can do other things

00:07:18.160 while I'm listening,

00:07:18.900 but I feel like video just holds you hostage.

00:07:21.220 But if you're looking for something specifically,

00:07:23.400 you can't beat a book.

00:07:24.700 Yeah, 100%.

00:07:25.500 You know, like podcast apps

00:07:27.000 and YouTube and others,

00:07:28.240 they take these linear formats like that

00:07:30.360 and they are introducing essentially index features

00:07:33.680 or content finding features.

00:07:36.180 Those are necessary.

00:07:37.480 The truth is you can't sit through a two hour long video

00:07:39.620 or even a 30 minute video

00:07:41.040 and get what you want

00:07:42.440 and then go back to it easily.

00:07:44.240 And so the need to do that

00:07:47.060 is like inherent in the format.

00:07:48.720 If you're going to consume content,

00:07:50.620 you have to be able to go back

00:07:51.780 and like identify parts of that

00:07:54.020 to reassess and to use again.

00:07:56.540 And so those kind of linear formats

00:07:58.900 like video, audio, they limit that.

00:08:02.060 And, you know, these developers are going to have to

00:08:04.280 because the typical consumer

00:08:05.860 is going to want to have ways

00:08:07.600 of overcoming that limitation.

00:08:09.280 The book already has it built into it.

00:08:11.040 Yeah, so they're trying to make podcasts

00:08:12.480 and video more book-like essentially.

00:08:14.580 Yeah.

00:08:15.180 Yeah, so you have books, the OG,

00:08:16.960 like best way to organize information.

00:08:19.380 The other thing I like about books too

00:08:21.220 is that, I mean, this is about writing in general.

00:08:24.820 We'll talk about writing here in a bit

00:08:26.220 and Socrates is beef with writing.

00:08:27.940 But something I've noticed with books

00:08:29.640 and reading and writing is that

00:08:31.660 I just, I feel like it helps you think better.

00:08:35.340 Like when you read something,

00:08:36.640 you're able to really see someone's completed

00:08:38.500 thoughts about something

00:08:40.020 in a linear argument

00:08:41.880 and synthesize it.

00:08:43.400 Then you can go back to it

00:08:44.640 and analyze it.

00:08:46.240 I mean, it's something about the format of the book,

00:08:47.900 even like a physical book.

00:08:49.600 Yes, totally.

00:08:50.600 Improves my thinking.

00:08:52.280 Yeah.

00:08:52.540 Well, one of the things that I emphasize

00:08:54.320 in the idea machine,

00:08:55.880 which is kind of my metaphor

00:08:57.020 for what a book is.

00:08:58.680 And then, of course,

00:08:59.680 the adjacent things around it,

00:09:00.880 like libraries,

00:09:01.580 are also part of the idea machine.

00:09:03.420 But one of the things

00:09:04.540 that an idea machine allows you to do

00:09:06.500 is think new thoughts.

00:09:09.020 And the way that you have the ability to do that

00:09:11.340 is one of the ways is

00:09:12.400 the book makes ideas like objects.

00:09:15.780 You can see them

00:09:16.620 and you can manipulate them.

00:09:19.380 You can play with them.

00:09:20.800 You can move them around.

00:09:22.460 You can analyze them such

00:09:24.640 that you can see the components of an argument.

00:09:26.740 You know, like when you are reading a book,

00:09:28.260 for instance,

00:09:28.680 and you can write in the margin,

00:09:30.020 0.1, 0.2, 0.3,

00:09:31.840 it enables you to go back to that page

00:09:33.720 and quickly reassess the argument

00:09:35.240 or quickly go back

00:09:36.280 and see how it holds together.

00:09:38.280 And if something is made objective like that,

00:09:41.080 it's much easier to dissect it,

00:09:43.720 to be critical with it.

00:09:44.860 Whereas if you're listening to an orator

00:09:46.720 or a speech or whatever,

00:09:48.440 you can't really do that.

00:09:49.680 It's very difficult to go back

00:09:50.980 and like analyze how was that?

00:09:53.280 How did he make that argument?

00:09:54.380 Was that like a specious argument?

00:09:55.840 Was that totally bogus?

00:09:57.040 The answer is probably yes.

00:09:58.780 And you have no way of actually going back

00:10:00.800 and doing anything other than

00:10:01.980 using your memory

00:10:03.080 to get the gist of what he said.

00:10:05.140 Whereas with a book,

00:10:06.180 you have quotable objective data

00:10:08.820 that you can look back at.

00:10:10.840 At the beginning of the book,

00:10:11.820 you developed this grid

00:10:13.040 that shows how the format of the book

00:10:15.400 can allow its content

00:10:16.740 or the software

00:10:17.520 to not only persist over time,

00:10:19.980 but how its meaning can change

00:10:22.040 over time as well.

00:10:23.040 So how are books

00:10:23.740 kind of like these weird time machines?

00:10:25.200 Yeah, well, I talk about

00:10:28.900 basically a three-dimensional grid.

00:10:31.460 Imagine you have an X axis,

00:10:33.940 which is the expression of an idea.

00:10:36.960 The Y axis going up

00:10:39.240 is the specificity of that idea,

00:10:42.060 the clarity of that idea.

00:10:43.440 And then the Z axis is time itself.

00:10:48.340 And time goes, you know,

00:10:50.680 as time does,

00:10:51.660 as far as it can run.

00:10:52.860 And because the format of the book

00:10:55.280 freezes content in a place,

00:10:57.940 in a time,

00:10:58.880 you are actually able,

00:11:00.160 we are able,

00:11:00.740 we do it all the time

00:11:01.420 without thinking

00:11:01.900 what a wonder this is.

00:11:03.180 We're able to access

00:11:04.360 the thoughts of people

00:11:05.740 like Augustine or like Paul

00:11:07.780 or like Socrates

00:11:08.760 or like whoever

00:11:09.700 as those ideas

00:11:10.960 were formulated originally.

00:11:12.780 And we're able to go interact

00:11:14.420 with those ideas.

00:11:15.420 And sometimes those ideas

00:11:17.060 are super clear to us.

00:11:18.560 Other times they're not.

00:11:19.940 We are able to impose

00:11:21.380 new interpretive criteria

00:11:23.900 on those messages.

00:11:25.440 We're able to use those messages

00:11:26.940 in ways the original people

00:11:28.160 had no intent,

00:11:29.140 you know,

00:11:29.320 like they never would have imagined

00:11:30.480 the way we've gone off

00:11:31.400 and used them.

00:11:32.400 But those are all capabilities

00:11:33.920 of the book

00:11:34.680 because of the particular form

00:11:36.060 that it takes.

00:11:37.340 Yeah, I've,

00:11:37.800 this past year,

00:11:38.480 I've been rereading books

00:11:39.940 that I read in high school,

00:11:41.160 like the great books.

00:11:42.800 So I reread Moby Dick.

00:11:44.180 I reread Ralph Ellison's

00:11:45.920 Invisible Man.

00:11:46.780 I reread Catch-22.

00:11:48.620 And it was interesting

00:11:49.780 to see how the meaning

00:11:51.860 of those books changed

00:11:53.120 compared to when I initially

00:11:54.980 read them when I was

00:11:55.920 in high school.

00:11:56.760 Because the thing is

00:11:57.580 that you have more experience,

00:11:58.640 you learn more,

00:12:00.200 I have more of an education.

00:12:01.300 Like in Ralph Ellison's

00:12:02.660 Invisible Man,

00:12:03.340 he was making all these references

00:12:04.440 to Marxism and Hegel,

00:12:07.480 you know,

00:12:07.840 some of the sociopolitical stuff

00:12:09.180 that's going on

00:12:09.720 in the 1950s,

00:12:11.260 1940s in America.

00:12:12.660 And when I was in like

00:12:13.660 12th grade when I read that,

00:12:15.140 that went completely over my head.

00:12:17.160 Sure.

00:12:17.460 But then when I read it again

00:12:18.620 as a 42-year-old man,

00:12:19.420 I was like,

00:12:19.640 oh, okay,

00:12:20.340 I can see what he's doing here.

00:12:21.240 This is an interesting

00:12:21.800 kind of critique

00:12:22.920 of what was going on there.

00:12:25.180 Yeah.

00:12:25.900 You know,

00:12:26.820 I think that's one of the great things

00:12:28.160 about revisiting books

00:12:29.280 is they,

00:12:30.560 you know,

00:12:30.920 the book says exactly

00:12:31.840 the same thing

00:12:32.640 as it did

00:12:33.080 when it was first published.

00:12:34.700 However,

00:12:35.200 we're not the same people

00:12:36.440 from one reading

00:12:37.640 to the next.

00:12:38.540 And so we bring

00:12:39.200 different things to it

00:12:40.080 every time we open it.

00:12:41.620 Yeah.

00:12:41.940 So before we could have books,

00:12:43.380 we needed to have writing.

00:12:45.140 But you highlight the fact,

00:12:46.820 and I'm sure a lot of people

00:12:47.460 know this,

00:12:48.360 the most famous philosopher

00:12:49.860 in the West

00:12:50.640 had a beef with writing.

00:12:53.140 Why didn't Socrates

00:12:54.540 like writing or reading?

00:12:57.100 Oh,

00:12:57.380 this is actually

00:12:58.060 such a funny story.

00:12:59.860 Yeah,

00:13:00.060 Socrates kind of hated,

00:13:01.800 well,

00:13:02.320 let me say it differently.

00:13:04.180 Socrates is

00:13:05.000 his most popular

00:13:06.520 voice,

00:13:07.840 the person that gave him

00:13:09.040 his voice,

00:13:09.620 Plato,

00:13:09.900 who wrote

00:13:11.020 the dialogues.

00:13:12.640 In his Phaedrus,

00:13:13.920 he has Socrates

00:13:15.060 make this

00:13:15.960 very robust case

00:13:18.000 against books.

00:13:20.080 And Socrates

00:13:21.380 thought that

00:13:22.000 it degraded

00:13:22.800 memory.

00:13:23.900 It's a kind of

00:13:24.540 a complicated case

00:13:25.360 because the way

00:13:25.820 he tells it

00:13:26.380 is through

00:13:27.440 a myth.

00:13:29.220 But essentially,

00:13:30.760 this Greek god,

00:13:32.760 Thuth,

00:13:33.280 comes to

00:13:34.080 this Egyptian

00:13:34.940 pharaoh,

00:13:36.240 king,

00:13:36.840 famous,

00:13:37.180 and he says,

00:13:38.120 hey,

00:13:38.320 I've invented

00:13:38.840 this amazing thing

00:13:39.800 called writing.

00:13:40.720 It's going to be great.

00:13:42.340 And famous

00:13:43.480 is like,

00:13:44.220 wait a minute,

00:13:45.800 unpack this for me

00:13:46.800 because all I see

00:13:47.900 are downsides.

00:13:49.060 And he starts

00:13:49.980 reciting all these

00:13:50.800 downsides.

00:13:51.480 And they include

00:13:52.080 things like,

00:13:53.220 you know,

00:13:54.200 writing will give

00:13:54.960 people the appearance

00:13:55.860 of knowing stuff

00:13:56.860 when in reality

00:13:57.680 they don't really

00:13:58.280 know anything.

00:13:58.780 They can just

00:13:59.360 parrot what they've

00:14:00.200 read.

00:14:00.720 And we know

00:14:01.440 people like that.

00:14:02.140 You know,

00:14:02.280 like if you spend

00:14:02.840 any time on Twitter

00:14:03.640 or X or whatever

00:14:04.500 you want to call it,

00:14:05.400 we run into those

00:14:06.120 people all day long,

00:14:06.840 right?

00:14:07.180 Folks that claim

00:14:08.000 to know things

00:14:08.520 that know nothing.

00:14:09.880 And that was

00:14:10.940 kind of like

00:14:11.500 the beginning part

00:14:12.460 of what he was saying.

00:14:13.760 But what's interesting

00:14:14.800 is everybody

00:14:15.840 has read him,

00:14:17.160 everybody has read

00:14:17.800 Socrates ever since

00:14:18.740 then as being

00:14:19.200 critical of writing.

00:14:21.320 And there are

00:14:22.540 other aspects to it.

00:14:23.880 For instance,

00:14:24.360 he says,

00:14:24.820 like a book can only

00:14:25.560 say what it says.

00:14:26.500 Therefore,

00:14:26.820 if you have an objection,

00:14:27.840 the book can never

00:14:28.480 deal with the objection.

00:14:30.140 A book can be read

00:14:31.120 by anybody.

00:14:32.240 You know,

00:14:32.420 so a book

00:14:33.200 that's meant

00:14:33.740 for one audience

00:14:34.540 can be read

00:14:35.000 by any other audience

00:14:36.060 and therefore

00:14:37.140 it can fall

00:14:37.840 into the wrong hands,

00:14:38.920 quote unquote.

00:14:40.160 And so he levels

00:14:41.520 all these objections

00:14:42.300 to it.

00:14:43.160 And I think

00:14:43.760 as a result of this

00:14:45.120 persuasive case

00:14:46.780 that he makes,

00:14:47.260 a lot of people

00:14:47.820 have walked away

00:14:48.520 with the assumption

00:14:49.160 that Socrates

00:14:49.800 was against writing

00:14:50.940 and against books.

00:14:52.520 And on its surface,

00:14:54.180 I think that's true.

00:14:55.400 But Plato's very dialogues,

00:14:57.120 not only the Phaedrus,

00:14:58.160 but also the Phaedo

00:14:59.140 and then Xenophon,

00:15:00.920 another disciple

00:15:01.620 of Socrates,

00:15:02.800 his memorabilia,

00:15:04.120 clearly show him

00:15:05.420 interacting with books

00:15:06.480 in a way that violate

00:15:07.380 his own objections.

00:15:09.160 So I call him a hypocrite,

00:15:10.980 you know,

00:15:11.280 out of a little bit of fun

00:15:12.380 and recommend that we

00:15:15.060 don't follow what he teaches,

00:15:16.400 but instead follow

00:15:17.060 what he did.

00:15:18.200 Yeah.

00:15:18.440 I mean,

00:15:18.640 I think I see

00:15:19.480 what he's getting at.

00:15:20.380 For Socrates,

00:15:21.780 the way that Plato

00:15:22.520 presents him,

00:15:23.760 to know something,

00:15:25.040 like,

00:15:25.580 it was all about

00:15:26.140 knowing the forms

00:15:27.060 and that's how you knew

00:15:28.000 what the right thing

00:15:28.820 to do was.

00:15:29.740 I imagine Socrates

00:15:30.540 would think,

00:15:31.300 well,

00:15:31.640 if you sort of

00:15:32.880 outsource that knowledge

00:15:34.840 to an external book,

00:15:35.940 you really can't say

00:15:36.860 you know the forms

00:15:37.980 and therefore you can't make

00:15:39.800 wise,

00:15:40.700 good decisions.

00:15:41.760 So you don't want to,

00:15:42.240 I mean,

00:15:42.360 I can get where he's

00:15:42.900 coming from,

00:15:43.280 but like,

00:15:43.980 it's not very useful

00:15:45.000 to try to memorize

00:15:45.600 everything that you

00:15:46.340 come across.

00:15:47.560 Not possible.

00:15:47.840 Well,

00:15:47.880 there was this concept

00:15:49.160 that everything

00:15:50.460 that could be

00:15:51.360 even taught

00:15:52.100 in education,

00:15:54.360 anything that an

00:15:55.100 educated person

00:15:55.840 would ever know,

00:15:56.480 they already know

00:15:57.380 that they have

00:15:58.160 access to that

00:15:59.100 through essentially

00:16:00.200 the divine

00:16:00.940 and it needs to be

00:16:02.140 awakened within them

00:16:03.140 and then they would

00:16:03.900 simply know the things

00:16:04.900 that they needed to know.

00:16:06.140 There wasn't a sense

00:16:07.160 that education

00:16:08.460 was informing people.

00:16:11.000 Education was more

00:16:11.960 about forming people

00:16:13.180 who could then

00:16:13.840 have access

00:16:14.480 to these truths,

00:16:15.480 to the verities.

00:16:16.380 Socrates and,

00:16:17.660 you know,

00:16:18.420 I don't think

00:16:19.460 there's any objective

00:16:20.160 way of demonstrating

00:16:21.200 that that's remotely

00:16:22.120 true,

00:16:22.860 but like books

00:16:23.740 violate that model

00:16:25.700 of the world

00:16:26.420 and Socrates

00:16:26.960 theoretically held

00:16:28.380 to that model

00:16:29.100 of the world.

00:16:30.300 Yeah.

00:16:30.680 Socrates,

00:16:31.300 he does read.

00:16:32.340 I mean,

00:16:32.500 there's a dialogue

00:16:33.080 where he says,

00:16:33.980 I got to go back

00:16:34.840 to this book

00:16:35.440 to look up a reference.

00:16:36.500 So he must have

00:16:37.200 been reading

00:16:37.660 and then even Plato,

00:16:39.460 you know,

00:16:40.240 in the Republic,

00:16:40.780 he makes this kind

00:16:41.700 of a critique

00:16:42.400 against poetry

00:16:43.240 and how it can,

00:16:44.600 you know,

00:16:45.140 corrupt the mind.

00:16:46.700 But Plato himself,

00:16:47.920 he's a fantastic writer.

00:16:49.600 I mean,

00:16:49.760 his writing is not only

00:16:50.940 philosophically dense

00:16:52.780 and thorough,

00:16:53.900 but it's beautiful.

00:16:55.240 I mean,

00:16:55.380 it's really nice to read.

00:16:56.700 So clearly,

00:16:57.440 he values the written word.

00:16:59.100 Well,

00:16:59.340 there's a great,

00:17:00.160 funny example.

00:17:01.380 This, again,

00:17:02.000 kind of goes

00:17:02.460 to the hypocrisy point.

00:17:04.180 There is a story

00:17:05.340 told about Plato

00:17:06.220 that after he died,

00:17:08.280 his writing tablet,

00:17:09.640 which would have been,

00:17:10.400 you know,

00:17:11.180 a wooden board

00:17:12.420 that had a recess

00:17:13.280 on the top

00:17:14.020 and wax would have

00:17:14.780 been poured into that

00:17:15.660 so you could incise

00:17:17.080 letters with a stylus.

00:17:19.480 You know,

00:17:19.620 this was before paper.

00:17:20.520 So this is kind of

00:17:21.620 what people used to use

00:17:22.760 in the old days

00:17:23.420 to jot down ideas

00:17:25.380 or rework ideas.

00:17:26.940 So this is kind of like

00:17:27.660 where your first draft,

00:17:29.320 your SFD,

00:17:30.220 would have been kept.

00:17:31.880 And when he died,

00:17:33.420 people went back

00:17:34.000 and looked at his tablet

00:17:34.960 and it showed

00:17:35.680 the first line

00:17:36.520 of the Republic

00:17:37.660 written out

00:17:38.560 in multiple ways.

00:17:39.780 like he was sitting

00:17:41.580 there editing

00:17:42.140 and judging the text

00:17:43.540 in order to get

00:17:44.240 the right phrase,

00:17:45.780 to get the right

00:17:46.540 formulation of it,

00:17:47.660 which shows

00:17:48.660 how dependent

00:17:49.300 he was on the technology

00:17:50.740 of writing

00:17:52.360 and the technique

00:17:53.800 of writing,

00:17:54.260 the technology

00:17:54.880 of the writing tablet

00:17:55.920 in order to convey

00:17:57.240 his own ideas.

00:17:58.980 All right.

00:17:59.260 So writing,

00:18:00.580 even though some

00:18:01.680 ancient philosophers

00:18:02.300 had a beef against it,

00:18:03.740 they knew that writing

00:18:05.240 had its benefits,

00:18:06.520 you know,

00:18:06.660 reading had its benefits.

00:18:07.700 You pick up this section

00:18:09.300 about writing

00:18:10.080 and you shift over

00:18:11.560 to the Romans.

00:18:13.040 The Romans relied on slaves

00:18:14.960 to dictate the writing

00:18:16.100 and copy books out

00:18:17.200 and even read books

00:18:18.680 out loud to them.

00:18:19.580 And you really highlight

00:18:20.620 the fact that the Romans

00:18:21.980 really started to use

00:18:23.600 reading and writing

00:18:24.300 as a form of thinking.

00:18:26.400 I think you get this

00:18:27.200 actually in that story

00:18:28.300 of Plato also,

00:18:29.260 where you see him

00:18:30.580 zhuzhing the text.

00:18:32.160 One of the arguments

00:18:33.000 I make in the book

00:18:33.760 is that writing

00:18:34.540 leads to editing

00:18:35.940 and editing

00:18:36.900 is evidence of thinking.

00:18:38.620 Like,

00:18:39.040 you cannot critique

00:18:40.680 your own work

00:18:41.540 without having engaged

00:18:42.820 cognitively,

00:18:44.080 critically with it.

00:18:45.540 And you see that

00:18:47.560 actually in that example

00:18:48.540 of Plato.

00:18:49.160 Like,

00:18:49.360 he is re-engaging

00:18:50.380 his own text.

00:18:51.820 But the same thing

00:18:53.020 is true for,

00:18:54.300 now in a refined sense,

00:18:55.780 in the Roman context,

00:18:56.760 because you have examples

00:18:57.960 of like Virgil

00:18:58.940 talking about,

00:19:00.560 or rather Suetonius,

00:19:01.800 his biographer,

00:19:02.460 talking about

00:19:03.060 how Virgil worked.

00:19:04.160 And the way Virgil

00:19:05.760 worked on like

00:19:06.640 his Georgics

00:19:07.540 or the Aeneid

00:19:08.740 was to basically

00:19:10.960 dictate all morning

00:19:12.300 and then zhuzh

00:19:13.760 and edit all afternoon

00:19:15.000 until he had,

00:19:16.320 you know,

00:19:16.640 what he wanted to keep

00:19:17.520 from the morning's work

00:19:18.560 all solidified.

00:19:19.740 So he's like,

00:19:20.600 he dictates

00:19:21.380 and his scribe

00:19:22.240 is busy like

00:19:22.920 keeping track

00:19:23.700 of all these notes,

00:19:24.520 writing.

00:19:25.080 And then in the afternoon

00:19:26.220 he goes back

00:19:26.800 and he like cleans it up

00:19:27.760 until he has a draft

00:19:28.580 that he likes.

00:19:29.680 And then on top of that,

00:19:30.620 whenever he has new ideas

00:19:31.680 pop in like,

00:19:32.860 oh,

00:19:32.960 I need to remember this

00:19:33.900 or I need to remember that

00:19:34.800 or whatever,

00:19:35.520 he basically works

00:19:36.560 with an outline.

00:19:37.460 He goes ahead

00:19:38.560 and he jots down

00:19:39.520 these ideas

00:19:40.320 in rough shape.

00:19:41.360 He calls them like

00:19:42.160 wooden pillars

00:19:43.760 that are placed

00:19:45.100 in a building

00:19:46.000 while we're awaiting

00:19:47.240 like the marble pillars

00:19:48.460 to come,

00:19:49.260 the final product.

00:19:50.580 This is like a prop

00:19:51.580 for his own thinking

00:19:52.520 in other words.

00:19:53.220 And so there's this

00:19:53.980 clear sense

00:19:55.680 in the way Virgil worked

00:19:57.060 that he is using writing

00:19:58.580 as a prop

00:19:59.400 to his own thinking,

00:20:00.380 as a support

00:20:00.940 to his own thinking

00:20:01.700 and he structures

00:20:02.500 even the work itself

00:20:04.580 to facilitate that.

00:20:06.680 And then in Quintilian's

00:20:08.320 instructions on oration,

00:20:10.160 he talks about

00:20:10.660 the same basic thing

00:20:11.660 and including

00:20:12.660 the idea that

00:20:14.000 whatever we first write out,

00:20:16.340 you know,

00:20:16.540 in our first draft,

00:20:17.140 we like it,

00:20:17.840 we love it,

00:20:18.480 you know,

00:20:18.660 it's our first go at it,

00:20:20.120 we feel great about it,

00:20:21.760 it's probably bad,

00:20:22.700 you got to go back

00:20:23.300 and edit it,

00:20:23.880 you got to go back

00:20:24.520 and clean up the flow,

00:20:26.040 you got to go back

00:20:26.740 and tidy up these phrases,

00:20:29.260 you got to go back

00:20:29.860 and kill your darlings

00:20:30.880 he said almost

00:20:31.520 the very same thing

00:20:32.740 that Arthur Quiller-Cooch

00:20:34.400 said 2,000 years later,

00:20:36.120 Quintilian said it

00:20:37.080 way back when,

00:20:38.500 because what he recognized

00:20:39.840 is,

00:20:40.380 is that

00:20:41.100 the writing process itself

00:20:43.120 and then especially

00:20:44.000 the editorial process

00:20:45.440 is part of formulating

00:20:46.960 the ideas.

00:20:48.220 And so the actual page,

00:20:49.840 or in their case,

00:20:50.720 the actual tablet

00:20:51.560 on which they're writing

00:20:52.720 is a reflection

00:20:53.900 of the thought process itself.

00:20:55.520 In fact,

00:20:55.880 it is part

00:20:56.800 of the thought process itself.

00:20:58.400 So when we write today,

00:20:59.960 like on a word processor

00:21:01.340 or a notebook

00:21:02.180 or whatever,

00:21:02.660 we're doing the same thing.

00:21:03.700 We're literally thinking

00:21:04.580 on the screen,

00:21:05.440 thinking on the page.

00:21:06.720 The device,

00:21:08.480 whether it's a notebook

00:21:09.180 or a tablet

00:21:10.080 or whatever,

00:21:11.060 it's an externalized

00:21:12.260 part of our own brain

00:21:13.780 at that point.

00:21:14.540 It is a part

00:21:15.160 of our own mind.

00:21:15.940 We're using it

00:21:16.780 to scaffold

00:21:17.320 our own creative processes.

00:21:19.300 Yeah,

00:21:19.400 I've noticed that

00:21:19.780 with my own writing.

00:21:20.900 If I can't write it clearly

00:21:22.820 and succinctly

00:21:24.420 and where it makes sense,

00:21:26.020 I realize I don't even know

00:21:27.560 what I'm trying to say.

00:21:28.560 Yeah,

00:21:28.800 exactly.

00:21:29.260 I mean,

00:21:29.400 I had this problem.

00:21:30.140 There was an article

00:21:30.600 I was working on

00:21:31.300 a couple weeks ago.

00:21:32.800 And I mean,

00:21:33.900 I thought it sounded good,

00:21:35.740 like technically it was good,

00:21:37.380 but I wasn't hitting the idea.

00:21:39.580 And my wife,

00:21:40.420 you know,

00:21:40.540 I was getting some feedback

00:21:41.420 from her and she's like,

00:21:42.160 what are you trying to say?

00:21:43.580 And I'd be like,

00:21:44.220 uh,

00:21:45.560 I don't know.

00:21:47.120 I don't know.

00:21:48.040 I don't know.

00:21:48.740 So I had to like just dump it.

00:21:49.760 I got to think about this some more

00:21:51.580 because I,

00:21:51.960 I couldn't articulate

00:21:53.420 what I was trying to say.

00:21:54.840 I didn't know what I wanted to say.

00:21:56.240 So you,

00:21:56.660 you can think you have a good idea

00:21:58.220 when it's all,

00:21:58.920 you know,

00:21:59.260 amorphous in your head,

00:22:00.440 but if you can't write it out,

00:22:02.320 you really don't know

00:22:03.040 what you think.

00:22:04.100 You know,

00:22:04.620 that goes back to the,

00:22:06.100 that idea grid

00:22:07.040 that we talked about earlier.

00:22:08.220 The X axis represents

00:22:09.960 that expression

00:22:11.220 and the Y axis represents

00:22:13.340 specificity or clarity of thought.

00:22:15.580 And what you have there

00:22:16.560 is the ability to express a lot.

00:22:18.280 So you're high on that X axis,

00:22:20.520 but you're low on the Y,

00:22:22.080 like the clarity isn't there.

00:22:23.780 And,

00:22:24.260 you know,

00:22:25.500 we experienced that all the time.

00:22:27.000 And it's like writing enables us

00:22:28.660 to move it up

00:22:29.460 into that other quadrant,

00:22:31.040 that far quadrant

00:22:32.180 where it's both fully expressed

00:22:34.320 and also very clear.

00:22:35.900 Yeah.

00:22:36.480 So when did the book appear

00:22:38.760 as we know today?

00:22:39.860 So,

00:22:40.380 you know,

00:22:40.760 pages that are sandwiched together,

00:22:42.660 bound together.

00:22:43.580 When did that come onto the scene?

00:22:45.780 It's kind of a first century

00:22:47.320 Roman invention.

00:22:48.920 You know,

00:22:49.100 you could find it going back,

00:22:51.180 you know,

00:22:51.620 like pre-Advent of Christ

00:22:53.960 kind of time,

00:22:54.800 but it would have been

00:22:55.440 very new at that point.

00:22:56.660 And it wasn't used

00:22:57.620 the way we think of it.

00:22:58.500 It was kind of like

00:22:59.320 a notebook,

00:23:00.800 basically.

00:23:01.880 Trades people use them

00:23:03.060 to just jot down notes.

00:23:04.260 These would have been

00:23:04.960 usually on parchment

00:23:06.080 or possibly papyrus.

00:23:08.280 And they basically

00:23:09.140 would have just taken

00:23:09.960 sheets of papyrus

00:23:11.700 or sheets of parchment

00:23:12.540 and folded them together

00:23:14.500 and stitched them

00:23:15.240 down the back.

00:23:16.360 And that was,

00:23:17.140 you know,

00:23:17.540 what a codex was

00:23:18.440 in those days.

00:23:19.880 The use of that

00:23:21.200 was primarily for

00:23:22.460 like work-a-day purposes,

00:23:24.280 keeping notes on business

00:23:25.580 or maybe rough drafting something

00:23:27.940 or jotting down

00:23:29.580 the draft of a contract

00:23:30.720 or something like that,

00:23:31.760 keeping tallies

00:23:32.560 if you're a merchant

00:23:33.280 and so on.

00:23:34.360 Those were the work-a-day purposes

00:23:35.800 to which the codex was put.

00:23:37.660 It was not a literary format.

00:23:39.480 The first rule reference to it

00:23:41.120 as a literary format

00:23:42.160 comes from the Roman poet Marshall

00:23:44.020 who talked about

00:23:45.860 this amazing innovation

00:23:47.400 that you could basically,

00:23:49.440 instead of having

00:23:49.880 a big bulky scroll,

00:23:51.500 because codexes could be,

00:23:53.060 codices could be

00:23:53.820 a slightly more compact,

00:23:56.400 you could end up with,

00:23:57.700 in his case,

00:23:58.340 he was bragging about

00:23:59.060 some of his own work,

00:23:59.880 but he talked about

00:24:00.420 other people's work also

00:24:01.400 that you could find

00:24:02.120 in a codex

00:24:02.880 and it would be smaller.

00:24:04.220 You could carry it around.

00:24:05.260 You know,

00:24:05.380 he talked about

00:24:06.220 someone being able

00:24:06.980 to carry him in one hand,

00:24:08.820 being able to thumb

00:24:09.700 through his work everywhere.

00:24:11.660 But that didn't really take off.

00:24:13.940 You know,

00:24:14.100 like I guess

00:24:14.620 he mentioned that

00:24:15.460 in some very public poems

00:24:16.660 that were designed

00:24:18.000 as kind of like

00:24:18.740 gift suggestions

00:24:19.960 for Saturnalia

00:24:20.880 and it was like,

00:24:22.680 if you think about it

00:24:23.420 as an early marketing effort,

00:24:24.780 like a lot of book marketing,

00:24:25.800 it didn't work.

00:24:27.020 Nobody took his advice,

00:24:29.440 but it didn't take off.

00:24:30.540 The group that actually

00:24:31.860 did embrace the codex,

00:24:33.500 weirdly enough,

00:24:34.260 were Christians.

00:24:35.700 And so,

00:24:36.460 first century Christians

00:24:37.520 began using the codex

00:24:38.880 the same way

00:24:39.440 everyone else did,

00:24:40.140 but they began using it

00:24:41.240 for other things too,

00:24:42.480 including recording

00:24:43.480 their scripture.

00:24:45.100 And that was a novelty.

00:24:46.420 No one else did that.

00:24:47.500 And that eventually took off.

00:24:49.000 And as Christians

00:24:49.620 became a larger and larger

00:24:50.880 percentage of the population

00:24:52.160 in the Roman Empire

00:24:53.100 and then beyond,

00:24:54.900 they kept that format

00:24:55.980 and kept using it.

00:24:56.960 They never went back

00:24:57.780 and sort of like

00:24:58.540 adopted the older version.

00:25:00.680 And as a result,

00:25:01.420 the codex took off

00:25:02.380 wherever Christians went.

00:25:03.440 Why do you think

00:25:04.560 Christians glommed on

00:25:05.800 to the codex?

00:25:07.620 There is so much

00:25:08.580 speculation on this

00:25:09.620 and there's no real

00:25:10.460 solid answers,

00:25:11.460 but here are a couple

00:25:12.240 sketchy ones

00:25:13.240 that I think

00:25:14.120 are generally agreed upon.

00:25:15.580 One was that

00:25:16.700 a codex allowed you

00:25:18.000 to gather together

00:25:19.180 different texts

00:25:20.460 and present them

00:25:22.060 in a way

00:25:22.520 that you could have

00:25:23.580 all of it

00:25:24.120 in one bundle.

00:25:25.720 So,

00:25:26.360 ancient codices

00:25:27.220 have,

00:25:28.480 for instance,

00:25:29.020 you may have a,

00:25:29.640 you know,

00:25:30.760 a letter of Paul

00:25:31.640 and a letter of James

00:25:32.740 and a poem

00:25:33.600 and a psalm

00:25:34.620 and somebody may like

00:25:35.860 have all that stitched

00:25:36.640 into one codex.

00:25:38.020 That would be odd

00:25:38.900 in a scroll.

00:25:39.880 Like,

00:25:40.260 the way that would work

00:25:41.360 in a scroll

00:25:41.800 would be a little strange

00:25:42.760 and so

00:25:43.180 that just didn't happen

00:25:44.520 that way.

00:25:45.200 But it did happen

00:25:45.920 with codices.

00:25:47.000 The other thing

00:25:47.520 that was interesting

00:25:48.120 is that

00:25:49.340 if you wanted to collect

00:25:50.560 all of a thing,

00:25:52.140 like all of Paul

00:25:53.240 in one document,

00:25:55.140 that would have been

00:25:55.640 a codex.

00:25:56.260 That would have been

00:25:56.720 kind of like

00:25:57.140 the preferred way

00:25:58.000 to do that.

00:25:58.920 If you took

00:25:59.360 all of Paul's letters

00:26:00.280 and put them

00:26:01.240 into one scroll,

00:26:02.440 it would be

00:26:02.660 a massive,

00:26:03.420 massive,

00:26:03.880 massive scroll.

00:26:04.580 But you could do it

00:26:05.320 all in a codex

00:26:06.280 by basically taking

00:26:07.720 many of these

00:26:08.840 individual codices,

00:26:10.540 these choirs,

00:26:11.460 they were called,

00:26:12.400 stacking them up

00:26:13.220 on top of each other

00:26:14.020 and binding them together.

00:26:15.280 So the end result

00:26:16.000 is like what we think

00:26:17.120 of as a book

00:26:17.640 with a book spine,

00:26:18.940 with a big thick spine.

00:26:20.280 You can't do that

00:26:20.980 in a scroll,

00:26:21.600 but you can do it

00:26:22.280 with a codex.

00:26:23.520 And so as Christians

00:26:24.240 in their bookishness

00:26:25.240 begin to collect

00:26:26.140 these letters

00:26:26.840 of their early

00:26:28.280 founding voices,

00:26:29.220 that's how they

00:26:30.500 found the best

00:26:31.100 and most efficient

00:26:31.740 way to do it.

00:26:32.640 That's one particular

00:26:33.740 kind of argument

00:26:34.520 for it.

00:26:35.540 Another argument

00:26:36.280 for it is that

00:26:36.980 the Christians

00:26:37.580 were using

00:26:39.100 kind of the

00:26:40.240 technology

00:26:41.340 of the codex

00:26:42.660 to capture

00:26:43.480 extracts

00:26:44.880 out of the

00:26:45.500 Jewish scriptures

00:26:46.220 that kind of

00:26:47.520 tended to confirm

00:26:48.400 their claims

00:26:49.560 about Christ.

00:26:50.760 These were called

00:26:51.480 testimonia,

00:26:52.700 and Paul actually

00:26:54.260 might be speaking

00:26:55.000 to one of these

00:26:55.760 when he tells

00:26:56.420 Timothy

00:26:56.820 in one of his

00:26:57.960 letters to

00:26:58.660 bring his cloak

00:26:59.740 and a few other

00:27:00.340 things when he

00:27:00.880 comes, I think,

00:27:01.420 what is it,

00:27:01.720 to Troas,

00:27:02.340 and he says,

00:27:03.260 bring the books,

00:27:04.200 especially the

00:27:05.260 notebooks,

00:27:05.860 or the Latin

00:27:06.920 there is membranes,

00:27:08.280 which is a

00:27:09.360 parchment notebook.

00:27:10.780 And so that

00:27:11.720 could have been

00:27:12.220 like his collection

00:27:13.080 of his own

00:27:13.560 letters.

00:27:14.180 Like when he

00:27:14.620 sent a letter

00:27:15.140 out, he probably

00:27:15.720 kept the original

00:27:16.460 and that was

00:27:17.200 copied down

00:27:18.180 in his notebook.

00:27:19.580 When he had

00:27:20.800 his own insights

00:27:22.460 and his own

00:27:23.020 arguments and his

00:27:23.780 own interaction

00:27:24.360 with the Jewish

00:27:24.980 scripture,

00:27:25.380 he was probably

00:27:26.280 writing that down

00:27:27.020 in a notebook

00:27:27.540 so he could refer

00:27:28.280 to it later.

00:27:28.840 That would have

00:27:29.220 been the kind

00:27:29.640 of thing he was

00:27:30.160 asking Timothy

00:27:30.780 to collect for him.

00:27:32.620 And so Christians

00:27:33.900 just tended to

00:27:34.860 glom onto it

00:27:35.780 and hold onto it.

00:27:37.060 And the end

00:27:37.980 result was a lot

00:27:39.200 of Christian

00:27:39.900 documents ended

00:27:40.780 up in codices

00:27:41.560 almost to the

00:27:42.760 complete exclusion

00:27:43.620 of scrolls.

00:27:44.300 It's just not

00:27:44.740 very many scrolls

00:27:45.660 of Christians

00:27:46.700 from that time.

00:27:47.680 It's almost all

00:27:48.480 codices.

00:27:49.660 And as Christians

00:27:50.280 spread, that

00:27:50.900 preference just took

00:27:51.740 off.

00:27:52.140 There are maybe

00:27:52.560 other reasons,

00:27:53.420 but those are the

00:27:53.900 primary ones.

00:27:54.520 Maybe there's

00:27:55.140 another speculation

00:27:55.700 of mine, but I

00:27:56.340 wonder if it was

00:27:57.180 also because the

00:27:58.820 early Christians,

00:27:59.940 they were outsiders

00:28:01.200 of Roman culture.

00:28:02.400 So maybe they were

00:28:03.080 like, scrolls,

00:28:04.500 oh, that's for rich

00:28:05.660 guys.

00:28:05.980 That's what the

00:28:06.340 elites use.

00:28:07.260 We're not that.

00:28:08.160 So we're going to

00:28:08.460 use these kind of

00:28:09.420 humble workaday

00:28:10.160 notebooks to take

00:28:10.980 care of our writing.

00:28:11.800 That's an interesting

00:28:12.500 speculation and I

00:28:13.460 think a good one

00:28:14.180 because it actually

00:28:14.860 parallels another one

00:28:16.020 like that, which is

00:28:17.080 why monks became

00:28:18.520 copyists.

00:28:19.260 So if slaves were

00:28:21.600 the infrastructure

00:28:22.980 of the book trade,

00:28:24.060 as Rex Winsbury

00:28:24.980 said, the reason

00:28:26.340 for that is that

00:28:27.040 copying manuscripts

00:28:27.880 was laborious,

00:28:29.420 difficult, you

00:28:30.440 know, mostly

00:28:31.220 unappreciated work.

00:28:33.300 And Christian monks

00:28:34.620 adopted it in part

00:28:36.040 because of its

00:28:36.620 ascetical value.

00:28:37.920 It was a way of

00:28:38.740 mortifying the flesh

00:28:39.820 to copy manuscripts.

00:28:41.680 And so they took

00:28:42.900 that up with

00:28:43.860 relative gusto.

00:28:44.800 And as the sort

00:28:46.400 of Roman model

00:28:48.160 began to

00:28:48.680 disintegrate, the

00:28:49.920 Christian model

00:28:50.620 began to emerge.

00:28:52.220 Monks became the

00:28:53.220 new infrastructure

00:28:53.860 of the trade, but

00:28:54.800 they did it because

00:28:55.600 they were rejecting

00:28:56.640 the assumptions

00:28:57.860 around that work

00:28:59.020 that the Romans

00:29:00.040 had.

00:29:00.860 Yes.

00:29:01.180 I mean, if you

00:29:01.740 were in first

00:29:02.460 grade and you

00:29:02.900 had to like copy

00:29:03.680 stuff out for

00:29:04.840 punishment in school,

00:29:06.600 the monks did

00:29:07.480 that on purpose.

00:29:08.240 They were like,

00:29:08.560 that's how they

00:29:08.980 wore their hair

00:29:09.580 shirt.

00:29:10.400 It was just like

00:29:11.060 fasting, you know,

00:29:12.160 like long bouts

00:29:13.160 of prayer, like

00:29:13.920 keeping vigil.

00:29:14.800 I mean, it's just

00:29:15.300 like that.

00:29:17.040 We're going to

00:29:17.460 take a quick break

00:29:17.960 for your word

00:29:18.380 from our sponsors.

00:29:20.400 I'm not trying

00:29:21.160 to reverse time,

00:29:22.000 but as I head

00:29:22.380 deeper into my

00:29:22.940 forties, I do

00:29:23.900 want to look like

00:29:24.480 I still take care

00:29:25.240 of myself.

00:29:25.860 And that's why

00:29:26.520 I've been using

00:29:26.980 Caldera Lab.

00:29:28.140 It's high

00:29:28.680 performance skincare

00:29:29.300 designed specifically

00:29:30.220 for men.

00:29:31.200 I've been talking

00:29:31.780 about Caldera Lab

00:29:32.460 for the past few

00:29:33.040 months now.

00:29:33.520 I've really enjoyed

00:29:34.160 it.

00:29:34.300 I've noticed a

00:29:34.800 difference.

00:29:35.260 Even Kate has

00:29:35.800 noticed a difference

00:29:36.320 in my skin.

00:29:37.240 I started using

00:29:37.920 their new product.

00:29:38.880 It's called

00:29:39.120 The Great.

00:29:39.680 I use it in the

00:29:40.240 mornings.

00:29:40.960 It's a lightweight

00:29:41.540 serum that goes

00:29:42.300 on smooth,

00:29:43.240 absorbs fast,

00:29:44.100 and leaves my

00:29:44.520 face feeling fresh

00:29:45.360 and hydrated

00:29:46.060 without any

00:29:47.020 greasy shine.

00:29:48.500 At night, I use

00:29:49.320 The Good Serum.

00:29:50.160 It's their

00:29:50.420 award-winning serum

00:29:51.280 packed with

00:29:51.680 botanicals and

00:29:52.420 antioxidants.

00:29:53.440 It helps your

00:29:53.840 skin recover from

00:29:54.500 the day and

00:29:55.060 protects against

00:29:55.580 environmental

00:29:56.000 stressors.

00:29:56.900 I also like the

00:29:57.460 Eye Serum, which

00:29:58.240 helps with dark

00:29:58.760 circles and

00:29:59.260 puffiness, and

00:30:00.160 their base layer.

00:30:01.140 It's a nutrient-rich

00:30:02.080 moisturizer that

00:30:02.860 hydrates without

00:30:03.520 clogging pores or

00:30:04.420 making you look

00:30:05.040 shiny.

00:30:06.320 Caldera Lab doesn't

00:30:07.180 overcomplicate

00:30:07.860 skincare.

00:30:08.480 There's no

00:30:08.860 10-step routines,

00:30:09.720 just clean, effective

00:30:11.200 products that are

00:30:12.160 cruelty-free, non

00:30:13.580 comedogenic, and

00:30:14.680 developed by

00:30:15.180 cosmetic chemists who

00:30:16.080 specialize in men's

00:30:17.300 skin.

00:30:18.060 If you want to look

00:30:18.840 like the best version

00:30:19.660 of yourself, head to

00:30:20.700 calderalab.com slash

00:30:22.360 manliness and use

00:30:23.720 promo code manliness

00:30:24.660 for 20% off your

00:30:25.960 first order.

00:30:26.800 That's calderalab.com

00:30:28.740 slash manliness.

00:30:30.020 So that's C-A-L-D-E-R-A-L-A-B

00:30:33.020 dot com slash manliness

00:30:34.300 promo code manliness

00:30:35.280 for 20% off your

00:30:36.260 first order.

00:30:37.540 If there's one

00:30:38.500 resolution that's worth

00:30:39.400 keeping this year,

00:30:40.080 it's finally launching

00:30:40.880 that business you've

00:30:41.540 had on the back

00:30:42.160 burner for a long

00:30:43.000 time.

00:30:43.680 Whether it's a side

00:30:44.360 hustle you've

00:30:44.840 daydreamed about or

00:30:45.680 an idea people keep

00:30:46.620 telling you to run

00:30:47.140 with, 2026 is the

00:30:48.920 year to stop talking

00:30:49.760 and start doing.

00:30:51.180 And Shopify is the

00:30:52.040 platform that helps

00:30:52.680 you do it.

00:30:53.500 We've been using

00:30:53.960 Shopify for the Art

00:30:54.720 of Manliness store for

00:30:55.440 over a decade now.

00:30:56.360 It is fantastic.

00:30:57.300 It helps you get a

00:30:57.780 site up and running in

00:30:58.660 just a few minutes.

00:30:59.520 You can create a

00:31:00.060 great looking site that

00:31:01.040 works well and is easy

00:31:02.120 to use for your

00:31:02.660 customer.

00:31:03.300 And it takes care of

00:31:04.060 the not so glamorous

00:31:04.780 stuff, inventory,

00:31:05.900 returns, things like

00:31:07.140 that.

00:31:07.780 Very, very useful on the

00:31:09.400 and they've got new

00:31:10.220 AI tools to help you

00:31:11.000 write product descriptions

00:31:11.760 and edit your photos

00:31:12.580 and you can do

00:31:13.280 marketing right from

00:31:14.080 Shopify, create email

00:31:15.160 campaigns, social media

00:31:16.280 campaigns right from

00:31:17.540 your dashboard on

00:31:18.220 Shopify.

00:31:19.080 As your business

00:31:19.680 grows, Shopify grows

00:31:20.800 with you.

00:31:21.300 Whether you're shipping

00:31:21.800 10 orders a week or

00:31:22.720 10,000, that's why it

00:31:24.220 powers millions of

00:31:25.060 businesses around the

00:31:25.740 world from solo shops

00:31:27.060 to household names

00:31:28.060 like Mattel.

00:31:29.020 Turn your idea into

00:31:29.900 income with Shopify.

00:31:31.380 Sign up for your $1

00:31:32.080 per month trial and

00:31:33.020 start selling today at

00:31:33.900 shopify.com slash

00:31:35.180 manliness.

00:31:36.120 That's shopify.com

00:31:37.320 slash manliness.

00:31:39.400 And now back to the

00:31:40.740 show.

00:31:41.440 But you talk about how

00:31:42.620 monks, these early

00:31:43.840 Christian monks, how

00:31:44.860 they changed reading and

00:31:46.520 writing with the help of

00:31:48.600 the book, the Codex.

00:31:49.860 How did Christian monks

00:31:51.500 change reading and writing

00:31:52.720 so that it looks more like

00:31:54.380 what we do today?

00:31:55.800 Well, this is like one of

00:31:56.840 those examples that,

00:31:58.220 again, unless you're

00:31:58.980 looking at how it worked

00:32:00.360 in the ancient world, you

00:32:01.440 would never even assume it

00:32:02.400 was anything other than

00:32:03.340 this.

00:32:04.020 But monks did something as

00:32:06.020 simple as put spaces

00:32:07.140 between words.

00:32:08.620 In the Greco-Roman

00:32:10.040 method of producing

00:32:11.980 literature, of producing

00:32:13.180 text, they did not put

00:32:14.680 spaces between words.

00:32:16.100 And they didn't really

00:32:16.940 need to because students

00:32:19.500 were trained to read by

00:32:21.260 basically memorizing

00:32:22.520 syllable combinations.

00:32:24.240 And then they would pick

00:32:25.400 out the words from this

00:32:27.900 river of letters or this

00:32:29.340 monolith of characters, as

00:32:30.860 a couple of scholars have

00:32:31.780 called it.

00:32:32.800 And so if you go back and

00:32:33.520 you look at very ancient

00:32:34.880 copies of Greek

00:32:35.620 manuscripts, they don't

00:32:36.860 have punctuation, they

00:32:38.220 don't have spaces between

00:32:39.160 words, they don't have

00:32:40.420 any of that stuff.

00:32:41.460 Those were all innovations

00:32:43.200 by Christian monks.

00:32:45.280 And they also introduced,

00:32:46.360 because they put in these

00:32:47.660 spaces and commas and

00:32:48.880 punctuation, they also

00:32:50.240 introduced silent reading.

00:32:52.040 Yeah.

00:32:52.680 Tell us about that.

00:32:53.920 So this is kind of

00:32:55.580 contested, but in the

00:32:57.120 ancient world, it was more

00:32:58.600 common for people to read

00:32:59.960 aloud.

00:33:00.680 And that has to do with

00:33:02.080 that scripta continua text.

00:33:04.300 In other words, all those

00:33:05.180 words just jammed

00:33:06.400 together, all the letters

00:33:07.620 in a constant stream with

00:33:09.800 no breaks.

00:33:10.860 The way you did that was

00:33:12.060 you picked out the

00:33:12.820 syllables, and the way you

00:33:13.720 did that was you at least

00:33:14.640 mouthed them, if not

00:33:16.040 verbalized them.

00:33:17.500 And so you can find, you

00:33:18.700 know, various indications

00:33:20.180 of this in books, like

00:33:21.360 Cyril of Alexandria, he has

00:33:23.960 to direct, or it might have

00:33:25.100 been Cyril of Jerusalem.

00:33:26.440 Cyril of Jerusalem directs the

00:33:28.380 women in his congregation in

00:33:29.860 this catechetical setting to

00:33:31.500 read while moving their lips,

00:33:33.080 but without letting other

00:33:33.960 people hear your voice.

00:33:35.700 So like, here's direct

00:33:36.740 evidence that people were

00:33:37.840 reading aloud.

00:33:38.580 That's just like kind of how

00:33:39.500 they did it.

00:33:40.220 And in the Confessions,

00:33:41.160 Augustine talks about seeing

00:33:42.540 Bishop Ambrose reading

00:33:44.380 quietly to himself without

00:33:45.960 doing that.

00:33:47.200 And that was an oddity,

00:33:48.340 which warranted being

00:33:49.340 mentioned.

00:33:50.020 You know, like, this guy

00:33:51.240 didn't even need, you

00:33:52.640 know, to mouth these

00:33:53.340 syllables in order to read.

00:33:55.280 It was kind of like a freak

00:33:56.160 of nature sort of thing.

00:33:57.560 So people could read

00:33:58.600 silently, but the tendency

00:34:00.040 was to read aloud because

00:34:01.380 the format itself encouraged

00:34:02.940 you to read aloud.

00:34:04.460 And I think that change

00:34:05.420 from reading aloud to

00:34:07.220 silent or inner reading,

00:34:09.160 that opened up some new

00:34:10.020 possibilities with how you

00:34:11.580 approach the text, I think.

00:34:13.620 Oh, absolutely.

00:34:14.400 First off, it enabled

00:34:15.300 private reading on a level

00:34:16.760 that really wasn't

00:34:17.460 accessible before.

00:34:18.880 And I think this is a

00:34:19.640 highly underrated aspect of

00:34:21.080 our understanding of how

00:34:22.740 books transformed us as

00:34:24.180 people.

00:34:24.720 But, you know, we mostly

00:34:26.060 read in private now.

00:34:27.420 Either we listen to

00:34:28.420 audio books, which are

00:34:29.400 like contained within

00:34:30.520 earbuds in our own, like,

00:34:32.440 you know, just our own

00:34:33.220 headspace or a book in

00:34:35.100 front of our eyes.

00:34:35.840 We rarely read aloud

00:34:37.140 anymore unless it's to

00:34:38.380 children or something like

00:34:39.480 that.

00:34:40.200 And so our consumption of

00:34:41.940 texts is almost entirely

00:34:43.540 individualistic.

00:34:45.140 In those days, it was not.

00:34:46.960 The way that you heard a

00:34:48.020 book when it was first

00:34:49.100 published or thereafter was

00:34:50.960 mostly to go listen to the

00:34:52.700 writer read it aloud at a

00:34:54.780 public presentation.

00:34:55.940 You didn't just go to the

00:34:57.580 store and buy a copy.

00:34:58.580 They didn't have copies.

00:34:59.860 You went to a store, perhaps,

00:35:01.440 to have a copy made for

00:35:03.200 you, but that was

00:35:03.840 expensive.

00:35:05.140 And so people went to what

00:35:06.900 were called recitachios to

00:35:08.420 have a book read that you

00:35:09.860 would listen to.

00:35:10.640 That was how it was

00:35:11.340 published, quote unquote,

00:35:12.860 in those days.

00:35:14.380 But as these technologies of

00:35:17.280 presenting text enabled the

00:35:19.820 text to be more easily

00:35:21.380 discernible, spaces between

00:35:23.020 words, standardized

00:35:23.860 punctuation, that kind of

00:35:25.140 thing, it enabled people to

00:35:26.740 read more easily on their

00:35:28.200 own.

00:35:29.020 And when that could happen,

00:35:29.920 then you could have private

00:35:30.760 reading.

00:35:31.280 And private reading really,

00:35:32.560 frankly, changes the

00:35:34.020 landscape of the world.

00:35:35.920 How does private reading

00:35:36.660 change the landscape of the

00:35:37.600 world?

00:35:38.540 Suddenly, you can have your

00:35:40.020 own opinions about what

00:35:41.400 you're reading.

00:35:42.100 You can challenge things.

00:35:43.320 You can read things on the

00:35:44.400 sly that you're not supposed

00:35:45.400 to be reading.

00:35:46.380 You can have interpretations

00:35:47.580 of those things that are not

00:35:49.060 acceptable.

00:35:49.980 You can wrestle with

00:35:51.780 received expectations on how

00:35:54.440 to interpret something by

00:35:55.620 holding your own

00:35:56.340 interpretation.

00:35:57.840 And what that does

00:35:59.080 fundamentally is it

00:36:00.220 ultimately tends to erode

00:36:02.080 community interpretations

00:36:04.140 and help elevate

00:36:06.140 individual interpretations.

00:36:07.740 Where that matters on

00:36:09.540 like big scale stuff would

00:36:11.260 be like religions.

00:36:12.440 But it also matters in

00:36:13.700 small scale stuff.

00:36:14.780 Imagine you are reading,

00:36:16.180 for instance, a book I

00:36:17.660 talk about, a dedicated

00:36:18.960 chapter, not exactly to

00:36:20.780 Uncle Tom's Cabin, but

00:36:21.820 it's a primary example

00:36:23.300 within this chapter.

00:36:24.720 Reading about the

00:36:26.020 horrors of slavery, you're

00:36:28.140 reading that on your own.

00:36:29.260 You could read that

00:36:29.840 anywhere.

00:36:30.380 You could read that in

00:36:31.060 the North where

00:36:31.840 abolitionist attitudes were

00:36:33.840 already rife, or you

00:36:34.800 could read it in the

00:36:35.560 South where they were

00:36:36.460 not.

00:36:37.540 And there were like

00:36:39.140 literal laws passed

00:36:40.920 against reading that

00:36:41.760 book as a result because

00:36:43.120 they were worried that

00:36:44.020 people would come to

00:36:44.740 alternative interpretations

00:36:46.040 of how society should be

00:36:47.800 structured.

00:36:48.940 Well, going back to this

00:36:49.620 idea of how individual

00:36:51.120 reading can cause big

00:36:53.260 changes, you mentioned

00:36:54.080 religion.

00:36:55.120 We see this in the

00:36:56.620 Renaissance after the

00:36:57.560 printing press, like the

00:36:58.600 printing press skyrocketed

00:37:00.040 the number of books

00:37:00.620 available during the

00:37:01.500 Renaissance.

00:37:02.540 Can you give us some

00:37:03.140 numbers so we can really

00:37:03.860 see how rapidly the book

00:37:05.280 proliferated during this

00:37:06.340 time?

00:37:07.340 Yeah, this is nuts.

00:37:08.300 But if you look at, like

00:37:10.300 say the nine centuries

00:37:11.340 between the 6th and the

00:37:13.260 15th centuries, European

00:37:14.900 scribes produced about 11

00:37:16.880 million books, 11 million

00:37:18.960 individual copies.

00:37:20.580 This is based on, you

00:37:21.580 know, the best analysis

00:37:23.120 of the available data, but

00:37:25.840 about 11 million copies.

00:37:27.840 In just the 148 years

00:37:30.680 between 1452 with the

00:37:32.460 invention of the printing

00:37:33.180 press and 1600, printers

00:37:35.900 produced about 212 million

00:37:39.000 individual units.

00:37:41.100 So that is like basically an

00:37:42.940 1800% increase.

00:37:44.760 It's like unbelievable.

00:37:46.840 And that was just getting

00:37:48.020 started.

00:37:48.760 That's just 148 years.

00:37:51.200 Those numbers go into the,

00:37:53.120 you know, beyond that.

00:37:55.520 They go into the billions

00:37:56.420 eventually.

00:37:57.880 Yeah.

00:37:58.060 And as you said, people

00:37:59.100 were reading these books

00:37:59.820 on their own.

00:38:00.720 So a lot of those books

00:38:01.460 that were printed were

00:38:02.280 Bibles.

00:38:03.200 And so people were reading

00:38:04.220 the Bible on their own and

00:38:05.760 like figuring out what

00:38:07.120 does this mean to me?

00:38:07.800 And then that gave rise to

00:38:08.920 the Reformation and all

00:38:09.880 these different Protestant

00:38:11.300 breakoffs.

00:38:12.140 And then, I mean, people

00:38:13.040 argue like the printing

00:38:13.840 press is actually what caused

00:38:15.120 all that warfare that

00:38:16.840 happened during the, it

00:38:18.160 was very violent and

00:38:19.160 they attributed it to the

00:38:20.300 printing press.

00:38:21.680 Yeah.

00:38:22.120 There's the arguments that

00:38:23.300 say that that was an

00:38:24.140 instrumental part of it.

00:38:25.040 There's the arguments that

00:38:26.000 say that's way overstated and

00:38:27.640 all of that stuff is all

00:38:29.340 interesting and it's very

00:38:30.400 difficult to suss out the,

00:38:31.740 you know, the ultimate

00:38:32.540 story.

00:38:33.020 Of course, history is mostly

00:38:34.580 an argument we just talk

00:38:35.600 about in retrospect.

00:38:36.300 We don't actually know a lot

00:38:37.480 of stuff for certain.

00:38:38.860 But I do think one thing is

00:38:39.940 very clear and that is the

00:38:41.040 Reformation could not have

00:38:42.240 happened without the

00:38:43.160 printing press.

00:38:43.720 There would have been no

00:38:44.920 way, for instance, for

00:38:45.840 Martin Luther to do what he

00:38:46.960 did, which was swamp all of

00:38:49.780 Europe in text, presenting

00:38:52.020 his particular view.

00:38:53.500 Other people held views that

00:38:54.740 were similar before and they

00:38:57.080 had nowhere near the impact.

00:38:58.280 They had zero impact.

00:38:59.720 Luther blew up Christendom and

00:39:01.980 that was in part because of

00:39:02.880 the printing press.

00:39:04.300 So the number of new books

00:39:05.560 started posing a problem for

00:39:07.160 people.

00:39:07.780 It was organizing and finding

00:39:09.020 information.

00:39:10.040 Yeah.

00:39:10.340 Like they were having a

00:39:11.040 problem with information

00:39:11.740 overload, you know,

00:39:13.720 way back, way back when

00:39:15.060 today we think of this is

00:39:16.960 really interesting.

00:39:17.280 I thought this was really

00:39:17.760 interesting today.

00:39:18.320 We think of organizing

00:39:19.260 books the way you do is you

00:39:21.360 put it on a shelf with the

00:39:22.780 spine facing out so you can

00:39:24.180 read the title and then you

00:39:25.580 can organize those based on

00:39:26.840 subject or however else you

00:39:27.940 want to organize them.

00:39:28.800 But that's not how people

00:39:30.460 kept their books during the

00:39:31.900 Renaissance.

00:39:33.140 How did people store their

00:39:34.360 books and how did that make

00:39:35.320 finding information a big

00:39:37.260 chore?

00:39:38.380 You know, I think it's

00:39:39.580 Duncan Watts is a writer who

00:39:41.080 has a book called

00:39:41.820 Everything is Obvious

00:39:42.660 Once You Know the Answer.

00:39:44.220 But this is like one of

00:39:45.320 those examples.

00:39:46.240 We all have bookcases.

00:39:47.460 We all have books sitting

00:39:48.240 on our bookcases.

00:39:49.360 They all mostly sit upright

00:39:51.000 with their spines facing

00:39:52.380 out and a lot of words on

00:39:53.520 the spine.

00:39:54.300 So it's like, of course,

00:39:56.200 that's how you organize

00:39:56.900 books, right?

00:39:57.500 It seems so obvious.

00:39:58.840 Well, that's not how they

00:39:59.520 did it in the old days.

00:40:00.340 They didn't have words on

00:40:01.220 the spine or if they did,

00:40:02.760 they might not have even

00:40:03.560 been things as simple as

00:40:04.640 the title.

00:40:05.660 They regularly kept them

00:40:08.620 inside of chests.

00:40:10.140 So like imagine just a big

00:40:12.160 box full of books.

00:40:13.740 They might be kept like in

00:40:15.160 a wall niche, like in a

00:40:16.580 window or something like

00:40:17.600 that if you just had a

00:40:18.420 dozen or so books.

00:40:19.700 And monastic libraries are

00:40:21.220 a great example of this.

00:40:22.260 They tended to be small.

00:40:23.940 Even big ones, you know,

00:40:25.620 may have only several

00:40:27.120 hundred books in them.

00:40:28.320 Like the biggest might have

00:40:29.540 had a thousand.

00:40:30.400 You know, there's a few

00:40:31.340 that had even more than

00:40:32.220 that.

00:40:32.460 But we're not talking about

00:40:33.320 massive tons of books.

00:40:35.040 However, they were all

00:40:35.860 kept in boxes or like

00:40:37.320 maybe with some sitting out

00:40:38.700 on top of the box or

00:40:39.720 some sitting on a table

00:40:40.740 often chained to that

00:40:42.400 table so that they

00:40:43.320 wouldn't wander off.

00:40:44.440 You know, book theft was

00:40:45.820 a real thing.

00:40:47.300 And so the end result was

00:40:48.800 finding books was a chore.

00:40:50.960 You had to kind of know

00:40:52.020 what was in that box.

00:40:53.100 And the only way to do

00:40:53.780 that was to lift up the

00:40:54.740 lid and go digging through

00:40:55.920 it to see what was in it.

00:40:57.660 When did they start

00:40:58.040 figuring out like, oh,

00:40:58.940 hey, we don't have to

00:41:00.060 stack books in boxes or

00:41:01.800 keep them in trunks.

00:41:02.540 We can put them on shelves

00:41:03.540 and organize them by subject.

00:41:04.780 When did that start

00:41:05.260 happening?

00:41:06.580 Well, that was really a

00:41:07.740 product of the Renaissance.

00:41:09.180 And that was the late

00:41:10.940 Renaissance or the early

00:41:11.900 modern era.

00:41:13.220 Hernando Colon, who was

00:41:14.920 Christopher Columbus's

00:41:15.880 bastard son, was one of

00:41:17.100 the very first to do this.

00:41:18.800 He realized that books

00:41:19.820 could be much more

00:41:20.520 efficiently stored on

00:41:21.760 open air shelves, you

00:41:23.780 know, standing upright.

00:41:25.340 Even the idea that we

00:41:26.380 think of the book as

00:41:27.120 upright that way tells you

00:41:28.600 how we're now so wired to

00:41:29.880 thinking.

00:41:30.580 But standing upright.

00:41:31.720 And then he basically

00:41:33.000 created collections of

00:41:35.140 indices, like a massive

00:41:36.320 catalog and indices that

00:41:37.880 enabled him to like find

00:41:39.280 anything in his library.

00:41:40.480 And he was trying at his

00:41:41.920 time to develop the

00:41:43.620 biggest library in the

00:41:44.740 world, basically.

00:41:45.840 That was his mission, was

00:41:46.720 to create a library of

00:41:47.920 like everything ever

00:41:48.960 ever printed, including

00:41:50.800 like things that nobody

00:41:51.760 thought were valuable at

00:41:52.660 the time, like all this

00:41:53.600 print ephemera, like

00:41:54.560 posters and things like

00:41:55.720 that.

00:41:55.980 He had all that, too.

00:41:57.480 And he created

00:41:58.640 essentially like an

00:42:01.280 internet browser out of

00:42:03.080 out of paper that had

00:42:05.280 this massive printed

00:42:06.280 catalog of everything in

00:42:07.640 his library, where you

00:42:08.740 could go into that

00:42:09.460 library catalog and you

00:42:10.880 could find the

00:42:11.640 entry that you were

00:42:13.340 looking for and then go

00:42:14.240 find it on the shelf.

00:42:15.440 But more than that, he

00:42:16.640 also then digested a lot

00:42:18.180 of what were in those

00:42:18.880 books in this catalog

00:42:20.820 setup that he had so

00:42:22.040 that you could, without

00:42:23.480 even having to go pull

00:42:24.420 the book off the shelf,

00:42:25.360 you could decide if you

00:42:26.540 needed it or not.

00:42:27.820 So he was basically

00:42:28.820 coming up with a way of

00:42:29.920 digesting text so that it

00:42:32.120 could be searchable in

00:42:33.640 essentially like a

00:42:34.500 proto Google, an analog

00:42:36.200 Google.

00:42:36.900 And it's a pretty

00:42:38.440 phenomenal feat that he

00:42:40.300 accomplished, but it's

00:42:41.540 like he was one of the

00:42:42.680 first to ever think to

00:42:43.540 even do that.

00:42:44.480 Yeah, and then I

00:42:44.880 imagine other people

00:42:45.480 thought, oh, that's a

00:42:46.660 good idea.

00:42:47.100 I'll try that, too.

00:42:48.140 Yes, exactly.

00:42:49.220 Every age, if you look

00:42:50.360 at the production of

00:42:51.440 books going all the way

00:42:52.440 back to the ancient

00:42:53.400 Near East, you know, when

00:42:54.360 books were really first

00:42:55.420 invented and they were

00:42:56.200 written on clay

00:42:56.820 tablets, every society

00:42:59.020 that has ever had to

00:42:59.880 deal with information

00:43:00.820 has had to come up

00:43:01.640 with ways of doing

00:43:02.420 what I'm just

00:43:02.940 describing.

00:43:04.040 But in the age of

00:43:04.880 print, when instead of

00:43:06.100 having thousands of

00:43:07.880 tablets, for instance,

00:43:08.980 now you have tens of

00:43:10.000 thousands of books that

00:43:11.640 are all far more

00:43:12.880 information dense than

00:43:14.280 those clay tablets

00:43:14.980 could be, the work has

00:43:16.040 suddenly become

00:43:16.920 infinitely harder.

00:43:18.660 And so what Cologne

00:43:19.980 invented and innovated on

00:43:21.820 at that time, and then

00:43:22.420 others around him and

00:43:23.380 after him, enabled a much

00:43:25.460 more like immediate

00:43:27.140 access to those ideas.

00:43:28.880 So we've been talking

00:43:30.580 about books as a

00:43:31.540 hardware, right?

00:43:32.340 It's format allows you

00:43:33.760 to do things with ideas

00:43:35.440 that you couldn't do if

00:43:36.500 it were in another

00:43:37.080 format, but they also

00:43:38.360 have a software.

00:43:39.520 That's the form of the

00:43:40.140 content of the book.

00:43:41.900 And starting in the

00:43:42.880 18th century and really

00:43:43.940 picking up speed in the

00:43:44.860 19th century, a new

00:43:46.660 type of book software

00:43:47.800 started showing up, and

00:43:49.440 that's the novel.

00:43:51.140 Yeah.

00:43:51.340 Why did it take so long

00:43:52.900 for the novel to develop

00:43:54.200 after the codex was

00:43:55.360 invented?

00:43:56.300 That's a great question.

00:43:57.100 I mean, there are

00:43:57.920 examples of proto-novels

00:43:59.940 that go back much

00:44:00.700 further.

00:44:01.620 You can find things that

00:44:02.980 kind of qualify as novels

00:44:04.240 in ancient Roman

00:44:05.280 literature.

00:44:06.540 There's Christian

00:44:07.460 hagiographies where

00:44:09.200 they're writing about

00:44:10.200 saints and the saints'

00:44:11.360 lives, and there's full

00:44:12.720 of imaginative, almost

00:44:13.920 fantasy-like elements

00:44:15.100 within those.

00:44:16.340 All of that, though,

00:44:17.240 kind of is pushing

00:44:18.780 towards the modern

00:44:20.100 novel, and Don Quixote

00:44:22.220 is kind of the first

00:44:23.600 example of that.

00:44:24.360 Miguel Cervantes'

00:44:25.340 massive novel, in

00:44:27.580 which he warns about

00:44:28.380 novels, which is

00:44:29.160 hilarious.

00:44:30.040 He gives us this

00:44:30.660 massive novel to warn

00:44:31.640 us about the dangers

00:44:32.400 of novels.

00:44:33.720 But that was kind of

00:44:35.220 like the first.

00:44:36.020 But it just, like, as

00:44:37.020 a cultural thing, I

00:44:38.600 think it required mass

00:44:40.420 literacy in order for

00:44:41.900 that to take off.

00:44:43.100 Because for a novel to

00:44:44.920 really work, it can't

00:44:45.960 just be that, you know,

00:44:47.080 the upper 20% of a

00:44:48.260 society has access to

00:44:49.540 it and they can read

00:44:50.140 it.

00:44:50.320 It has to be where

00:44:51.360 you've got a lot of

00:44:53.720 people with some

00:44:54.660 expendable time, like

00:44:56.400 either in between jobs

00:44:57.880 or waiting for this or

00:44:59.280 waiting for that or

00:45:00.140 whatever, where they're

00:45:01.200 able to take this

00:45:01.940 portable thing, pull it

00:45:03.140 out of their pocket and

00:45:04.040 start reading it.

00:45:05.440 And it wasn't really

00:45:07.020 until the 18th century,

00:45:09.640 the 19th century, where

00:45:11.080 that was possible.

00:45:12.540 And then on top of that,

00:45:13.600 you really needed what

00:45:14.860 happened in the 19th

00:45:16.020 century, which was

00:45:17.260 industrialized printing.

00:45:19.000 Because what that did

00:45:19.760 was, you know, as

00:45:20.960 incredible as the

00:45:22.000 original printing press and

00:45:23.260 that original revolution

00:45:24.220 was, it was really

00:45:25.580 industrial printing that

00:45:27.000 created the scale that we

00:45:28.700 think of today as like the

00:45:30.580 ubiquity of books.

00:45:31.560 Because before that, every

00:45:33.820 book that was printed was

00:45:34.600 like printed one sheet at a

00:45:35.760 time.

00:45:36.080 And that one sheet might

00:45:37.360 have eight pages on it.

00:45:38.600 But still, we're talking

00:45:40.020 about somebody manually

00:45:41.340 feeding a sheet, you know,

00:45:42.720 into a printing press and

00:45:44.000 the machine having to come

00:45:45.380 down and press it onto the

00:45:46.760 paper and so on.

00:45:48.060 By the 19th century, steam

00:45:49.400 power had been invented.

00:45:50.800 And they figured out how to

00:45:51.640 basically create rotary

00:45:53.480 presses that could take

00:45:55.140 paper off of a roll, so

00:45:57.040 not sheets any longer, take

00:45:58.420 it off a roll, feed it

00:46:00.000 through a rotary press, and

00:46:02.080 you know, within an hour,

00:46:04.100 they could produce what had

00:46:05.640 formally taken two weeks to

00:46:07.500 produce.

00:46:08.480 So that created like a

00:46:11.280 massive ubiquity of books,

00:46:12.640 which then drove the price

00:46:13.880 down.

00:46:14.220 And that suddenly meant

00:46:15.020 that middle class and even

00:46:16.560 poor people could afford to

00:46:18.180 pick up a novel and be

00:46:19.140 entertained by it.

00:46:19.920 That's interesting.

00:46:20.820 So some people, and I

00:46:21.860 think often men, think of

00:46:23.440 fiction reading or novel

00:46:24.680 reading as just entertaining

00:46:25.960 fluff.

00:46:26.840 But you make the case that

00:46:27.800 the novel is a powerful

00:46:28.880 tool for individual and

00:46:30.480 societal change.

00:46:31.820 So what does reading

00:46:32.440 fiction do to us?

00:46:34.220 Man, reading fiction does

00:46:35.320 so many things for us.

00:46:36.620 I, let me just, this is

00:46:37.880 kind of a personal

00:46:38.500 perspective, personal story

00:46:40.580 here, but I grew up

00:46:42.100 reading a little fiction.

00:46:43.180 I've always read a little

00:46:44.040 fiction over the course of

00:46:45.180 my whole life.

00:46:46.220 But as a young man, I

00:46:47.440 mostly read nonfiction.

00:46:48.540 I wanted serious stuff.

00:46:50.080 I wanted to read economics

00:46:51.400 and politics and history.

00:46:53.000 And I mean, that's like

00:46:53.760 literally all I, that and

00:46:54.920 theology, that was like all

00:46:55.840 I ever read, except for the

00:46:57.740 occasional novel that would

00:46:58.780 come across my path that

00:46:59.800 interested me for whatever

00:47:00.920 reason.

00:47:01.800 Now that I'm almost 50, I

00:47:03.480 almost only read novels.

00:47:05.000 And I think what I'm getting

00:47:06.980 ready to describe is

00:47:08.100 available to anybody at any

00:47:09.500 age, but we don't quite

00:47:10.320 appreciate it usually when

00:47:11.420 we're younger.

00:47:12.020 At least I think.

00:47:13.480 At least I didn't.

00:47:14.680 So maybe the world's blame on

00:47:16.220 this one rests on my

00:47:17.080 shoulders, but the way to

00:47:18.460 think about it is this.

00:47:19.760 When you pick up a book and

00:47:21.300 you're reading about a

00:47:22.520 character, whether that's in

00:47:23.620 a first person narrative or

00:47:25.360 it's a third person

00:47:26.140 narrative, we impose our

00:47:28.540 own cognitive faculties on

00:47:31.200 this character.

00:47:32.100 We like loan our own

00:47:33.640 emotions to the character.

00:47:35.160 We loan our goal setting

00:47:37.660 ability to the character.

00:47:38.940 We loan our problem

00:47:39.960 solving ability to the

00:47:41.160 character in ways that

00:47:42.960 other kinds of literature

00:47:44.280 don't allow us to do or

00:47:45.540 don't invite us to do.

00:47:47.140 So when a character is

00:47:48.140 stuck, like we are busy

00:47:49.880 problem solving with them,

00:47:51.300 we're like, well, you

00:47:51.840 should really do X.

00:47:52.860 You should really do Y.

00:47:54.400 And then that happens.

00:47:55.780 And then we feel either

00:47:56.880 grief or joy at how it

00:47:58.320 happened or whatever.

00:47:59.640 And that emotive

00:48:00.520 connection is also

00:48:02.200 powerful all by itself

00:48:03.260 because it is formative.

00:48:04.820 It is the kind of thing

00:48:05.580 that actually shapes our

00:48:06.700 own emotional intelligence.

00:48:08.500 And so as we're reading

00:48:10.000 fiction, we are learning

00:48:11.360 about the world in a way

00:48:12.760 and other people, more

00:48:14.280 importantly, in a way

00:48:15.520 that we couldn't outside

00:48:17.100 of books that were so

00:48:18.960 directly related to that

00:48:20.400 kind of experience.

00:48:21.840 Yeah.

00:48:22.420 A lot back ago, I wrote

00:48:23.520 an article for the site,

00:48:25.080 like why men should read

00:48:25.940 more fiction.

00:48:27.140 Because I was like you,

00:48:28.300 when I read, it was like

00:48:29.340 I was going to read

00:48:29.740 nonfiction, history books,

00:48:31.160 whatever.

00:48:31.780 But yeah, I mean, studies

00:48:32.440 show that reading fiction

00:48:33.680 increases your theory of

00:48:35.060 mind, which is this

00:48:36.560 cognitive ability to

00:48:38.040 understand the thoughts

00:48:40.480 and feelings of other

00:48:41.240 people.

00:48:41.960 Basically, you need theory

00:48:42.900 of mind to socialize,

00:48:44.020 right?

00:48:44.960 Totally.

00:48:45.700 You've got to guess

00:48:46.440 what so-and-so thinks.

00:48:47.800 And then you're going to

00:48:48.360 guess what they think

00:48:49.100 based on what this other

00:48:49.940 person might or might not

00:48:50.840 think.

00:48:51.220 Right.

00:48:51.460 And reading fiction

00:48:52.180 allows you to do that

00:48:52.880 because you're seeing

00:48:53.860 theory of mind and action.

00:48:55.680 Like you're seeing the

00:48:56.280 thoughts of all these

00:48:56.900 different characters

00:48:57.480 and you've got to keep

00:48:57.980 them in place.

00:48:58.960 I mean, as you said,

00:48:59.400 it makes you more

00:48:59.800 empathetic.

00:49:00.820 The character's emotions

00:49:01.660 become your emotions

00:49:02.540 and your emotions become

00:49:03.300 the character emotions.

00:49:04.660 And you were talking

00:49:05.200 about like that's why

00:49:06.020 Uncle Tom's Cabin

00:49:07.120 was so powerful

00:49:07.960 because it really affected

00:49:09.920 people.

00:49:11.280 And I mean,

00:49:11.780 even Abraham Lincoln

00:49:12.560 when he met

00:49:13.200 Harriet Beecher Stowe

00:49:14.160 was like,

00:49:14.460 oh, so here's the

00:49:14.960 little lady that

00:49:15.800 started this war

00:49:17.260 that we're fighting

00:49:17.940 because everyone read

00:49:18.860 Uncle Tom's Cabin.

00:49:20.460 Yeah, absolutely.

00:49:21.500 Let's say there's

00:49:21.960 some guys out there

00:49:22.700 who are listening.

00:49:23.460 They want to start

00:49:23.900 reading more fiction.

00:49:25.020 Are there three novels

00:49:26.080 you'd recommend

00:49:26.700 they start with?

00:49:28.540 Oh, man,

00:49:28.920 there's so freaking

00:49:29.900 many great novels

00:49:31.100 for men that don't

00:49:32.180 regularly read.

00:49:33.260 I would have them read

00:49:34.160 something like

00:49:34.840 Cormac McCarthy's

00:49:36.020 No Country for Old Men.

00:49:37.360 Oh, yeah,

00:49:37.580 it's a great one.

00:49:38.280 That would be such

00:49:38.900 a great book to start

00:49:39.840 with.

00:49:40.720 Kurt Vonnegut

00:49:41.420 is a blast.

00:49:42.540 I can't imagine

00:49:43.340 a better starting place

00:49:44.400 than like Slaughterhouse-Five.

00:49:45.860 That's a funny,

00:49:47.420 very satirical,

00:49:49.240 snide,

00:49:49.980 but very wise,

00:49:51.200 fascinating book.

00:49:52.120 That's a great one.

00:49:53.480 And then personally,

00:49:54.280 one that I love,

00:49:55.600 it's a little bit

00:49:56.520 more speculative

00:49:57.260 in the way that it's written,

00:49:58.440 but it's a beautiful,

00:49:59.800 wonderful book

00:50:00.620 by the Russian novelist

00:50:02.300 Eugene Vodalovskan.

00:50:03.840 Don't let Russian novelist

00:50:05.100 be a phrase

00:50:05.620 that scares you away.

00:50:06.660 It's very contemporary

00:50:07.680 and it's translated

00:50:09.340 very ably

00:50:10.040 by the wonderful

00:50:10.960 Lisa Hayden,

00:50:12.300 but it's called

00:50:13.240 The Aviator

00:50:13.900 and it's a book

00:50:15.200 about a guy

00:50:15.800 who was like frozen

00:50:17.020 during the Russian Revolution

00:50:18.880 in some cryogenic experiment

00:50:20.940 and wakes up

00:50:21.660 in the modern era

00:50:22.440 and has to kind of

00:50:23.560 understand what happened

00:50:24.540 to him.

00:50:25.460 And it's really great.

00:50:27.200 I'll have to check that.

00:50:27.760 I haven't heard

00:50:28.080 The Aviator.

00:50:28.540 That sounds awesome.

00:50:29.780 So what do you think

00:50:30.420 the state of reading is today?

00:50:31.580 So we've talked about the book,

00:50:32.740 how it's this amazing thing.

00:50:34.180 It's this idea machine.

00:50:35.720 We have the book to thank

00:50:36.600 for the spread of religion,

00:50:38.240 the rise of the scientific method,

00:50:41.200 the rise of different institutions,

00:50:43.220 governments,

00:50:44.280 democratic governments,

00:50:45.180 constitutional governments.

00:50:46.700 What's reading look like right now?

00:50:48.500 Are you optimistic

00:50:49.240 or pessimistic about it?

00:50:51.300 I'm both.

00:50:53.100 One of the reasons

00:50:53.660 I wrote the book

00:50:54.360 is I just wanted people

00:50:55.220 to appreciate the book.

00:50:57.200 You know,

00:50:57.340 I wanted people

00:50:57.880 to appreciate

00:50:58.400 this amazing technology,

00:51:00.060 especially as we are

00:51:01.160 so technologically fixated

00:51:03.300 these days.

00:51:04.500 I say at the very beginning

00:51:05.640 of The Idea Machine

00:51:06.540 that books basically suffer

00:51:08.900 from their ubiquity.

00:51:10.100 They're everywhere.

00:51:10.960 And most things don't,

00:51:12.440 you know,

00:51:12.620 like ubiquity

00:51:13.540 and all of that

00:51:14.400 doesn't really breed contempt

00:51:16.340 so much as neglect,

00:51:17.640 familiarity.

00:51:18.620 We just tend to ignore it.

00:51:20.360 And yet this has been

00:51:21.700 like demonstrably instrumental

00:51:24.000 in making our modern world.

00:51:25.600 Like we wouldn't live

00:51:26.300 in the world

00:51:26.600 we live in today

00:51:27.440 without the book,

00:51:29.080 without the invention

00:51:29.640 of the book.

00:51:30.200 And so I wanted people

00:51:31.160 to be inspired

00:51:31.780 by that history,

00:51:32.900 which is part of the reason

00:51:33.680 I wrote the book.

00:51:34.760 But in terms of like,

00:51:36.680 what I actually think

00:51:37.920 on a day-to-day basis,

00:51:38.960 I kind of ping pong

00:51:40.560 between, you know,

00:51:42.020 discouragement

00:51:42.640 and encouragement.

00:51:44.000 On the discouraging side,

00:51:45.820 fewer people today

00:51:46.640 seem to be reading

00:51:47.420 than they have in the past.

00:51:48.680 Now, on a historical scale,

00:51:50.300 we're still reading it

00:51:51.160 much, much higher

00:51:52.100 than they were

00:51:52.600 in the Middle Ages, say.

00:51:54.240 So these things

00:51:54.960 are all relative.

00:51:55.860 But, you know,

00:51:56.680 those numbers that you see

00:51:57.680 on how much people

00:51:58.700 engage in books these days,

00:52:00.420 there's studies published

00:52:01.220 every, you know,

00:52:02.300 every couple years,

00:52:03.200 every several months,

00:52:03.940 you can find this

00:52:04.640 or that study

00:52:05.220 and none of them

00:52:06.300 have encouraging news,

00:52:07.440 hardly ever.

00:52:08.580 However, I say that

00:52:10.140 and yet at the same time,

00:52:11.520 I also go to a platform

00:52:12.960 like Substack

00:52:13.900 where I keep my newsletter,

00:52:16.080 millersbookreview.com.

00:52:17.340 And there are like loads

00:52:21.020 of people celebrating

00:52:22.320 classical literature there.

00:52:23.640 There's loads of people

00:52:24.940 talking about

00:52:25.500 what they're reading.

00:52:26.280 It is phenomenal.

00:52:27.780 And that's very substantive

00:52:28.980 in its depth and breadth

00:52:31.160 in terms of the,

00:52:32.200 like the quality

00:52:32.860 of the discussion there.

00:52:34.020 At the same time,

00:52:35.140 there's places like TikTok

00:52:36.520 where I don't think

00:52:37.280 the discussion

00:52:37.800 is anywhere near as robust,

00:52:38.920 but it's very plentiful.

00:52:41.260 You know, like book talk

00:52:42.200 is a thing

00:52:42.780 where there's like scads

00:52:44.760 of people talking about,

00:52:45.860 you know, this or that

00:52:47.040 romanticity author

00:52:48.180 that they're reading

00:52:48.880 or whatever.

00:52:49.580 I don't want to denigrate

00:52:50.560 any of that.

00:52:51.360 People reading

00:52:51.900 should just be reading

00:52:52.660 and enjoy what they're reading.

00:52:53.700 So whatever you want to read,

00:52:55.120 rock on, do it.

00:52:56.180 But I see those kind of

00:52:57.760 like anecdotal examples

00:52:59.220 and I think,

00:52:59.660 ah, maybe there's a lot

00:53:00.440 to actually still be

00:53:01.320 enthusiastic about.

00:53:02.520 So I kind of vacillate

00:53:03.960 between the two.

00:53:05.360 I've heard people say

00:53:06.260 that books,

00:53:08.080 at least nonfiction books,

00:53:09.600 are going to become outmoded

00:53:11.860 in the age of LLMs

00:53:13.400 like ChatGPT

00:53:14.560 because instead of having

00:53:15.580 to read through

00:53:16.120 a whole book

00:53:16.840 to find the information

00:53:17.660 and answers you want,

00:53:19.320 you can essentially

00:53:20.060 generate a text

00:53:21.160 entirely tailored

00:53:22.160 to your interest

00:53:22.980 and questions

00:53:23.580 from the LLM.

00:53:25.000 So like what role

00:53:26.040 do you think books

00:53:26.980 will play in a world

00:53:28.020 with large language models?

00:53:30.200 I end the book

00:53:30.880 with Sam Bankman Freed,

00:53:32.820 the disgraced founder

00:53:34.220 of that massive

00:53:35.540 cryptocurrency exchange.

00:53:37.580 He very prominently

00:53:39.020 said near his downfall,

00:53:41.240 in fact,

00:53:41.740 very closely to that,

00:53:43.240 that if you wrote a book,

00:53:44.500 you effed up.

00:53:45.160 He had no appreciation

00:53:47.460 for a book.

00:53:48.200 He literally said,

00:53:49.340 I don't say that

00:53:50.220 no book has any value,

00:53:51.880 but I almost say that.

00:53:53.220 Like that's almost

00:53:53.720 a direct quote from him.

00:53:55.240 And I think what he's missing,

00:53:56.960 what he missed,

00:53:57.900 he became like

00:53:58.500 a reverse poster boy

00:53:59.620 for the benefit

00:54:00.600 of a humanities degree,

00:54:01.880 basically,

00:54:02.440 is that there is

00:54:04.100 some deep soul

00:54:05.940 and mind formation

00:54:07.360 that happens

00:54:08.040 when we read,

00:54:09.200 that does not happen

00:54:10.640 when we simply

00:54:11.400 glean extracts

00:54:12.900 from, say,

00:54:13.980 an LLM report

00:54:15.080 any more than

00:54:16.140 from the headlines

00:54:16.960 pulled out of a Google search.

00:54:19.000 You have to go deeper

00:54:20.280 and you have to engage

00:54:21.360 at a more robust level

00:54:22.780 in order to be shaped

00:54:24.160 by the content

00:54:25.200 that you're reading.

00:54:26.800 And that requires books.

00:54:28.480 Like, you can't get that

00:54:29.520 from an LLM.

00:54:30.300 You can get great stuff

00:54:31.040 out of an LLM.

00:54:31.980 And let me just say right out,

00:54:33.600 I think large language models

00:54:35.080 are astonishing.

00:54:36.120 They are, in fact,

00:54:36.860 in my mind,

00:54:37.400 they're an extension

00:54:38.100 of what the book

00:54:38.860 has done for us.

00:54:39.900 They are part of that

00:54:40.920 whole trend.

00:54:42.220 But the way people use them

00:54:43.480 is often to misuse them

00:54:45.180 and to miss the benefit

00:54:46.920 that a book would provide

00:54:47.840 in comparison.

00:54:48.980 What's great about books

00:54:49.880 is that you serendipitously

00:54:51.800 discover things

00:54:53.100 you didn't know

00:54:54.300 you wanted to know.

00:54:56.180 Like, you don't know

00:54:57.300 the questions to ask

00:54:58.320 without the wider

00:54:59.480 ranging knowledge

00:55:00.560 you get in a book.

00:55:01.880 But I do think LLMs

00:55:03.380 can actually enhance

00:55:04.300 your reading.

00:55:05.300 How are you using

00:55:06.500 large language models

00:55:07.640 in your own reading

00:55:08.700 and writing

00:55:09.560 so that they enhance

00:55:11.020 rather than

00:55:11.780 replace your thinking?

00:55:13.560 Well, for a lot

00:55:14.620 of business work

00:55:15.660 that doesn't actually

00:55:16.680 require the level

00:55:17.740 of creative thinking

00:55:19.640 that personal writing

00:55:20.920 projects do for me,

00:55:21.980 I use LLMs

00:55:23.200 to draft early things

00:55:24.640 or to help me

00:55:25.100 brainstorm ideas

00:55:26.200 to help me

00:55:27.520 take one form

00:55:28.720 of a document

00:55:29.340 and turn it into

00:55:30.120 another form of a document

00:55:31.320 where I might have

00:55:32.820 some derivative uses

00:55:34.060 of a core text

00:55:35.160 that I want to use

00:55:36.080 but I need to turn it

00:55:37.040 into another thing.

00:55:37.880 That might take me

00:55:39.040 45 minutes to an hour

00:55:40.320 but it'll take an LLM

00:55:41.400 seven minutes

00:55:42.100 including me fixing

00:55:43.600 the sloppiness in it

00:55:45.080 or whatever.

00:55:46.220 So I use it as a productivity tool

00:55:47.720 and for that it's fantastic.

00:55:49.540 For research,

00:55:50.200 I also use it.

00:55:51.220 I find perplexity

00:55:52.560 and also the deep research

00:55:53.840 functions on several

00:55:55.060 of the different LLMs

00:55:56.120 to be very helpful

00:55:57.020 especially when it provides me

00:55:58.880 actual links

00:55:59.600 I can go back and check.

00:56:01.100 That can help.

00:56:02.140 I've written whole business plans

00:56:04.080 using that

00:56:04.940 and they've been

00:56:06.080 very successful

00:56:06.820 and like I couldn't

00:56:08.500 have even done

00:56:09.100 the work that I did

00:56:09.940 in the time

00:56:10.560 if I had done

00:56:11.920 that in a traditional way.

00:56:13.860 So the research side

00:56:14.960 of it can be very,

00:56:15.980 very good.

00:56:16.940 And then I also

00:56:17.820 sometimes will load

00:56:19.060 books up into an LLM

00:56:20.700 like Notebook,

00:56:22.080 the Google one

00:56:23.260 which is now

00:56:23.720 suddenly escaping me.

00:56:24.860 I guess it's Notebook LLM.

00:56:25.660 Yeah, it's called

00:56:26.000 Notebook LLM, yeah.

00:56:27.420 And then sometimes

00:56:28.720 ChatGPT

00:56:29.600 and then also Claude.

00:56:30.940 I've tried it

00:56:31.340 in all three of those

00:56:32.100 and a little bit

00:56:32.960 with Grok

00:56:33.500 where I'll take a manuscript.

00:56:35.600 I've done this

00:56:35.960 with my own book

00:56:36.620 just to query my own book

00:56:37.840 on certain things

00:56:38.580 but I do it

00:56:39.540 with classic literature

00:56:40.660 where you can get

00:56:41.360 basically free PDFs

00:56:42.620 of these classic novels

00:56:44.020 and other things

00:56:44.760 and I'll use it

00:56:46.460 to query the novel.

00:56:47.640 Like, you know,

00:56:48.380 I'll have a conversation

00:56:49.140 with the book basically.

00:56:50.260 I'm trying to find something

00:56:51.360 like there's no index for it.

00:56:53.560 I find it quickly

00:56:54.260 using that

00:56:55.420 or I have done

00:56:57.100 some work

00:56:58.500 where I will

00:56:59.260 investigate

00:56:59.960 essentially an angle

00:57:01.140 in a book

00:57:01.740 and I'll use the LLM

00:57:02.840 to help me do it

00:57:03.780 where I would have

00:57:05.120 a hard time

00:57:05.760 I think sussing it out

00:57:06.960 otherwise.

00:57:08.060 Yeah, I've done that

00:57:09.060 reading along with an LLM.

00:57:11.000 Like, I'll do this

00:57:11.440 with fiction books.

00:57:12.600 I'll just start a chat

00:57:13.560 where as I'm reading

00:57:15.060 and I see something

00:57:15.880 like I don't know

00:57:16.700 what that means

00:57:17.320 or what's going on

00:57:17.840 especially when there's

00:57:18.380 like a historical novel.

00:57:20.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:57:20.280 I'll start talking

00:57:20.900 to the LLM

00:57:21.660 like give me some information

00:57:22.540 on what's going on

00:57:23.800 in this chapter.

00:57:24.540 Like, for example,

00:57:25.040 I did this a lot

00:57:25.640 with The Count of Monte Cristo

00:57:26.580 because there's a lot

00:57:28.020 of history

00:57:28.600 in that thing

00:57:29.660 and so I used Chachapi

00:57:31.100 to help me like

00:57:31.800 flesh out some of that stuff

00:57:33.520 a little bit more

00:57:33.900 so I understood it better.

00:57:34.840 And I thought that was

00:57:35.400 a useful way of using

00:57:36.260 an LLM with your reading.

00:57:38.660 Yeah, totally.

00:57:39.260 I think that's a great example

00:57:40.380 of that for sure.

00:57:41.380 Yeah.

00:57:41.780 Well, Joel,

00:57:42.320 this has been a great conversation.

00:57:43.620 Where can people go

00:57:44.160 to learn more about the book

00:57:45.000 and your work?

00:57:46.600 Millersbookreview.com

00:57:47.440 is probably the best place.

00:57:48.560 That's where I post book reviews

00:57:50.320 and literary essays there

00:57:51.760 and you can also find out

00:57:53.120 about more about

00:57:53.960 the idea machine there.

00:57:55.260 Fantastic.

00:57:55.660 Well, Joel Miller,

00:57:56.200 thanks for your time.

00:57:56.560 It's been a pleasure.

00:57:57.660 Yeah, thank you so much

00:57:58.340 for having me.

00:57:59.660 My guest today was Joel Miller.

00:58:00.880 He's the author of the book

00:58:01.780 The Idea Machine.

00:58:02.700 It's available on Amazon.com

00:58:03.940 and bookstores everywhere.

00:58:05.200 You can find more information

00:58:05.980 about his work

00:58:06.400 at his website

00:58:07.060 millersbookreview.com.

00:58:08.940 Also, check out our show notes

00:58:09.880 at aom.is slash books

00:58:11.460 where you can find links

00:58:12.040 to resources

00:58:12.640 where you delve deeper

00:58:13.320 into this topic.

00:58:21.940 Well, that wraps up

00:58:22.900 another edition

00:58:23.560 of the AOM podcast.

00:58:24.620 Make sure to check out

00:58:25.260 our website

00:58:25.640 at artofmanless.com

00:58:26.700 where you can find

00:58:26.980 our podcast archives.

00:58:28.000 And make sure to check out

00:58:29.100 our new sub stack

00:58:29.780 Dying Breed.

00:58:30.980 You can sign up

00:58:31.480 at dyingbreed.net.

00:58:32.560 It's a great way

00:58:33.260 to support the show directly.

00:58:34.640 And if you haven't done so already,

00:58:35.780 I'd appreciate it

00:58:36.580 if you take one minute

00:58:37.320 to give us a review

00:58:37.920 on a podcast or Spotify.

00:58:39.280 It helps out a lot.

00:58:40.040 And if you've done that already,

00:58:40.940 thank you.

00:58:41.780 Please consider sharing the show

00:58:42.900 with a friend or family member

00:58:43.860 who you think was something

00:58:44.500 out of it.

00:58:45.420 As always,

00:58:46.280 thank you for the continued support

00:58:47.200 until next time

00:58:47.680 as Brett McKay.

00:58:48.800 Remind you to listen

00:58:49.380 to the AOM podcast

00:58:50.060 and put what you've heard

00:58:51.300 into action.

00:58:51.940 Before you go,

00:59:07.240 here's another one

00:59:07.820 to queue up next.

00:59:08.780 I talked to Ben Aldridge

00:59:09.820 about his book

00:59:10.440 Seriously Happy

00:59:11.220 where he takes the big ideas

00:59:12.440 from ancient philosophies

00:59:13.340 like Buddhism,

00:59:14.560 cynicism,

00:59:15.260 Stoicism,

00:59:15.720 and turns them

00:59:16.880 into real,

00:59:17.960 doable challenges

00:59:18.660 for becoming

00:59:19.200 a better,

00:59:20.020 happier person.

00:59:20.840 We get into everything

00:59:22.080 from cultivating virtue

00:59:23.020 to walking a banana

00:59:24.080 and taking a wu-wei adventure.

00:59:26.100 It's fun,

00:59:27.040 practical,

00:59:27.720 and surprisingly deep.

00:59:29.120 You can check it out

00:59:29.800 at aom.is

00:59:31.120 slash seriously happy.

00:59:32.980 Again,

00:59:33.320 that's aom.is

00:59:34.560 slash seriously happy.

The Art of Manliness - December 16, 2025

The Idea Machine — How Books Changed the World (and Still Matter)

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript