released 7/30/2026
Joel Halldorf, author of Reading Matters: A History for the Digital Age (NYU Press, 2026), examines how our relationship to texts and reading changes as technology shifts. Each form that text takes invites a mode of interaction with it, and Halldorf explains how we approach printed text differently than digital reading. We experience digital text as an overwhelming flood of mostly unedited input, he says, which results in verbal environments that lack nuance, sophistication, and complex reasoning. Book reading is likelier to result in people marked by a greater capacity for empathy and intellectual depth. Halldorf discusses literary reading practices and movements in history and the effects they had on society and culture. He reflects on reading as a lover, how reading is connected to virtues, and the importance of understanding ourselves as storytelling beings who live within a narrative. In this digital age, he challenges us to pursue reflective reading, for its own sake and for ours.
53 minutes
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