Moment 53 - Why Doing This Is More Important Than Ever Before: Johann Hari

The segment opens with the interviewer asking why reading still matters when so much information is now consumed digitally. Johann Hari says first that his case is "not a snooty thing at all", and then turns to the scale of the decline. He says that 57% of Americans now read no book at all in a given year. He calls this the first time in the history of the American Republic that this has been true, and adds that Britain is "a bit better than that" but "not by much."

57% of Americans now never read a book in any given year.

Hari then sets out the claim behind the rest of the discussion. He says the decline in reading runs in both directions with attention, being "partly a symptom of our declining attention and partly a cause of it." On this view, falling attention leads people to read fewer books, and reading fewer books further weakens attention.