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It’s our first literary – and marital – debate! Which is the best way to consume books: audiobooks or paper books? Essayist and critic Maris Kreizman prefers to listen to her books while comedian Josh Gondelman wants to physically hold what he’s reading. And their job today is to convince Aminatou Sow to pick their preferred format. Maris loves that audiobooks allow her to multitask and thinks the reading experience can be enhanced when an author reads their own work aloud. Josh loves being forced to only focus on the words when he’s reading a book and wants to interpret the works for himself without someone else’s performance influencing him. Aminatou must consider the arguments on both sides and declare a winner in the battle between audiobooks and paper books.

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Keep up with Aminatou Sow @aminatou on Instagram and X. And stay up to date with us @LemonadaMedia on X, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Josh Gondelman, Aminatou Sow, Maris Kreizman

Aminatou Sow  00:00

I’m Aminatou Sow, and I’m a writer who loves pop culture. So welcome to Pop Culture Debate Club from Lemonada, and the BBC. We bring on some of the funniest, smartest folks in the biz to go head to head over TV, music and movies that we love. And because I’m the judge, I get to choose the winner. Today we are discussing the merits of audiobooks versus hard copy books. This idea is a little bit different than the kinds of things we usually cover on the show, but I’m very excited about it. Let’s meet the people who brought the idea to us in the first place. Joining me today is essayist, book critic and creator of the Maris review newsletter and podcast, Maris Kreizman and stand up comedian Emmy, award winning writer and essayist Josh Gondelman.

 

Aminatou Sow  02:39

Guys, thanks for being here. You were like, on my like, dream pairing to come on the show, so I couldn’t believe that you said, yes.

 

Maris Kreizman  02:46

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

 

Josh Gondelman  02:49

Thank you so much. I’m so delighted to come on this program to argue publicly with my beloved wife.

 

Aminatou Sow  02:54

Well, okay, I’m so glad that we’re telling the people that you’re married, because what if we just didn’t.

 

Josh Gondelman  02:59

I don’t want to sneak anything past him. I don’t want him to like, be speculating. Be like, what’s this chemistry that we’re feeling?

 

Aminatou Sow  03:05

My king of transparency, we love it. That’s right. Okay so when we reached out to you to be on the show, you pitched us the topic we’re going to discuss today, which is audio books versus hard copy books. Why did you want to go with this?

 

Maris Kreizman  03:19

I found it fairly difficult to come up with things that we disagree about.

 

Aminatou Sow  03:27

Oh, check your married and love privilege at the door.

 

Josh Gondelman  03:31

No, I agree that’s that’s this that was, like, a big part of choosing this topic, because, like, it’s also there are things that we we have different preferences, but it’s not like they’re strong enough to argue about in most cases. Like Amaris will be like, oh, I like to watch the show. And I’ll be like, I’ll skip it. Oh, then you can watch it while I’m out, and that’s okay.

 

Aminatou Sow  03:53

Wow, you guys are resolving arguments in like, healthy ways in your household. Please tell me more about that, and please pass that that luck along to me.

 

Josh Gondelman  04:02

Anything more serious than this, and it’s like, well, I don’t feel comfortable.

 

Aminatou Sow  04:11

Okay. Well, we love a low stakes debate. We’re all for keeping families and marriages intact on pop culture Debate Club, okay? Maris, well, if it’s not like I guess I don’t even want to make assumptions. But like, what format are you picking today?

 

Maris Kreizman  04:26

I am picking audio books because I do enjoy listening to them.

 

Aminatou Sow  04:30

Wow, so my assumptions were wrong.

 

Maris Kreizman  04:34

And so all of the books that you might see in the background on this zoom, most of them are mine.

 

Josh Gondelman  04:39

Most, wow, except for when you look over your other shoulder and those ones are mine,

 

Aminatou Sow  04:44

Yeah, but those are arranged kind of messy.

 

Josh Gondelman  04:46

Yeah, they’re messy.

 

Aminatou Sow  04:47

For the people at home, there are hundreds of books. Was it easy combining books when you started dating? Or was it like something that you were like at?

 

Josh Gondelman  04:56

No point if we combine books separate bookshelves still like the. The way couples in the 50s slapped.

 

Aminatou Sow  05:02

You’re like two different beds, two different bookshelves.

 

Josh Gondelman  05:05

Now we sleep one bed, two shelves. That’s our marriage motto. It’s on the crest.

 

Aminatou Sow  05:11

Wait, Maris, what was your gateway into books on tape?

 

Maris Kreizman  05:16

So when I was a kid, my aunt listened to them all the time, and she would like, go for walks and, like, sweat her arms real fast, and she was.

 

Aminatou Sow  05:24

Wait, like, on a Walkman, or.

 

Maris Kreizman  05:26

On a Walkman, like, for sure, like, actual tapes, cassette tapes, and I remember that and thinking, they’re cool. And then it took me, it took me, I think, until lockdown, to actually get really, really into audiobooks. I worked as an audiobooks editor for a long time in the mid aughts, and I just still didn’t like audiobooks. So it took me, it took me this long to like, really appreciate what they do.

 

Aminatou Sow  05:56

What was the first lockdown audiobook?

 

Maris Kreizman  06:00

I remember listening to love as a mixtape by Rob Sheffield. Oh, that’s good, and it’s nice when, you know it’s his story, and he gets to tell it. And you know, I saw.

 

Aminatou Sow  06:14

That’ll do it, that’ll definitely do it. Okay well, Josh.

 

Josh Gondelman  06:19

Yes.

 

Aminatou Sow  06:19

What did you pick? I guess hard copy books?

 

Josh Gondelman  06:24

These are the choices I did pick. I will be arguing in favor of hard copy books. That’s where I stand on this.

 

Aminatou Sow  06:31

Okay, tell me a little bit about why.

 

Josh Gondelman  06:34

So I’m not a person that’s, that’s like coming to this from a place of, like, I need to touch a book. I need to smell a book. I’m coming to it from a place of when I make myself read, which also I should say, Maris reads way more audio books, infinitely more audio books than I do, and also way more hard copy books. So she could do both sides of this argument. But for me, I need when I’m reading a book, I needed to blot out all the other stuff I’m doing. That’s how I focus. I can’t be doing something like, oh, I listen to this audiobook while I take a walk. Because I like, you look at a tree for 45 seconds and then be like, Oh no, the President has been kidnapped. And I have to, like, rewind it. So I’m really I like one of the things I like about the book is that it doesn’t enable multitasking. I can’t do it on a commute, I can’t do it while I or I can’t do it on a commute, but it’s still like, I’m not doing other stuff. I can’t do it while I drive. I can’t do it while I’m also doing other stuff on my phone without putting the book down. So I really love the immersive quality of a book, first and foremost, that it like physically occupies me.

 

Maris Kreizman  07:43

Well, that’s why our apartment is so crowded.

 

Aminatou Sow  07:46

Yeah, it’s like she says, as the books inch forward and just like subsume subsumer, let’s get into it. The rules are pretty simple. Here. It’s your mission to win me over with your argument as to why your pick today is the superior one. So Maris, I’m going to start with you. What is your argument for audiobooks.

 

Maris Kreizman  08:08

Audiobooks are so fun, especially if you do a lot of stress cleaning like I do, it’s the perfect companion for when you want to mop the floor, they get into your brain in a different way. And I like having that second input, because my eyes get tired. My eyes get really tired now, and my favorite kinds of audiobooks enhance the story and don’t take away from it. So like, narration should be more just a method of storytelling rather than a full performance, because I do think that takes me out. But I do think that listening to someone read their own memoir is more personal and up close than reading it.

 

Aminatou Sow  08:11

Oh, man, hearing you say that your eyes get tired, I just went to the eye doctor, and they did this test on, like, I don’t know. It turns out they can, like, see how strong or not your your eyes are, and my eyes are not as strong. And he was like, you have the eyes of a not a 40 year old, and much older person, and I gotta do now, I gotta go to physical therapy for my eyes. And I was like, you know, what? Just gonna get into the audiobook game, because it is great, humiliating to do these exercises. And, you know, so that’s, that’s a good enough reason. But here’s the deal. The beef that a lot of people have with audiobooks is that they don’t think that listening to a book counts as much as reading it. What do you say to those people?

 

Maris Kreizman  09:47

I say that if you’re retaining the information, that’s all that matters. Like, yeah, if you’re Josh and you’re out for a walk looking at a tree and you get caught up in the trees.

 

Aminatou Sow  09:56

Wow. Okay, that’s right, ad homonyms, it’s not.

 

Maris Kreizman  09:59

Recording, then it doesn’t really count as reading, but if you really digest all of the information you’re presented, then I don’t think there’s any big difference.

 

Josh Gondelman  10:11

So I think it counts double. And I don’t mean that in a good way. I think listening to a book counts double because you have to, like, it’s like an obstacle course when you’re listening to a book, because it’s like, well, your eyes are doing something else and your hands are doing something else. So like, for me, it takes double the effort to retain an audio book, because if I if I miss something in a book, if my eyes kind of glaze over and I realize I didn’t retain a paragraph, I just go and my eyes go up to the top and I bring them back down. And that’s fine if I miss something on an audio book. Now I have to DJ the book for myself, and I don’t want I don’t need that in my life. I don’t need this kind of like, first screen experience, like I don’t need eyes, ears all brought into it.

 

Aminatou Sow  10:53

This is such an interesting proposition, though, this because you’ve mentioned it twice now, and I’m trying to decide what kind of reader I am. If you feel like you’ve missed a paragraph, do you like, rewind in the like, I mean, like, truly, do you go back the paragraph previously and try to understand? Because that’s me, and it’s why I get so frustrated when I’m reading. Or do you just, like, power along and you go, context is going to provide the clues for me? I’ll back it up. I always thought that was, like, a me ADHD thing, but it really like I cannot move forward from a paragraph if I have not, if I don’t get what it’s about, I just can’t move forward in a book.

 

Maris Kreizman  11:28

And the nice thing about audiobooks these days, digital audiobooks is that you can just press a button go back 30 seconds.

 

Josh Gondelman  11:36

Okay, I don’t need to turn everything into a podcast. Okay? I love, I’m currently recording a podcast. I love listening to podcasts that’s for that’s for chores. The podcasts are for chores. Books are for hanging out. And the other thing is, Maris, you read a lot of books for work. And so I can imagine having another method to like be able to accomplish work tasks is really helpful and efficient and enriching. Right? When you’re like, oh, I wish I could be doing that, but I almost never am. Like, like, washing dishes or cooking, and being like, oh, I wish I were also doing another chore.

 

Aminatou Sow  12:17

They don’t assign books at comedy school like you’re you don’t have, like, have, like, a lot of, like, work reading.

 

Maris Kreizman  12:24

How many podcasts do you listen to Josh?

 

Josh Gondelman  12:26

A lot.

 

Aminatou Sow  12:27

How many ballpark, ballpark, how many?

 

Josh Gondelman  12:30

I don’t know, there’s probably, like, five or six in my regular rotation.

 

Aminatou Sow  12:34

Okay, that’s reasonable. I thought you were gonna say, like, a sick number.

 

Maris Kreizman  12:37

I thought you would say more.

 

Josh Gondelman  12:39

Maybe, I mean, maybe there’s more, but some of them fall in and out. But it’s like, I do that. Like, that is, some of it is background noise. Like, there, there’s like, a tier of basketball podcasts that I listen to when I wake up at five o’clock to walk the dog and and then, like, No, I have to fall back asleep. But I’ve already, like, gotten dressed, gone outside, come inside, and I’m like, Okay, well, I’m not ready to sleep yet, so I’ll put on the most boring dudes talking about basketball, and that’ll bring me to sleep. And I don’t want that from books, okay, I want books to, like, be exciting and to and riveting and not background.

 

Aminatou Sow  13:11

Okay, that’s fair, but Josh, what’s your argument for the hard copy books?

 

Josh Gondelman  13:17

Yeah, so, I mean, I feel like I’ve gone pretty hard with this facet, which is that it consumes your attention. I’ve taken some notes.

 

Aminatou Sow  13:26

Let me like, I love it, prepared. I love it.

 

Josh Gondelman  13:29

Here’s something that Maris brought up, of the performance of it, right? The narration of it, I think it gives it mediates between your imagination and the author’s vision. It gives you one more step where things can go wrong, or where your brain can be directed in a way that, like, diminishes your imaginative capacity. So that’s I really do, like the the idea of, okay, the writer wrote this, and I’m taking it in just them to me, like direct skin contact and the with a narrator, it’s a great narrator is, you know, brings you in in a wonderful way. I don’t care how this guy thinks the book sounds, I want it to sound like my brain sounds.

 

Maris Kreizman  14:15

I agree with you on that point, but it’s more that some books can be enhanced by specific performances.

 

Aminatou Sow  14:24

Josh, there is a study that finds that women are about 14% more likely to listen to audio books. I don’t think that’s a huge that’s like a huge probability, like a statistic, but it still is slightly significant. Why do you think that is?

 

Josh Gondelman  14:43

Well, I feel like the Jay Leno version of it is because we don’t listen. You can say everything twice with us. It cuts into our Rogan time. That’s another possible example. Like, I think women read more statistically anyway. So I imagine there’s just like more openness to more Fauci. Formats. Just as the the voraciousness for books grows, I really only know I Maris dad, my father in law, is like the big audiobook man in my life. And he’ll listen to like, a long, long book while he drives and and I’m, like, so impressed by that, because I just he’ll be like, I learned all about World War Two from an audio book on my commute, and they’ll be like, damn, I didn’t learn anything about World War Two. I just learned about like the Knicks.

 

Aminatou Sow  15:32

Let’s take a quick break.

 

Aminatou Sow  17:18

We are back for round two. This is the part of the show where we typically ask our guests about the cultural impacts of their pick and why they think that it made the impact that it did when it came out. You know, but books have been around for millennia, so I’m not gonna ask you to trace. Not gonna.

 

Josh Gondelman  19:07

Yeah, and audiobooks got here, although they’re kind of new in town. They are, you know, we’ll see what their what their staying power is.

 

Aminatou Sow  19:14

Yeah, the audiobooks I want to say, you know, according to my producers over here, became alive in 1932 when the American Foundation for the Blind began releasing books on vinyl. So that’s kind of exciting.

 

Josh Gondelman  19:29

And I should say, if you’re blind, I’m not gonna be like, you gotta open your eyes and read a book blind. Oh, like, I understand that access and accessibility reasons, and this is just me coming from my own curmudgeonly point of view. If you’re, like, actually, it I my vision doesn’t permit, I’m like, well, yeah, that’s I’m not arguing with you. I’m arguing with Maris.

 

Aminatou Sow  19:51

Right, I feel like, thank you for saying that, because this argument is about that, you know, like, it’s like, we always fall into this, like, kind of ableist trap all the time. And it’s like. Listen, everybody should read within the formats that are accessible to them. Accessibility is a huge deal, if it is not a constraint that you have, that’s what we’re talking about today.

 

Josh Gondelman  20:11

Totally, I think that’s that. I’m glad that we made that disclaimer, but also my hope is that blind people listening weren’t mad at us until.this point.

 

Aminatou Sow  20:21

Yes, honestly, if the blind people are mad at us, they are well in their rights to me, we are annoying people in general. So I’ll give I’ll give them that.

 

Josh Gondelman  20:33

Yeah, but I only want blind people to be as mad at me as other people as well. I think I’m Equal Opportunity annoying, right?

 

Aminatou Sow  20:40

I’m an equal opportunity people pleaser. I need everybody on my side, okay, but that said, there are always, like, these debates of like, how much should you read like, how should you read whatever. But there is like, I am noticing at least, maybe it’s just because I’m fully entering my Boomer era. Like, there is such a stark divide between like people who read for comprehension and then like people who read for consumption reasons. Like, there is such a like emphasis right now on, I don’t know, the esthetic of reading the and I it’s not to say that, like, we didn’t have those people, you know, like that, like pretentious reader when you were in high school, or whatever.

 

Josh Gondelman  21:21

Sure.

 

Maris Kreizman  21:21

We just got Pizza Hut from.

 

Aminatou Sow  21:23

Exactly, we got, like, we got pizza coupons from it. It just really breaks my heart. This, you know, this, like, over that, over consumption can also be like, part of someone else’s like, literary experience. You know, I’m like this. This is not how this works. Like there are, there are more books than there are years in one’s life. And the point is not to maximize efficiency on how to get through all of them no.

 

Maris Kreizman  21:47

And the worst is companies like Blinkist, that summarizes books so that people can cram all of the information in their brains as quickly as possible. And to me, that is the opposite of why we read or listen to books, but I think there’s a segment of the population that just wants to be productive all the time, and that’s where that falls.

 

Aminatou Sow  22:14

And on that note, we’re going to take a quick break and move on to our next round.

 

Aminatou Sow  22:29

Hi listeners. Just a heads up that you’re going to hear a shift in the quality of Josh’s Audio in this next segment about halfway through technical difficulties. I know it’s very cliche, but it’s so real here in the podcast world, also Josh and Maris beloved pug busy makes a cameo. Hi guys, we’re back, and this round is all about the power of nostalgia, something that I would love to hear from both of you. I am just wondering if there was also maybe a bookstore that you like to hang out in when you were a teen? Is there like a formative bookstore of your life?

 

Josh Gondelman  24:24

So the independent bookstore in my town, book oasis in Stoneham, Massachusetts, was more of like a vibe than it was a place where I bought books. It was like a tiny used bookstore, and it like didn’t necessarily cater to my needs. I was a big library guy when I was a kid. My grandparents would take me to library when I was really small, and we would like get a whole bunch of books, and I would sit, I would sit and read the live at the library. So that was like the stone home Public Library, and like the librarians there all. I knew them all by name when I was a kid did. And so that was, to me, even, even bigger than a bookstore, because by the time we were going to bookstores to, like, hang out, it was like, kind of I would love, I loved a Barnes and Noble, but there I didn’t have a lot of access to, like, too many indie bookstores where I would go to shop.

 

Aminatou Sow  25:19

Maris, what about you? Is there a formative bookstore that used to hang out in ?

 

Maris Kreizman  25:23

Yeah, I mean, we’re so lucky to live in the heart of indie bookstore land now in Brooklyn. And when I was a kid, I would go to the mall, and I would go to Walden books, and always with a sense of excitement, because I would check to see if there was a new Sweet Valley High or a new Babysitter’s Club. And there often was, they just turned those things out so quickly back then. So that thrill remains. And then, of course, as I grew older, the Barnes Noble opened near me, and I couldn’t believe there is one store with all these books like that. That was still the era of the big box store. Very thrilling.

 

Aminatou Sow  26:08

It was very thrilling. I um, I’ve done some of my best reading in like, a Barnes and Noble like chair, it’s actually shocking how true that is, because.

 

Josh Gondelman  26:19

He puts you in the reading zone, right? You’re like, I’m in a bookstore. There’s books here. All I’m doing is booking.

 

Aminatou Sow  26:27

And it had the thing that the which I’m also a big library person, but, you know, I was like, like, I would go to Barnes and Noble and read all the books I like. Was either embarrassed to buy or like authors I didn’t want to give my money to. So I just like, sit there and be like, this is where I come to read all my bad like, non fiction, and it’s not coming home with me, and I don’t feel bad if I get a little bit of the frappuccino, like, sweat on it. Thank you to Barnes and Noble for that. Okay, we’re moving on to our next round. This is our lightning round, you guys, where I’m just gonna ask you a series of questions and you just get to answer them as quickly as you can, like, there’s no, don’t overthink it too much. We’re just, you know, we’re gonna power through them. Okay, Josh, I’m gonna start with you.

 

Josh Gondelman  27:14

Okay.

 

Aminatou Sow  27:14

I understand that Infinite Jest is a big Touchstone book in your life. How close do you think you can get to the exact duration of the audiobook without going over, I’m gonna give you a little hint. The book is 1100 pages long, like almost?

 

Josh Gondelman  27:30

I’m gonna say that it is 30 hours audio.

 

Aminatou Sow  27:39

It is 64 hours and 11 minutes.

 

Josh Gondelman  27:43

I didn’t go over.

 

Maris Kreizman  27:44

That’s so bad the footnotes at the end.

 

Aminatou Sow  27:48

Yeah, that’s like 64 hours of your life. That’s, yeah, yeah. Okay, Maris, we know that you’re a big fan of the Elena Ferrante novels. So we added up the audiobook duration of My Brilliant Friend, the story of a new name those who leave and those who stay, and the story of the Lost Child. Do you think that the infinite, just audiobook is longer or shorter than these four audio books combined? Shorter? Yes, good job. The Ferrante novels clock in at 66 hours and 50 minutes?

 

Josh Gondelman  28:23

Wow, I can’t imagine Infinite Jest as an audiobook that sounds like what you would listen make someone listen to to make them like, scramble their brains.

 

Aminatou Sow  28:33

Yeah, no, you know it’s probably part of a CIA torture program. Like, for sure, for sure.

 

Josh Gondelman  28:45

Okay, I can do my next question eventually.

 

Aminatou Sow  28:48

Well, the next question is actually for both of you, and it is about busy, if busy suddenly became a human stranger and you saw her out in the world on the subway, at a cafe, on a bench at a park. What book do you think she would be performatively reading in public?

 

Josh Gondelman  29:05

Collected Works? Is Emily Dickinson. She’s like a real homebody introvert. Yeah, no hesitation. That’s my call. Now, what do you think?

 

Maris Kreizman  29:15

I think it would be a little bit more of like of the moment? I think she would be a big Sally Rooney fan.

 

Aminatou Sow  29:23

I think big Swiss only from experiencing busy through the internet. It’s a big Swiss moment for me.

 

Maris Kreizman  29:32

We were once told that if she had a narrator for her voice, it would be done by Diane Keaton.

 

Aminatou Sow  29:38

Oh, that’s good. Okay, next question is for both of you, again, in terms of audiobook moment of the year, are you Team Michelle Williams impersonating Justin Timberlake in the Britney Spears memoir? The woman in me.

 

Maris Kreizman  29:53

One day, Jay and I were in New York going to parts of town I’d never been to before, walking our way was a guy with. Huge, blinged out medallion. He was flanked by two giant security guards. Jay got all excited and said so loud, oh yeah, Fauci is Fauci is genuine. What’s up, homie?

 

Aminatou Sow  30:11

Or are you Team Andrew Garfield getting tortured by Andrew Scott in the audiobook reading of 1984?

 

Josh Gondelman  30:19

That was 40. You can see here on this dial, the numbers run up to 100 if you tell me any lies or attempts to prevaricate in any way or fall below your usual level of intelligence, you will break with pain.

 

Maris Kreizman  30:33

Michelle Williams impersonation really got me. They just the entire performance from front to back, like Britney Spears gives an intro, and she’s like, Hey, here’s my book or whatever. And then Michelle Williams is, like, I was born when it was, like, a completely different thing that she was doing, and it was fascinating. And then so getting to the JT part, was magic.

 

Josh Gondelman  30:58

I thought that was great. There were so many layers to it, right? It was Michelle Williams as Britney Spears as Justin Timberlake. And that’s really a beautiful level of performance to it. I listened to that, and I just listened to the torture part of 1984 which is also very good. But there it was, like a little it’s a little bit like to radio play for me with like the Michelle Williams is like, I’m telling you a story about Justin Timberlake being embarrassing. And then the other one is just like, two guys being like, you know what you’ve done, Winston. And be like, what is this 1920s? What am I doing here?

 

Aminatou Sow  31:44

I have to give a special shout outs to Ronan Farrow’s audiobook, catch and kill. He does incredible voices in it. Like, incredible, and also, I need everybody to know that Jeremy Irons reads a lot of audiobooks and has a stellar reading voice. It’s like, revisited. Oh yeah, the Brideshead to revisit. That’s like, my favorite road trip audiobook. Like always, it’s classic, a classic, a classic. Maris. Do you have any, like, favorite voices?

 

Maris Kreizman  32:15

I feel like a seminal reading moment. And one I want to talk about here right now is I listen to all 48 hours of Barbra Streisand’s memoir.

 

Aminatou Sow  32:26

Oh my god, talk about it.

 

Maris Kreizman  32:30

It is delightful. She just goes on tangents, like you’re not just as if you’re in the mood for an experience and you’re not listening to an edited book. She just she sings, she does a sides, she curses. My favorite part of the memoir is when Barbara learns that Siri mispronounces her name, so she calls up Tim Cook and gets him to fix it.

 

Aminatou Sow  32:57

Of course.

 

Maris Kreizman  32:59

That little tidbit.

 

Aminatou Sow  33:00

Of course.

 

Josh Gondelman  33:01

Okay, that’s how you fight antiSemitism.

 

Aminatou Sow  33:06

Okay, this is your last question, for both of you. Do you remember that scene in When Harry Met Sally, when Harry explains that he likes to skip to the end of a book when he first gets it to see how it ends? How do we feel about that book reading?

 

Maris Kreizman  33:22

That’s blinkist.

 

Josh Gondelman  33:24

Eras version of listening to a book on like, 3x speed. Yeah. It’s like, because first of all, if you’re reading, just to like, take in information, if you’re like, I need to know what’s in this book by the end of the day or the week or whatever. And you’re like, trying to power through it. That’s one thing. But if you’re like, I have to know how it ends, so I know whether it’s worth it. Like, for non fiction, that’s fully preposterous, it’s like, it all happened already. And for fiction, it’s like, well, that defeats the purpose of fiction is to go on this journey in the way the author set it out. So I think Harry’s been a little twerp. He’s been a little weasel about books.

 

Maris Kreizman  33:59

Not open to the idea of discovery and possibility.

 

Aminatou Sow  34:05

That is, you know what? That is the most bookish burn you can give somebody. So I will take it. I’ll take it. Okay, guys, we’re here final round before I declare a winner, I just want to say you are both delightful, and I really appreciate you making the time today, so now you have 30 ish uninterrupted seconds to make one final argument as to why you think audiobooks or hard copy books are a better overall experience. Maris, I will let you go first. Please state your final case.

 

Maris Kreizman  34:40

Audiobooks are well, of course, they’re first. They’re vital for people who with accessibility issues, but they add a level of intimacy with the book that I don’t think you get from from simply from simply reading and. Am I talk about most of the time. When I’m listening to an audio book, I want to listen to someone telling their own story. I love it, when authors narrate their own books, it brings me closer to them, and it’s a more enjoyable experience.

 

Aminatou Sow  35:15

I love it. Josh, please state your final case for hard copy books.

 

Josh Gondelman  35:20

Audio books are too much intimacy. I’m not trying to have a threesome author and a third person who’s tickling the book into my eardrums. I think we obviously the accessibility is an issue. But shout out to hard of hearing and deaf people who maybe need to read their books. As long as we’re going on, we should go the other way as well, and I don’t want this additional production experience most of the time getting in between my experience of the book. I like to activate that kind of imagination. I’m a I’m a reading person. It helps me retain information. I don’t get distracted, or if I do, then I’m fully out of it. I’m not in this like liminal space where the book is still playing in my ears and I’m not paying attention to it, so I really like to be there with the book, one on one, in that kind of intimate, monogamous way.

 

Aminatou Sow  36:14

Okay, before I declare my winner, you know, it’s really funny. When you guys pitched us this topic, I was tickled. I was very excited, because I was like, Oh, they’re such a clear, obvious winner. And upon listening to both of you, you actually made, uh, two very good points that are going to dictate my my decision. We do this every once in a while here, but it’s a tie for me, because I think that audio books versus hard copy books is a non debate, and that reading is magical and very personal, and people should get into it however convenient it is for them. And there was something Maris about that image that you you had about your you know, like that image that you conjured about your aunt, like, with her Walkman walking and listening. That was like, yeah, like, that’s the time that this person has to read, and that is, like, very important. And also, Josh, like, hearing all of your kind of, like, the reasons that you hate audiobooks, which are like, really do align a lot with mine, where I was like, I don’t like the rewinding, I don’t like the technology of it and the whatever. But those are all, like, personal limitations that have nothing to do with the medium and everything to do with my own, like, kind of, you know, it’s like, this is how my brain works, and this is also how the time in my day is. And I think that as it is, people do not read enough, and, you know, fighting about how we should do it is so silly when the result is that we get to, like, really enjoy other people’s words. And that truly is magic. I am a writer and I’m a reader, so I will always be pro reading in whatever form it is available to people. That’s my verdict. No debate today. Reading is magic. Everyone should do it, and I’m so glad I got to talk to both of you about it, because you’re so smart and kind, and that’s that. Thanks for coming on today, guys.

 

Josh Gondelman  38:15

Yeah, this is really interesting.

 

Maris Kreizman  38:19

It didn’t get nearly as vicious as I.

 

Aminatou Sow  38:22

This is as vicious as it gets on a BBC podcast is when I go tie I’m like, we’re playing soccer here today.

 

Aminatou Sow  38:36

Thanks so much to Maris Kreizman and Josh Gondelman for joining me today. You can subscribe to Maris newsletter, The Maris review on sub stack, and you can find pep talks and general enthusiasm by subscribing to Josh’s sub stack newsletter called that’s marvelous.

 

CREDITS  38:51

There’s more Pop Culture Debate Club with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like Josie Duffy Rice and Samantha Irby from the worst lawyer on TV episode talking with me about our hypothetical ability to commit crimes. Subscribe now in Apple podcasts. Pop Culture Debate Club is a production of Lemonada and the BBC.  I’m Aminatou Sow the show is produced by me, Joanna Solotaroff, Kryssy Pease, Lamar Wood and Dani Matias. Our mix is by Noah Smith. Rachel Neel is VP of new content. Our SVP of weekly content is Steve Nelson. Commissioning editor for the BBC is Rhian Roberts. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer.  Follow Pop Culture Debate Club, wherever you get your podcasts.