Allowing video to crowd out reading means trading selecting and constructing for patience and willingness to follow direction. It’s a poor bargain in the age of AI.

You’re reading Open Questions, Joshua Rothman’s weekly column exploring what it means to be human. What do you read, and why? A few decades ago, these weren’t urgent questions. Reading was an ...

Reading for pleasure in the U.S. fell 40% over two decades, the study found. Fewer Americans are opening a book for fun each day, with reading for pleasure in the United States down 40% over the past ...

The New Year has a funny way of making everything feel possible, including finishing a book without getting “distracted” by a ...

The Lede Reporting and commentary on what you need to know today. This way of perceiving social reality—and particularly a person’s reading life—may seem inane, even deranged. But performative reading ...

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. If you read a book in 2025—just one book—you belong to an endangered species. Like honeybees and red wolves, ...