Why You Should Read Books | Ep.30

We make the case for reading as one of the simplest ways to take your time and attention back in a world built to distract you. We share what helped us move from slow, frustrating reading to real focus, better speech, lower stress, and a wider view of other people’s ideas. 
• why reading matters when entertainment is everywhere 
• audiobooks versus physical reading and what gets lost 
• growing up a slow reader and pushing through re-reading fatigue 
• learning to read better with context, pacing, highlighting and notes 
• using nonfiction to gain deep knowledge without formal study 
• scepticism about shallow credentials and doing your own research 
• deleting apps, cancelling subscriptions and escaping doomscrolling 
• rebuilding attention span and training low-stim focus 
• stress reduction, memory protection and long-term brain health 
• fiction and classic literature as perspective training 
• books and authors mentioned including How To Read A Book, Ernest Hemingway, East Of Eden and George Orwell 

Christ is King, Jesus loves you, and He's coming back soon

Transcript

An Awkward Intro And A Promise

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to The Ministry of Man Pod, Episode 30. And guess what? Over the last 30 episodes, I still do not feel overly comfortable doing an intro to the thing. I wanna I wanna just be in the middle of the pod before it's like already. Right now I want to be in the middle of the pod. I don't want to be doing the intro, but you have to do an intro, I feel like, of some sort. And so now that I've said that, that's become part of the intro, and now I'm just gonna have to jump into the topic of today, which I know that you're all eagerly on the edge of your seat for. So as you might have known, as I might have suggested in previous podcasts, and I say might because I genuinely don't remember a lot of the things that I say on here, even though I mean what I say, but I don't know what I what topics I've covered and what details I've shared. One

Why Reading Feels Like A Dying Art

SPEAKER_00 1:13

of those details that I may or may not have shared is that I've been reading a lot. And this is a new thing for me. So I was not like my my life in recent months is not a very good reflection on what my life has been like in all of the years up until the last few months, six months or so, let's say. And so I want to share today on some of the things that I've learned and have found to be extraordinarily valuable and why I think that everyone should be reading books. Because I do feel like it's act it's more of a dying art with all of the different forms of entertainment, and you know, once upon a time, the forms of entertainment was only to read a book. Like reading literature was was probably one of the only things. I mean, aside from obviously physical activities and game, like physical games and stuff like that. But as far as like sitting down to enjoy something, like nowadays you can play board games, you can play video games, you can watch movies, watch TV shows. I mean, I guess at some point you could sit down and and listen to a story on the radio. I mean, that would be pretty cool. In another world, that's what I would have wanted to do. I would have wanted to be a raccoon, which is a a storyteller. But but needless to say, I feel like there's there's a lot of things stacked against people, which I'll get into that that are maybe deterring people away from reading. Especially because I don't know, man, like a lot of there's a lot of books being written these days, and there's just the ones that seem to be doing well are just like the the romanticy genre, and it's just creepy and weird, like the smart stuff. I've talked about that before. That's just weird. Anyway, so I am gonna talk about why I think everyone should read.

Audiobooks Count, But You Miss Things

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Now I when I say this, I distinctly don't mean like I'm not including audiobooks in this, and I'll explain why. Because I'm not one of those people that's like, oh, if you only read the audiobook, you didn't read the book. Like I don't get like I I still would like in a lot of ways, like 99% count that. Like maybe maybe maybe not 90%, maybe like 90%. Like I don't mind audiobooks. Uh, because like if you think about it, if if it's a non-fiction book, you're just extracting the information, which is what you want to do, so you can do that by listening to it as if if you as long as you can retain it. Uh, and if it's a fiction book, then some and someone's just reading you the story, then why not? Like, I don't I don't really see the the big deal. But there are other things that you miss out on. I think you do miss out on some collateral benefits if you if you choose the audiobook over the the actual book. And so I'll go through some of those things as what I think that they're missing out on. But um, but yeah, I don't like the whole pretentious thing. Like I I'm on both sides because I'm also like if you listen to the audiobook, then you didn't read the book. So stop telling people that you read the book. People go, oh yeah, I read that, and you go, oh yeah, and they go, Well, I listened to it on audiobook. Well, then you didn't you didn't actually read it, and so stop saying that. But also the people that do read the books, like you're not better than the person who listened to the audiobooks because you read it. Like, it's not a it's not like there's nothing to be, there's no pride in that. So like it's such a weird thing. It's like, I don't know. People will be pretentious about literally anything if they given, if given the opportunity, they'll just try and I don't know, whatever. Anyway,

Slow Reading, Dyslexia, And School Struggles

SPEAKER_00 5:06

let me give you a little bit of a brief outline. A friend of mine recently said that he was encouraged when I told him that I'm a slow reader, but he knows how much I read. And so he he got some encouragement from that to be like, oh wow, okay, you read a lot, but you're a slow reader. I'm a slow reader too. Maybe I can get into reading as well because it is defeating sometimes, like knowing that you are not very good at the thing. And so uh my background with reading is that like I I've never been a I wouldn't say a good reader. I think I actually have a slight touch of dyslexia because uh I was I've watched a lot of anime and subtitled anime. Well, I used to watch it with one of my old housemates. We used to watch it all the time. We watched all of Bleach, like 366 episodes of Bleach, all subtitled, and I I kid you not, like I like I thought there was something wrong with the the subtitles on the show because I was like they get they keep getting the words back to front on like a bunch of the things that I'm reading, and it turns out that that wasn't what was happening, and my brain was doing that. So so not only do I have a slight it's not bad though, like I um it you know it'll you can tell if you've got it, like if it's bad, because I can read, but also uh when words get jumbled up, you can quickly this is why I know it's not bad for me, because I can quickly re-hang on that's I've read that wrong. Let me read the sentence again and then read it properly. So it's only like a smidgen of dyslex, but but it's there, it exists. Like it happens to my to when I read. So there's that. So not not a not a great reader for that reason. I'm also super slow, as I mentioned, very, very slow reader. Oftentimes, like it was it wasn't uncommon for me to not actually finish a test, and typically like I wouldn't even get up to the last questions because I would just take so long to read the questions, like I would take so long to read and comprehend as well. Because obviously, the the ability to read fast means nothing if you're not understanding what it is that you're reading. So you have to be able to comprehend what you're reading as well, and so I'm just I'm a quite a slow processor when it comes to reading, at the at you know, most of the time. There's some days where I get on a bit of a roll, but most of the time I'm pretty pretty slow to process the things that I'm that I'm reading. I've had people literally laugh at me in in like a couple of years ago, like not even that long ago, because it was taking so long to read a paragraph. Uh I was in a special spelling class. So when I was in the in in the sixth grade, I was asked with a bunch of other people, maybe like there might have only been like six of us in the in the this room, taken to a different room to to do spelling. But they didn't tell us that we were in a special spelling class. I was like, why am I here with like all these people that have certain qualities and attributes that I felt were not similar to my own. Come to find out, uh, yeah, apparently I wasn't doing so well linguistically, but but that's just another thing, add that to the list. Uh and look, still to this day, although I have gotten a lot faster in reading, I'm still not like I wouldn't be faster than the average reader for sure. And I'm I'm I'm slow compared to like a good proficient reader for sure. And so I found that through the being slow at reading and maybe not being able to comprehend the words a lot, like you know, back then, especially when I was younger, I didn't have a very large vocabulary, I didn't have a large bag of vocabs to draw from. So I couldn't read, I couldn't understand a lot of what I was reading. So a lot of people that have this issue will be able to relate to the fact that you could read an entire page and you weren't listening. Like you've you've read the whole page and you were thinking of something else completely. And then you got to read the whole page again. And by the time you finish that the page, if someone asks you, what did you just read? You go, I forgot, I forgot again. It's like I've read the same sentence 10 times over and just been like, Whoa, hang on, like what is whatever for whatever reason, I just keep reading these this sentence and it's just not going in. And then when you get to that point, you do just want to give up. Like you're just like, it's just not working for me. I'm just I'll just listen to a podcast or listen to whatever. And so that's like that's one of the the hurdles, and and uh and it it's really frustrating for one because you feel like you're wasting time. Like you sit there, you know, I'm gonna read this book, and you could read 10 pages and you're like, man, it's just not going in. And so it can be really, really frustrating. So I was I was adamant that I wanted to be able to to to remedy this. Like I'm a big believer in you can you can figure anything out, whatever the problem is, you can solve the problem. So if someone can read really good, well then that means that that anyone could, including myself. I but I don't I believe that you know, although I might not be the number one thing, that I should be able to at least become skilled or proficient in absolutely anything. And I so I was determined I'm going to learn how to read properly, and so I bought a book called How to Read

Learning How To Read Better

SPEAKER_00 10:53

a Book. Now, funnily enough, I didn't actually end up getting around to finishing the book, but don't let that deter you from what I'm about to say next, because the the stark takeaways that I got from this book were like I read maybe half the book, the first half. And the reason I didn't finish it was because it started to get into understanding how to read poetry and how to read different things. You you read non-fiction and fiction differently. So more more prominently, the lesson that I learned is that there are different levels of reading education that you can get to. So most people, let's say, learn to read when they're in primary school. Now, they stop being taught how to read in primary school, and then they use what they'd been taught for the rest of their lives. And so you can safely say most people are walking around with an elementary level of reading education. However, there are actually higher levels of reading education that you can get to, and this is what the book goes through with you. And so I was able to increase my ability to be able to read, retain, and understand what it was that I was reading. And so that was kind of what kicked off. Now, this was a few years ago that I read this particular book, and I've been, I was off and on with reading for a little bit. But that's where that's where I began. My journey into reading was I'm going to, if I'm going to spend any time reading a book, I want to make sure that I am understanding it because I'm just going to waste my time otherwise. And so I'm going to, I'm going to make my foundation reading education. And I'm going to learn how it is that people can read so quickly and understand it. What are they doing? And turns out, yeah, things like the pace in which you read and what it is that you're reading, these things help. What uh when you get a book to read the blurb at the back, so you actually understand and have some context of what it is, you can read each chapter. So you, and a lot of the time a book will have a chapter and then it will have some sort of like, you know, parts within the chapter, like little subheaders. And so reading those subheaders and kind of getting to know the book before you're reading it. I know, especially when I started to read the Bible, I didn't understand things like Romans and Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, all of these books that are in the Bible, until someone told me, and I learned that oh, these books here, from Romans right through to Titus, these are actually written by this guy named Paul. And uh the the Paul writes nine letters, the first nine epistles he writes to seven different churches, and so he's writing letters, so you you're kind of understanding what's happening. You're like, oh, so Paul wrote Romans to the Romans, to the Roman church. He wrote Ephesians to the church in Ephesus, in the city of Ephesus, and and so on. Uh so when when you understand the oh, okay, I get it now. So now I've got a bit of frame of reference of what's actually happening in in the words that I'm reading. So these are like little things. Even even highlighting and underlining books will help you to retain and remember things. To digest, if you're reading something and you want to learn, you can even make notes and take notes. That that helps to retain. You can uh even if you're having trouble with pacing, putting your finger under the line and actually reading along significantly helps with pacing because you can kind of follow your finger as a and choose your own pace and find one that feels comfortable. It's really weird and it's it sounds kind of childish because that's what children do when they're learning to read. But the reason that they do it is because it makes it easier to do, and so it doesn't stop making it easier just because you're an adult now. So if you have trouble with reading and retaining and pacing and all that, putting a finger under the word and going along significantly helps, or it can do for some people. I know it helped me, but I don't need to do it anymore. But when I first started, I was doing that and it was it was really helping. So that's just I guess a little bit of encouragement as to reading, getting into reading if you're if you're not into it, and a little bit of my background, just so you know that like you it doesn't matter where you start, like you can have this the chip stacked against you and still become a good reader. Like I've read more, what what are we in? We're in May. I've already read more books this year. I think I've read maybe eight or nine books this year, and that's more than I read all of last year, all of 2025. So you can grow and develop and yeah, and and read read more proficiently.

Nonfiction Knowledge Without Uni Debt

SPEAKER_00 15:53

So now I want to get into uh some of the benefits of it. Now, the the books that I started reading and that got me into reading were non-fiction books. And they the I'll speak about them first and then I'll move on to maybe fiction later on. So the the obviously the distinct factor of nonfiction books is just the pure amount of information that you're able to get that you probably wouldn't be able to get as thoroughly. Like when you listen to a podcast or or you listen to an interview or something, you're able to get information from that person, but when it's in the form of a book, they don't have a time limit. And you also go at the pace that you go at. So you can really study the book. You can sit there and kind of digest and chew on everything that you're kind of reading. You can take your time with it, and you're able to absorb a lot of information and a lot of information that is, let's say, valuable. I mean, also you're usually choosing the books that you're already interested in and that you want to find out more about. And so you can become not like an expert, but you can become really well-rounded in knowledge of a subject just by like getting stuck into like a book or a or a couple of books on a topic. You can really go in deep and delve into something. So, first of all, like that as a man as well, I think that part, like the learning and being knowledgeable on things is is really important for men. Like, you don't you don't want to be the jacked guy, the Chad kind of sporty athletic guy that's just like a numbskull. Like you don't want to be the the archetype of just the the idiot jock kind of thing who's just like all he knows is lift heavy thing and then just doesn't know how to think for himself, kind of thing. Like you don't want to be that guy, and like in you don't want to be the other way around either. Like you don't want to be the stereotypical nerdy bookworm that doesn't, you know, can't protect anyone or help anyone, is basically just uh a little boy with a big brain. Like you don't want to be either of that. There's a a Greek named uh Thucydides that says the society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools. Now, to be fair, that quote is attributed to Thucydides, but it it is also attributed probably more likely to William Butler in around the 20th century. But needless to say, I mean, it's a like that's true. Like you don't want to have like a society of really great thinkers that are all cowards, or of these incredible fighting athletes that are fools and are just stupid, basically. So you do want to kind of cover all bases, and the the age that we live in now as well, this is really cool. You can literally just buy like we've got access to so much information, unrestricted, unfiltered information, and you can just go and buy textbooks from courses, like you can look up the course, a course list of okay, what books is this psychology degree going to be studying? And you can look at the books and you can just buy the textbooks. I've literally bought textbooks that were listed on for for certain degrees, uh university degrees, just because I'm interested in the subject, but I don't want to have $100,000 in in hex debt. But I you don't have to. Like, if the goal, I mean it depends what you the goal is. Obviously, you can go and educate yourself and not have any formal accreditation. But if you're just interested in educating yourself because you're interested in the topics and you don't actually want to maybe work in that field, but you want to be studied in that area, then you can just buy the textbooks. Like you buy the books that they're all learning and you just read it yourself. And sure, it might take a little bit longer and you have to rely on your ability to be able to comprehend it what it is that you're reading without it being taught to you by someone that's a professional or an educator. But to be honest, these days, I feel like I don't trust a lot of the educators. I don't trust that um there isn't going to be some political agenda in the universities because it seems to always be. It's always like, oh my gosh. The other day I heard someone try and say that they they did an arts degree or an no, what was it? It was a degree, I don't know exactly what it was, but it was something to do with art. And their professor was teaching the class that there is no difference in beauty between the Mona Lisa and the banana that was taped to the wall. Like I don't know if anyone remembers seeing that, but there was it was in an art gallery, a banana taped to the wall. And this person was trying to say, no, well, because you know, art is just subjective. Like you can't you can't honestly say that one thing is more beautiful than the other. And this is like you know, part of why our society is getting uglier and deteriorating because there is an attack on the the good, the true, and the beautiful. And you know, I've I'll speak about that another day again because I've already spoken about it a little bit. But yeah, I mean, so I I personally prefer to do my own research and study, and that includes researching and studying the sources of which I'm getting more resources, you know. You know what I'm trying to say? Like, I want to look at the authors of these books. I want to look at are these books you know looked upon as being edgy or fringe, or is this the can the general consensus? And what is the opposition to it? Blah blah blah. You you get what I'm trying to say. So That's what I prefer to do anyway. I prefer to decide the things that I'm going to learn. And to be honest, a lot of people with degrees these days don't even know much about their own degree because you can kind of just you can get by. That's the thing that I don't like about a lot of formal education is that there are ways that you the testing process isn't that vigorous. Like I know people that have got degrees and I know what they're like. Like a lot of my friends went to university and I know what they were doing in their spare time. And I know that they were like rocking up hungover and just sort of like just scraping through the bottom of the barrel, and but they were getting a pass is a pass. Like when it comes to a degree, you can get like a high distinction and you can get whatever, but a pass is a pass, you can still have the degree, even though you've just scraped in the bare minimum. And so, yeah, some people have degrees and they don't know anything about their own degree. And there's also there's somewhat of an incentive for that too. Like, if you are like, okay, well, I can get the degree with doing less work. Why would I want to do more work? You know, if if you're someone that's just after the degree and not actually genuinely interested in the topic. So I prefer to do my own research anyway. So there's one thing.

Screen Time, Doomscrolling, And Deleting Apps

SPEAKER_00 23:20

The next thing is it's just such a better way to utilize your time. So rather than doom scrolling or ledaring, you're actually doing something that is beneficial to your overall well-being, to your health, to you just being a more educated individual. It's just a more practically useful thing to do than some of the time-wasting things that we have. So, like obviously, we're living in a world that is full of entertainment and full of distraction. And in that type of world, reading is almost an act of rebellion because it's it's not falling into the the goy slop, it's not falling into the oh, just the wasted time and hours and the oh just the the life-wasting things that are presented in front of us. Yes, we get entertained, yes, we we find it pleasurable to to some degree, but at what cost? That's the real question. Because you've this is your life. Australians log an average of roughly five and a half to six hours per day on smartphones alone, just on the phone, on the smartphone. Not it's not including all screens. That's crazy, man. Adults and and the general population average uh screen-based activities sit between 39 to 46 hours per week, which is equal to somewhere in the range of 30 to 42 percent of all waking hours. 30 to 40 percent of your waking hours are on a screen-based activity. And depending on on that, I mean, like, you know, five and a half to six hours per day is smartphones. Like, if you think about it, like how many hours in the day I guess like you know, people multitask and they go on their phone while at work and they go on their phone while while actually watching a movie too, and so they they double up on the screen. So I don't know if you know, does that count? Is that more hours on screens? If I've got my phone, my laptop, and and the TV going, am I triple time? Is that is that 3Xing my screen time? Or is that just one screen time? It's crazy, man. Under 30s average eight to nine hours per day, by the way, with Gen Z upwards of 7.3 hours just on mobile devices. So it's like different age demographics, like the five and a half to six hours is going to be impaired by like elderly people and by babies. So to to look at a I guess a more accurate idea of the time for the person listening to this, which is probably going to be in the in the under 30s or somewhere in between like you know, the young adult range, like 18 to 40, I think is is kind of the the range, but under 30s average eight to nine hours per day on mobile phones, and Gen Z are reporting upwards of 7.3 hours just on mobile devices per day. Oh, can you it's just crazy to think that like phones weren't even around. Like I was around when there was no mobile phones. And do you understand how practical my life was? How much I was doing physically. Like I feel like there's just so many things I do now that are just indoor activities. Used to be so much more active, and I try to be active. I go to the gym and I'm I'm obviously at work a lot now, and and part of what I'm doing with this whole podcast requires me to be on a screen for a little bit longer. But but man, honestly, you here's it here's some practical advice. Delete the things, delete, delete things. If you've got games on your phone, delete games on your phone and watch what happens. Watch what happens when you don't have a game on your phone, what your brain will be drawn to, because you can't just be your brain won't let you be bored forever. Okay, so when you when you delete games off your phone that you normally play, or whether it be social media, deactivate social media, delete the games, whatever the thing is that's drawing you to the mobile device. If you delete them, watch what happens. You feel like picking up the phone and you go, Oh, there's nothing on there, you put it down, and you go what now? And your brain will come up with something that you're entertained by. It won't allow you to be perpetually bored. You will find joy and entertainment in something else. And so you can kind of like almost what's the what's the word you use to carve? Why am I asking? You you can't answer me back. Like whittle, is it whittle? You whittle down a stick, whatever the word is, I think you get it. You your brain will do that it anyway, it'll it'll finally carve out something that you find entertaining, and then you'll do that. And so for me, like reading is has filled that gap. But yeah, deleting games off your phone, delete like cancel subscriptions, cancel Netflix, and like honestly, it will it will definitely suck at first, but you will reap the rewards, the benefits. Think of the Bennies. I feel like some people just don't consider the Bennies, and there's so many Bennies, bro. Okay, so it's it's your life. I mean, it's your life, do it with it what you may. But if you you're not gonna be 90 wishing that you played more games on the phone or wishing that you just had another bit of a scroll on the old Instagram, Facebook, YouTube shorts, or whatever the TikTok is.

Attention Span And Building Focus

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Next one developing your brain. So first of all, the elephant in the room is just purely your ability to be able to concentrate for longer periods of time. Like you, you when you read, you are actively developing your ability to be able to sit there and focus on one thing for an extended period of time, not these sharp little reels that come two seconds here, two seconds there. It's something that you can you can build, you can build your ability to be able to focus and concentrate for longer periods of time. And I can actually do that now. I couldn't do it before. I can I could raw dog or flight to Beijing, brother. It's low stim. I think that's the thing. It's like reading is low stim. So like obviously, anyone can concentrate on something high stim for a long period of time. You probably feel exhausted after it. But like video games, for example, people can binge video games, people can binge a TV show. It's high stim. We're looking at the low stim. That's the thing. It's the low stim where the brain is diffy. So I'll read this thing. This is this I actually my jaw was dropped after reading this. So let me let me prep you for this. This was posted on on American Psychological Association on their website. It was researched by Dr. Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine. Okay, she reveals that the average attention span on on a digital screen has plummeted. In 2004, it was roughly around two and a half minutes. Today it's around 47 seconds. Like your attention span is decreasing the more you use short form content. It's it's cracking your brain. That is scary, but it's not irreparable. That's the thing. Like on average, I heard that the the average attention span. Now, I I would want to go and fact check this this because I just heard this from someone told me this. But the on average, like global attention span has dropped by about seven seconds. Now, this was a few years ago, and I imagine if that's true, that it's gotten worse. Because why wouldn't it have gotten worse? Like, who's actively making steps to prevent that from happening? We're giving smartphones to kids, like little kids. There it's it's you know, you heard about the whole Cocoa Melon, I think it's called Cocoa Melon, where it's specifically generated and tailored to keep kids' attention span locked in for as long as possible. And so they make the the changes of scene shorter than a than a normal show. They make sure the scene changes quicker than other shows, and that the particular colors that they have, they make them somewhat clash. So it's so it's uh it's an even higher stimuli. It's crazy. This is a baby show, man. Like, what is going on? I tell you what, dude, like you gotta be careful, man. Okay, so that's that's one of the benefits in developing your brain, right? Is obviously the increased uh ability to concentrate. The next thing is when you read, your linguistic intelligence actually increases as well. So your vocabulary increases because you're obviously being exposed to more words. And if you're if you're wanting to read and understand what it is that you're reading, you'll want to find out what those words mean. And then when that happens, your ability to draw upon those words becomes more fluent, and your use of filler words drop drastically because if you think about it, there are no filler words in books. So you're getting familiar and used to reading words in a particular way, you're reading a stream of words at once, then you don't feel like you need to use filler words because it's just not something that you're around a lot. Now, granted, I still use filler words, but it's gotten way better. Way better. When I tell you the first episode of this podcast, the amount of editing that I had to do, and I still didn't like was there's still so many ums and ahs and whatever in the first thing. But by gosh, if you go back and listen to the first episode, the way that I speak is so much worse. And obviously, I've been reading a lot since then. Like, I think I started this podcast like over six months ago, so like, or I guess 30 or 31 weeks ago, it would have been. So in the last 31 weeks, I've been reading a lot, and I feel like my ability to speak more fluently has increased. And I would attribute that one to doing the podcast, but also to just doing reading. I'm only doing this less than an hour a week, so it's not a lot that I'm actually speaking long periods of time. The reading is what I'm doing the most of in a week. So that is uh that is another thing, and yeah, so that so that's um that's another benefit.

Stress, Memory, And Brain Protection

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Another benefit, there was a study done at the University of Sussex demonstrated, let me read this, demonstrated that six minutes of silent reading can reduce stress levels by 68%. In fact, it says reading works better and faster than other methods, such as listening to music, going for a walk, or sitting down for a relaxing copper. Now, if you know me, you know how much I love a relaxing copper. Let me tell you that, brother. But if it's a de-stressor, apparently reading is the number one thing. Six minutes. Six minutes. Grab a book, read, and let's get those cortisol levels back down. Let's start to come into a better, healthier mind state, reducing that stress. Another benefit. This is from the Fisher Center of for Alzheimer's Research Foundation. It says, the researchers found that people who participated in mentally challenging activities most often, both early and in late life, had a slower rate of decline in memory compared to those who did not engage in such activities. Even when people had plaques and tangles and other signs of damage to their brains, mental stimulation seemed to help protect memory and thinking skills, accounting for about 14% of the difference in decline beyond what they would be expected. So, and this was this when it says mentally challenging activities, reading was one of the main ones. So that's that's huge, man. That's huge. It's it decreases your likelihood of getting Alzheimer's. Come on, man. Like if that's not enough to get the gears turning, get the cogs turning, and maybe I should be getting into this, checking out this whole reading thing, then it should, you know? Now

Fiction, Classics, And Seeing Other Views

SPEAKER_00 36:05

the last thing that I will say about this is it gives you the ability to be able to understand different perspectives. So let me say this. One of the earliest books that I read of uh nonfiction was a book called The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I think I've mentioned this before. And I absolutely hated the book. I hated it because I didn't understand the format and the ideas of classic literature. I thought it was just going to be a story that you would see, you know, a classic story where there's, you know, because it was somewhat based around, you know, there was a main character and there was a love interest and there was things unfolding. And so obviously I thought, oh, well, this is a love story. And it was like, it's it wasn't about that really at all. It was just a it was about a toxic relationship. And to be honest, I don't remember most of the book because I was most of the book, I'm sure now, after reading other Ernest Hemingway books, that all of the gold is is in the journey. It's like the the conversations that they have and the ideas that they express. That's the why you would read a book like that, is because you're trying to look at a perspective, you're trying to look at an idea being presented. And I missed completely all of that. Because I was just like, what is the storyline? And that was all I was focused on. And so I absolutely hated the book. And I didn't want to read any Ernest Hemingway again, and it took a lot for me to read it, but it was only after coming to the understanding of now I know why these authors are so highly accredited. It isn't because they write an amazing, gripping tale, it's that they they have these really interesting philosophical perspectives or these relational dynamics that are really relatable because they're real and it's not it's not like uh an imaginary story oftentimes. It's something you can relate to that you hear that happens in real life. Not everything has to be a fairy tale and have a fairy tale ending. And so this is what what reading, especially classic literature, it forces you to see the world through a different lens. And if you aren't open to that, then you you'll completely miss it because I could read a book and think, okay, well, you know, like Wuthering Heights, for example, as it's kind of somewhat topically relevant. That there isn't a lot of people in that book that you're really rooting for. You you can't read the book and be like, okay, I can't see myself in this book. And I also can't say that I agree with a lot of people in this book. Maybe there's one one person who's sort of hearing the information, uh, as as Bothering Heights is kind of strange. It's it's like it's kind of read through someone retelling the story to someone else. Uh, and that's someone, yeah, anyway. So, but yeah, but the point being that there there isn't you're just you're almost just like an observer of what's happening, and you're just like looking at the ideas, you're looking at wow, this what I'm looking at here is uh is this person believes in this idea. So I I didn't have the ability to do that with with Hemingway, and so at the time, and so all of the subtleties were completely lost on me. And I had to develop that skill, I had to develop the the ability to to try and understand okay, what is the perspective that this person is is putting through and kind of go from there. So at the moment, I'm currently reading East of Eden, which I'm about halfway through, and it's a really, really interesting book. Uh I won't say too much about it yet. And thankfully, there's actually a Netflix series coming out in a few months about East of Eden. I say thankfully because I'm gonna be able to be the pretentious book reader guy now, which I was able to do with Wuthering Heights. Um, but you you know, one is one. You want to be you want to be able to do it more, and so even if East of Eden, the Netflix adaptation is amazing and great, I'm still gonna be the guy that's been like, yeah, but have you read the book? The book's so much better. If you if you read the book, you'll hate the movie. And so, anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway. But there's certain perspectives that he's putting forth in the book, and I might agree with it, but I also like you have to afford yourself the ability to not agree with it, but still understand what they're saying. So, Aristotle, he says it is the mark of an intelligent mind to be able to comprehend an idea without accepting it. That is a that is a skill to be able to do that. A lot of people cannot do that, they can't understand the like come to to see something from another perspective if it's not their own perspective. They're not able to entertain the idea. This is this, you see this in politics a lot, where it's like, you know, okay, well, this is a good example, actually. So, George Orwell, I read 1984, and I and I thought that was a brilliant book. I thought it was amazing. Obviously, it's a classic for a reason. Incredible. Couldn't recommend it enough. Now, he also I he he has a small book called Why I Write. Now I bought this, it was it was actually a compilation of four different writings that he had. And it turns out, and I didn't know this because it's not really expressed well through 1984, his political beliefs, but he's a he's a democratic socialist, a stark and and and avid democratic socialist. But listening to him explain why he is was fascinating because he was writing the these works through the war. And so he's very anti-capitalism. And listening to his reasons of why he's against capitalism was very interesting, even though I am in favor of that. I I think capitalism's great, but at the same time, I'm not super well versed in you know political ideas and and economics. But from what I do know, I mean, you have to, I guess, this is where I've landed. And so uh, but listening to his ideas, I'm like, oh wow, okay, yeah, that's that perspective. It makes sense that you think that because during the war, the World War II, none of the capitalists wanted to help. They didn't want like the idea of you know capitalism being a free market, which is great because everyone's kind of on a level playing field as far as what you're capable of doing, the opportunities there. Uh, and there's incentive as well. There's obviously an inbuilt incentive for someone to better their life, whereas in some other formats, there's there's very little incentive for people to work really hard if everyone's kind of getting the same share. So that's a benefit. But then what was happening was that none of the big capitalists wanted to help, you know, they're like, why would we want to manufacture tanks when we can manufacture some cars to sell and that's going to make us more money? And so it was interesting anyway, for the for the very least, like being able to see it from a different perspective. But but that's what anyway, that's one of the added benefits in in reading fiction will do. It'll it'll not only expose you to a lot of different ideas as well, by the way, just the the actual idea of learning through story. I've done multiple podcast episodes on the importance and significance of stories and how we learn through that. So go back and listen to them. But uh but also just being exposed to these different ideas that you that don't really translate in movies and that uh not not nearly as well. But uh but anyway, so that's my that's my thoughts on why I think everyone should read what. I love reading. Why I'm so glad that I spent a bit of time to invest in myself and my ability to be able to read, and I recommend that you do it too. And

Final Takeaway And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 44:08

so, if I can leave you with anything, I'll leave you with this. Christ is King, Jesus loves you, and He's coming back soon. Gotcha. Gotcha. I don't know if people skip the end, but if you did, I got you on that. And so anyway, thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for uh tuning in. I really appreciate it. Give us a like, a subscribe, a follow, a share. Tell your friend, tell your neighbor, we're coming in hot. We're gonna be in every household in the next by we're gonna be in every single household by 2020. And when we get there, you're gonna be one of the people who go, I was there from the start. And so, you know, people are gonna remember who recommended this this show to them, and you're gonna be that person because you were there first. So, anyway, thanks again for listening. I love you all. Be blessed, my my brothers and my sisters be blessed in Jesus' name. Amen.