JOEL MILLER: Books Make Us Better

25:32I want to just like take a second and tell you, you know this already, Joel, but dad, you don't know this. I'm going to tell you about this experiment that I'm doing on myself. And I want you to tell me your thoughts on it. So I have not read a physical book. Like I listen to books on audible all the time. And I listen to podcasts and stuff like that. But I, I mostly never read physical books. Like I have a lot of books, I will use them to jog my interest or thinking about what I might want to go listen to. But sitting down and reading a book like probably has not happened with any regularity in over a decade, almost exclusively audiobooks.

26:08And lately I have been thinking to myself, I don't know that I like the trade-off of that. I mean, for some things, yes. Like, you know, I was listening last week to a book about investing and it's like, it's really more conceptual. It's not technical. Like I just, I just kind of want to get the big idea and move on. Right. So like I did listen to that, but then there's some other deeper work that I'm doing for our work at full focus research related stuff. And I can't remember anything. Like I can't synthesize it and put it back together. I feel like when it's in that audio format. And that's becoming frustrating to me.

26:39And so I thought, okay, I'm going to do this experiment on myself where I'm just going to read physical books, anything that like matters that I'm not, it's not entertainment. It's not just something I'm trying to like, kind of get the big idea and move on. I'm really going to read a physical book. And so a couple of things that I've found so far, number one, when do I do that? And I know that sounds like a silly thing to say, but when you've been listening to audio books, when do you do it is anytime. So anytime you're in the car, when I'm getting ready, I mean, good grief, I could put a speaker in the shower and listen while I'm in the shower.

27:09You know, anytime I'm anywhere doing anything else, cooking dinner, et cetera, et cetera, I could listen to an audio book as long as I wasn't trying to talk to other people. Right. So the real question of when do I read a physical book? And then I had to come to terms with the fact that I was going to read way slower than I could listen. That was like jarring. Like, oh my gosh, like I've been reading for an hour and I've only read like 30 pages or I don't know what it was, you know, but like, it's a very different experience of consuming information to do it in that context. And I'm kind of struggling with that.

27:43Like there are things I like about that. I like making notes in the margins because it helps me connect the dots for things I'm writing, but it's also very frustrating to me. So is there a case to be made for reading physical books? And if so, what is it and how do we do it? Because I mean, literally, I'm not sure I know how to do it after spending a decade of listening. Let me take that in a few different ways. The first one is I would point to behind me, this bookcase behind me. Yes. I mean, when we think about an analog book, we think, oh, it's like an analog book. I mean, it's a physical thing.

28:15We don't think about things like user interface or things that we would think about with apps, for instance. But this is like one of the greatest user interfaces ever created. If you're just listening, which is great, by the way, If you're just listening, what you're missing is I'm pointing to my bookcase behind me, which is an entire wall. And that is the greatest user interface of all time because that's a screen. That's the size of a whole wall. And I have access to, by looking at those spines, whole lines of argument. I have access to whole trains of thought just by looking at the spines of those books.

28:52I don't even have to be close enough. All I have to do is be close enough to kind of recognize them. I don't even have to be able to pull them off the shelf to have that, the ability to do that. And so like as an external part of my mind, which is what a bookcase is, a book itself is this. It is an externalization of your own brain. It's like extra scaffolding for your brain. I have access to tons of extra ideas just by looking at the spines of those books, which if I were limited to thumbnails on my phone or thumbnails on a Kindle, I wouldn't have access to because I would have to like manually thumb through like that entire archive of stuff on my phone or on my Kindle.

29:33Joel, is that valuable if you're not a writer? Yeah, 100%. If you're thinking about anything like, and we're all in knowledge work in one form or another, you know, like if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably in some form of knowledge work. And that means that you are frankly handicapped by the kind of knowledge you could have access to, but don't if you're not surrounded by physical books, because physical books actually prompt thinking just by virtue of being able to see them. And so if you had like, if you've just even thumbed through, call it 50 different books, and you had them on a shelf around you, you would have access to those ideas just by looking at them because they would prompt memories that would be useful to you.

30:16But let's talk about your own situation here on like time and how do I get good at this again and that kind of thing. I think it's just a practice thing because some books I read very slowly. Other books I read very quickly. Some books you find that you can kind of get started reading and realize this book doesn't warrant the kind of deep super engagement. I can probably get through it actually in a couple of hours if I just kind of read quickly and do a cursory read of it. You'll still get all the goodness out of it that was there for you because that's all you were going to get out of it anyway, but you didn't have to invest two weeks to read it.

30:52At the same time, you'll find there are books that do require you to really be in it. And you may write tons of notes in it and all of that. And that goes back to this user interface thing. A page, just like, you know, your screen on your phone, that's a user interface or an app screen. That's a user interface. A page is a user interface. And there's useful things about that. The margin, how you find different pages, the notes you make in those margins and how they link back to other things. You can think about marginal notes and things that say like, check page 57. That's a hyperlink in the book back to another idea in that book.

31:28An index is like a bunch of hyperlinks to a bunch of ideas in a book. Once you kind of get mastery of the physical shape of the book again, what you find is it is an amazingly efficient tool for communicating ideas, for accessing those ideas again. And I think part of what we've done is we've just de-skilled ourself in reading. and we just need to reskill ourself in reading so that we are taking, maybe it's just 30 minutes to an hour a day, like 30 minutes at the top, 30 minutes at the bottom and just spending time in the book itself. And what happens is those skills will come back to you. The ability to speed up or the ability to be more discerning in what needs to be read closely or what doesn't.

32:10All of that just kind of happens with practice. What do you do about the frustration that it's slow? So I'm just narrating my own experience here. Maybe others of you are better than me in this, but this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking to myself, in the two weeks that I've spent working on this book, you know, in the margins of my life, because I can't do it in all the margins of my life, it's much more limited. it's going to take me forever to read this book. You know, instead of reading 20 or 50 books this year, maybe I only really have time for focused reading like that of 10 or 12 or 15 books.

32:47And that means over the course of my lifetime, I'm going to read a lot less books because there's a real capacity lid. For example, I can't listen to them at 2x speed. You know, I have to read it whatever my natural reading speed is, and maybe I can read a little quicker, whatever. How do you deal with the opportunity cost of reading physical books? How do you offset the loss of opportunity in terms of scale of ideas you can be exposed to compared with the depth of what you get from reading at a human speed as opposed to mechanized speed? Well, for one thing, I don't think I would limit myself to one format only.

33:24Because I would say, for instance, that supplementing an audiobook book with a physical book enables you to get the benefits of both. So there's a book right now that I'm reading that I'm having a very critical argument with this book. It's kind of popular. A lot of people are talking about it and I've started reading it. When I started reading it, I realized I'm going to disagree with almost everything in this book. And so I was started off listening to it actually in the car line, picking up Naomi. And I got home from picking up Naomi and I grabbed my physical copy and I started underlining and making notes, I've kept listening to that book.

34:00But every time I come back to it, I make all these notes in the book. And so I think you can kind of multi-format your way through some of this stuff. I don't think you have to be completely dedicated to one format or another. The other thing I would say is that it kind of depends on what you're trying to get out of that book. If you don't need to retain it, or you don't need to have access to the kind of level of precision that you're talking about, like let's say the book is more for entertainment, then by all means, just listen to the audio book. That's no problem. And go ahead and give yourself the permission to do that.

34:32And if you're gonna be listening for or reading for like these kind of like hard takeaways and you wanna walk away with a really synthesized version of what this author is saying, then I would go ahead and I would read physical. I would just give myself time in the day to do it and take the pressure off myself that I somehow have to finish by a certain time. I would just give myself the permission to read the book for what it is. You know, I read mostly eBooks. And I know the advantages of analog. You know, I know that it's physically more in your face. It's easy to forget books when you read them on an eBook.

35:08But I like the portability of eBooks. Sure, yeah. And I can remember back, this was like, right after Kindle came out. Well, it was probably several years after Kindle. came out, but Gail and I went to Africa, and she's a reader, and she literally had one suitcase that was nothing but a book. Meanwhile, I had a Kindle, and I had 10x, maybe 20x the number of books on my Kindle that she had. But I don't know, like Megan, I struggle with this too. And part of it is, you know, this may be me being jaded as a book publisher. You know, there are so many books that should have been essays. 100%. So true.

35:47And so many of those even, I've heard you say this before, should have been probably short articles or blog posts. There's a statement by Al Regnery, whose father was the publisher, Henry Regnery. And Al Regnery was involved in Regnery Publishing, I'm pretty sure, but he was also a magazine publisher. And he was kind of famous for saying that most books should be magazine articles and most magazine articles shouldn't even be written. just to address the ebook thing real quick i think portability is awesome and there's just trade-offs you can listen to a ton of audiobooks and all this interstitial time that we have driving here doing chores whatever that's awesome but there are trade-offs you're not going to be able to get the level of deep engagement that you get from a physical book and the ebook is awesome because you have portability and you can like you know you can have like a thousand two thousand three thousand i don't know how many you can have on a kindle ultimately i've got like maybe 500 books on my Kindle, but I also know I never go back to them and I don't read them or look at them or benefit from them in the same way I do physical books because I even forget that they're there.

36:48They're invisible to me. So there's just trade-offs. You know, Joel, one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is again, as you well know, is the idea of human limitations. And I think I'm probably in a season of my life where I'm bumping up against this a lot and it's creating a lot of friction for me. And I'm also asking myself the question, like what might actually be good within our human limitations that we consider to be a bug, but is actually a feature. And so I'm thinking about things like our native capacity, our native speed, you know, even just like walking. Walking happens at a certain speed kind of throughout all time.

37:26And there's something really good about that, like going faster than that is there's negatives and there's real benefits of just, you know, walking at a human speed. And I think about reading at a human speed and consuming ideas at a human speed. And I think the friction for me is I don't like the idea that I'm not going to be able to potentially consume as many books. Now, I know what you said about format and all that. So I make some of that moot. However, there is a reality. If I'm going to read important books deeply that I want to be shaped by, and that's really what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about things that are kind of ancillary to that, but books that I want to shape me.

38:05if I'm going to read them deeply, I'm going to read fewer of them. I'm going to be shaped by fewer ideas. And I think that's helpful to just say, like, to be honest about it and then to have to come to grips with, like, there's a sense of like almost greed that I contend with in myself that like, I want more. Yeah. I want to read deeply, but I also want to do that at scale. And it's like, well, you get to choose. You're going to, you're going to get to choose at some level between those two things. The math is just not working for you regardless, because there's like half a million books that get published every year.

38:38You know, I mean, I don't know what the exact number is, but it's pretty close to that. And that that's an absurdly large number. And that's every year. How many books you can read in a year? Let's say you're a pretty ambitious reader and you read 50 books a year. I mean, that's totally doable, even for somebody who's as busy as you, 50 books a year, 500 ,000 books a year. You're going to read a few thousand books and then you're going to die. And like, that's all you get. Yeah. And that's okay. Like, that's just like, that's the math. That's all there is. So will there be books in heaven, Joel?

39:11That's the question. Well, Jorge Borges, he imagined like heaven is a paradise is kind of like a library. So maybe, maybe we just get to keep reading forever. Okay, good. We're going to just

39:29I would be remiss if I didn't bring in the topic of AI when we're talking about books. But you have this in the book, and I ran into it separately from that earlier this week. I think I may have pinged you about it. But Socrates was very skeptical of writing anything down because he felt like it would atrophy our memory. Yes. And I hear this argument all the time with the AI technology. We're going to lose the ability to think. And I can remember when the first Hewlett Packard calculators came out, people were saying, we're going to lose the ability to do math. And they weren't wrong. But what we gained from that was something extraordinary.

40:10But how do you see the interplay of AI in books in the future? Oh, my gosh. So this is a big open question. And it's one that I deal with in the idea machine going all the way back to Socrates and then looking all the way into the, I don't go into the future future, but I do talk about AI because the truth is AI is actually an extension of the book. And if you look at the history of library science, the internet and all of that, AI like just comes right out of that. The internet comes right out of that. They're all intimately related to each other. If you're one of these people that sees AI as somehow like against literary culture or against the book, you've kind of maybe haven't heard the story because they're like friends.

40:55They've been together from the very beginning. Humans have this need to create metadata to get access to the data that they create. And we create tons of data. We always have like going back to the beginning of time. Humans have been creating information and it's hard to access it. And so humans have created metadata and various searching methods and all that kind of stuff. And at every stage of humans trying to figure out some new way of managing data better, like writing or AI today, there are people that come along the way and say, ah, that's terrible. And Socrates was one of the first and one of the most famous because he has at least one major dialogue of Plato's The Phaedrus, where he comes right out and talks about how terrible books are.

41:43You can kind of go back to him as like the original Luddite on information technology. But he was wrong. And not only was he wrong, he was a hypocrite. If you actually look at his own practice, which is recorded in these other books, you can see that Socrates used books. He talked about how he used books. He talked about how he benefited from books and so on. And Plato, of course, did. And Plato published those dialogues. So the idea that books are writing is somehow going to damage our own cognitive abilities. I get it. I get why Socrates says that. It's right there in the argument. However, it's wrong.

42:18And we've got now 2 ,300 years or so of proof that he was incorrect about that. And I'm pretty sure that's how AI will work out. We've got this long trend of information technologies. The book is kind of the foundation of it. AI comes out of it. And I believe that over time, we'll just find humane ways of using AI that reinforce the things that we hope to get from it. And so I don't think that kind of like anti-positioning is going to help anybody. Also, you can't win that argument because no one individual controls any of this. This is an emergent phenomenon that comes out of like a marketplace dynamic, and no one human controls that.

42:58Even if they have regulatory power, they can't control it. They'll just maybe manipulate it in some way. So there's no way for us to control this. What we really can do is figure out how to use it well for ourselves, and then hopefully model that for other people. Joel, you may have read this, but I'm now seeing a lot of authors who, in the publication of their book, are also publishing a custom GPT that's been trained by their book so that readers can query against the book. So it's like you get the package or you get a link in the book to get it or whatever. But I think that's kind of a neat idea too, because like any technology, it leverages human strengths.

43:36That's fascinating. I had not seen that. I know that when I listened to an audio book, I noticed that there's now a feature in my Audible that allows me to query the book. So they've obviously plugged an LLM of some kind into the Audible app that allows me to query the book. That makes tons of sense to me because that's actually one of the original ideas behind AI, LLMs. The original idea behind them was that we needed some way of getting beyond the passiveness of a page where a book could actually serve information to us. And search engines were a part of that plan. That goes all the way back to like Tim Berners-Lee when he was talking about the web and he was, you know, kind of describing the invention of the web.

44:18He talked about the ability to have automatic processing of data and serving us data coming out of that. This goes all the way back even further to essays written by a guy named Vannevar Bush in the 1930s and 40s, where he described having a machine. He called it the Memex that could sit that would be a desk. In his version, it was all analog, but fed by microfiche. But the idea is that it could actually do data processing on the backside while you weren't even there. It would put together data for you and then serve it up to you. So this desire for humans to have machines give us the data that we need to work has been around as long as humans can imagine it.

45:00And in this case, that's like literally over 100 years because it wasn't even Vannevar Bush. There was a guy before him named Paul Otlet, who was a Belgian librarian who had cooked up this idea of basically creating the idea that you could have all the data of the world available in card files, and you could call up some central office and they could serve it up to you. And then eventually somebody created the internet, which was what that was. And so the need for this has been around forever, and we're finally actually experiencing the fruit of it. And of course, it's uneven and lumpy, and it doesn't work great all the time, and there's all these concerns.

45:36But it's kind of magical, and we should kind of appreciate it for what it is and then make it work better, not just like beat up on it. That's good. Okay, last question, Joel. I know we're about out of time, but I want to know, with regard to AI, what's the dark side, though, with regard to ideas or writing in particular? Michael mentioned this with math and calculators. We talked about this with leaving physical books and moving to audio books. There can be a de-skilling and critical thinking is a skill. And if people de-skill their critical abilities or never develop them, that could be a real problem for sure.

46:14I mean, I think this is not a political statement. This is just a reflection of our own political climate. We don't live at a time where people are critically engaging that much on ideas. It just feels very reactionary on both sides. And I think some of that is that there's just no patience for critical thinking or critical evaluation. And we should hold on to that as tightly as we can. And so we should be using AI to help us with that, not to replace that. Because if we lose that, that's a problem for sure. If you could design a double win reading habit for mere mortals, not the Joel Millers who walk amongst us, but for mere mortals, what would that look like on maybe a daily or a weekly or a seasonal basis?

46:56Well, I would say it should be daily. You'll never pick up a habit unless it is daily. At least that should be the intent. And I think I would just say everybody should read, I mean, at least 30 minutes a day, better an hour. And the best way to do it is to just take, say, 30 minutes at the top of the day and 30 minutes at the bottom of the day. You can move through a lot of pages with an hour a day. And it's just like with exercise. The minute you start getting momentum and start feeling the difference, the more self-inspiring it is and the more self-motivating it is. And so if you just kind of like treat it like it's a chore and you only do it a little bit every day, you'll never get anywhere.

47:36It'd be like convincing yourself to exercise. and then you basically go lift some barbells like four times in a morning and then quit. You'll never develop the habit. You really need to expose yourself to enough books over a period of time that you develop a love for it. And it's not that hard if you do it at 30 minutes to an hour a day. Just give yourself some time at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. And one other thing to remember about reading is it's kind of an interstitial thing. For whatever reason, reading is not a main thing for almost any of us, unless that's your job somehow.

48:09And it really isn't anybody's job, although that would be a great job. But because it's not, if you have a book with you, just think about it this way. Like whatever you go bounce to social media, try to bounce to a book instead or some other thing like that. Something that diverts your time in a period where you're not otherwise occupied. Allow a book to be part of your range of options in that moment. And I would say pick something that just interests you. So never read a book because you're supposed to. Read books because they delight you. Read books because they're entertaining to you. Read books because you get something out of it that you really like.

48:45Alan Jacobs is a professor at Baylor. He talks about reading by whim. Just follow your whims. If something looks good to you, if something looks cool, great, read that. Don't take somebody else's recommendation as something like you have to read it and then do it. Would you agree with the advice that not every book has to be finished? Oh, never. If you're into a book a little ways and that author hasn't done the job of securing your attention, feel free to put it away. That may be a deficiency in you. I'm open to admitting that. I have never finished a Dostoevsky novel, ever. I'm happy to admit that that's a deficiency in me, and someday I'll be a man enough to finish a Dostoevsky novel.

49:22But I'm not going to beat myself up about it. At the same time, I'm not going to soldier through something that's going to prevent me from reading other things that are more enjoyable or more useful to me right now. So if a book doesn't work for you, fine. It doesn't work for you. Just like people, not every person works for you. It's the same thing. Just like go on to something else. I love it. Yes. Okay. Joel, on that note, we're going to transition to the three questions that we ask all of our guests. And the first one is what's your biggest obstacle in getting the double win right now in this season?

49:57And by that, I mean, winning at work and succeeding at life. Well, books sometimes, you won't be surprised to know, actually can be a bit of an obstacle for me in that they can contribute to kind of a distractibility for me. And so if I have a lot of things going on and yet I feel the pressure to finish reading a book and review it, for instance, or I just am obsessed with a particular book and I got to finish it, like I just feel compelled to finish it, that can come at the expense of my family in a way that is not helpful. And so one of the biggest obstacles in getting the double win for me is just me, not able to get myself guardrails.

50:37second question how do you personally know you've achieved the double win being on the background of this podcast since the day it was started and having heard the answers of so many other people and all the conversations that we've had about it the kind of default answer is peace and i kind of agree with that answer it's just that simple i feel settled i feel at peace i feel contented when I'm there. I don't feel hairy. So I would say tranquility is kind of how I know personally, if I feel tranquil, I'm there. Okay. Lastly, what is one ritual or routine that you rely on to get the double win?

51:16And it can't be reading. It can't be reading. Well, the answer to that, the alternative answer to that would be walking. I find that walking is a tremendous way to A, get physical exercise, B, be outside. And that goes in any weather. I mean, walking in any weather is worth it, even in the rain sometimes. And it's just allows your mind to be free and you can kind of free associate and your brain will come back recharged and ready to think about new things. And it's awesome. Walking is like a superpower. I don't know why more people don't just take it up. It's like the easiest thing to do. I mean, you got all the equipment you need.

51:54You just like open your door and go. You know, I'm sitting here right now and I'm looking out my window and it's a beautiful day. And I'm like, as soon as I'm done with this podcast, I'm going to go walk around the block because I just, I just feel the need to move. And I love that you can do it like slowly. And I don't know, it just feels so human. Joel, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing some of your wisdom with us. I have a feeling about this book. And I've told you that from the moment I heard the idea, I just have a feeling about this, that this is a good moment for this book.

52:25And I wish you every success. Thank you. I hope you hit the New York Times bestsellers list. I know that's not your criteria for success. I just hope that it explodes. Yeah. Thank you so much. I think you're right. I think it's a great moment for this idea, the idea machine, because we're at a time where as a culture, we're concerned about AI. We're concerned about all these different cultural trends. and the history of the book actually addresses all of them.

53:02Okay, guys, the book is called The Idea Machine, How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future. Megan, what did you think about that interview? And of course, it was your husband, so. It was so fun. I mean, you know, I have not read the book yet. I can't wait to read it. But I have lived through the entire writing of the book, and I've talked to Joel about it over the last decade plus as he's been in process for this. And I think the thing I love about Joel is that he sees the world from a contrarian novel point of view. You know, he just doesn't see things the way most people do. And consequently, it opens my eyes, and I hope it has been the same for you listening.

53:42it opens my eyes to a different way of seeing the world and thinking about the very real circumstances and challenges of our lives. And so I think there's some great takeaways. Like I love how he said, just read 30 minutes a day. Like, you know, Joel is so good at like, don't make it harder than it needs to be. He's a, he's a simplifier by nature. And I think that makes it feel doable. And it makes me want to keep leaning into my own reading habit to reestablishing that even though it's easier to do something else, that there's a lot to be gained by using not just the information in the book, but the technology of the book itself to aid in my own intellectual and personal development.

54:25You know, it's really interesting. As you know, I was fishing this last week in Montana with a group of 19 other guys. And one of the guys that I found the most fascinating was Kerry Newhoff. And the reason is that Kerry reads so much and he had so much to contribute, not in a showy or flashy way, but he would say, oh, that reminded me of this, you know, the delusion of crowds or something. And he would cite that book or he would cite some other book. And man, I was taking so many notes on books that I needed to read. But I do think that one benefit, and I've certainly seen this and Joel is when you read a lot, you have a lot to contribute.

55:08You know, if your life is about service and contribution, this gives you the raw fodder that you can contribute to other people's lives. And frankly, from a selfish standpoint, it makes you more interesting. So true. Well, I was newly inspired again, and I just want to encourage everybody to go pre-order the book. And also, we didn't really talk about this in the interview, but Joel has a sub stack newsletter called Miller's Book Review. It's millersbookreview.com where he reviews books every week on his newsletter, in his newsletter. And it is fantastic. I mean, it's just everything you just enjoyed about that interview you get on a weekly basis.

55:44And that's a great way to kind of keep up with him and get in his brain even more. And it's an interesting brain to be in. Again, guys, the book is The Idea Machine, How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future. Really encourage you to read this. I think it'll give you not only the history of books and their impact on civilization, but just to see the arc of history and to see that it's really moving towards something. I don't know what that something is, but books have been a large part of that in shaping us, in shaping the cultures that we live in, and hopefully shaping the future. So until next time, get the double win.

56:30Thank you.