Ezra Klein on Reading : Let’s Not Forget the Heart • Part of the issue is that we have operated with the wrong metaphor, thinking too much about information instead of the states we’re spending time in and the circuits in the mind we are deepening and strengthening. • We need facts, but we also need contemplation and feelings, which are important for knowledge. Transcript: Speaker 2 So I wonder whether we have gotten too into what I think of as the matrix Jack theory of learning. I have always wanted the thing in the matrix where they put the little needle in the back of your head into the Jack and then you know, Kung Fu. There’s so many books I’ve said to people that I want to have read the book. And it took a long time. It was actually Nicholas Carr’s book that began to the shallows and began to make me think differently about this. But to realize that it was the time I spent in the book that really mattered. There was a quote from Sam Bankman free that was making the rounds be Sam Bankman free being the former head of FTX as crypto exchange and collapsed. And he says in there that he’s very skeptical of books. He thinks mostly books should not be books. There should be six paragraph blog posts. And somebody’s written both a book and more six paragraph blog posts that I can count. Even when the book is expanding an idea that could be shorter, some of its value for the readers actually the time spent there wrestling. And I wonder if the point of this a little bit isn’t that we think much too much about the information we pass onto ourselves or teach children in schools and not enough about the states That we’re spending time in and as such the circuits in the mind that we are deepening and strengthening versus letting languish that like we’ve gotten too hung up on products as opposed To process. Speaker 1 I think that you are putting just a beautiful metaphor if you will for what’s important and it’s not information. We need facts. This is the Aristotle’s three lies, but we need contemplation and we have forgotten our need for it. But we also need something else and it’s the isotope of knowledge or insight is feeling that’s so important. I’ve been reading Herman Hesse again. And one of the things he did at the end of his life was write a poem about books and he said, all the books in the world will not bring you happiness, but build a secret path towards your heart. Let’s not forget the heart as we battle what is best for the mind because the heart, the affective aspect of reading is one of the most beautiful things that leads to that inner sanctuary, But it’s part of what happens on the journey to insight, the feelings that we have, the feelings that an author elicits to us, that’s a form of knowledge. We need heart and brain as we look at what reading gives us and what we experience when we’re reading or not. (Time 0:52:28)