Why we should all be 'bookmaxxing'

Remember your mom, dad and teachers telling you to read because it’s good for you? Well, a compilation of the latest research shows they were right. “Reading is one of the simplest and most accessible activities for actually supporting cognitive performance, brain health, mental health, but also overall wellbeing throughout our lives,” said Christelle Langley, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge and co-author of review, published in the journal Psychological Medicine. The review looked specifically at recreational reading — reading for fun — and found broad benefits for children, adolescents and older adults. This episode, we dive deep into the joys and health benefits of bookmaxxing. Interested in the science of reading? Email us your question at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:18Speaker 01

  You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Were either of you two big readers as kids?

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. I feel like I always had a book in my hand.

• 0:28Regina Barber?

  I was not.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  No?

• 0:30Regina Barber?

  I did not. I was in front of the TV. TV was my first friend.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 0:34Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  What were you reading, Wana?

• 0:36Speaker 01

  A lot of Babysitter's Club, a lot of Goosebumps, like Love a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

• 0:41Regina Barber?

  Okay, I did read Goosebumps. I will say that. I will say that I love Goosebumps. They gave me nightmares.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  I still love Goosebumps.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  R.L. Stine really had his finger on the pulse of the kids.

• 0:51Regina Barber?

  He did. He did. He helped us non-readers read.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Hey, different strokes for different folks, right?

• 0:56Speaker 02

  But Gina, you're actually more the norm now. Because I was talking to this assistant professor at Cambridge University, Christelle Langley, recently, and she's one of the authors of this new review. Here's what she says.

• 1:06Speaker 04

  Our reading rates are among children and young people are on the decline and actually at the lowest levels since they started taking records.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  So Christelle's talking specifically about reading rates where she lives in the UK, but reading rates and comprehension are also really, really low in the US, too.

• 1:24Regina Barber?

  Yeah, it does make sense. It's really based on how like you're raised. My dad specifically, he is kind of a reader, but I mean, looking back when people asked me if there were like bookshelves in my house as a kid, the answer was no.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Well, I was very lucky because my mom was an English teacher and a librarian, so I had no choice.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  This is lucky.

• 1:43Regina Barber?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  And I was a big fantasy stan, still am. Star Wars, Expanded Universe, Dragonlands, you name it. Wana, do you still read a lot?

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I read a ton, but it's mostly romance novels these days. Got to be honest, I love a good romance fiction. I've got all the tropes.

• 1:57Regina Barber?

  Yeah, I think I'm reading the most I've ever read in my entire life this year.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Wow, why do you think that is?

• 2:02Regina Barber?

  Dungeon Crawler Carl.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Ah, of course, of course.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  The key to unlock readers.

• 2:08Regina Barber?

  No, I was reading before that, actually, a lot of stuff. But what about you, Nate?

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Ah, man, I am on book 13 of 14 of The Wheel of Time series.

• 2:16Regina Barber?

  No. I could never get into that. I tried.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  It's a journey. And it's the thing that I do to, you know, escape reality. As you both know, working in news, it can be somewhat depressing at times. So it's really nice to read something that's not, I mean, Wheel of Time is still kind of depressing, but.

• 2:34Regina Barber?

  It is.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 2:36Regina Barber?

  Yeah.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  But also, I wanted to say, if anybody here is listening to this and they are reading The Wheel of Time or have read The Wheel of Time, please write a letter to me or write an email.

• 2:45Regina Barber?

  Write in to NPR.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Yes, I am desperate to talk to somebody about it, and I don't know anybody else.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Nate needs book friends, help him out, y'all.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I do.

• 2:52Regina Barber?

  My best friends live so far away, like I basically have like pen pals. But I do understand escapism. Like, there's, there's some research out that details the benefits of sitting down in like a cozy corner and reading a book. And that's one of the science stories we're going to talk to you about today, Wana.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  All right, buckle up. I'm excited. I get to take a little break from my day job and just soak in all the science news.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, Wana Summers, for those that don't know, is one of the hosts of All Things Considered, and.

• 3:20Regina Barber?

  The host.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  The host. The host is what the host is.

• 3:24Regina Barber?

  She took over the whole show.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Y'all are going to get me in trouble.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Well, Wana, we've got more for you because today on the show, we've also got super solar flares and a couple of discoveries about one of my favorite dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus Rex. I'm Nate Rot.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  And I'm Regina Barber.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  You're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 3:51Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 3:56Speaker 00

  This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Fall tastes better with better ingredients from Whole Foods Market. No added growth hormones or antibiotics in their meat department means slow-braised short ribs are even more satisfying. All seafood is wild-caught, like they're vibrant sockeye salmon or verified responsibly farmed. And all sweets, including fall-themed cookies, are made without high-fructose corn syrup. Spice up fall at Whole Foods Market. This message comes from Edward Jones. Where they believe rich isn't about having life all figured out, it's opening yourself to all the possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you, meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you want to be.

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• 5:13Regina Barber?

  All right, Wana, where do you want to start?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Let's start with reading science.

• 5:17Regina Barber?

  Okay, so the big takeaway from all this science we're going to talk about is not going to be all that surprising. Readings, good for you, specifically reading for fun.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Yes, mom was right about everything. But what's really cool about this new research compiled in the journal Psychological Medicine is how specific it gets in looking at some of the benefits of reading.

• 5:37Regina Barber?

  Specifically, reading for fun.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  I love reading for fun, particularly a good romance book or two.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that counts. Graphic novels count, history books, newspapers. What's important, Wana, is that you're choosing to do it for some kind of satisfaction.

• 5:50Regina Barber?

  Which, like we alluded to earlier, is increasingly rare.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Oh, that's interesting. But like, what are the consequences of that? What are the benefits that people are missing out on by not reading?

• 6:00Regina Barber?

  Yeah, so studies they looked at focused on two age groups, youth and adolescent readers, and then older readers.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, one study which looked at more than 10,000 young people in the US found that children who began reading for pleasure earlier in life had better attention spans, memory, executive function as adolescents. They also had better sleeping habits and mental health. I could go on and on.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Got to say, that's a pretty compelling list there.

• 6:23Regina Barber?

  Yeah, and with older people, they found that recreational reading might help keep the brain from aging and help us cut the risk of Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, Christelle says that one study that really stood out to her was one that looked at grandparents reading to their grandchildren. It's very cute. Specifically, looking at a part of the brain that's really important for learning and memory, the hippocampus.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  What this study found was that the hippocampus actually enlarged as the grandparents were reading to their grandchildren. And this might be one of the reasons why it seems to be protective of brain aging.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Okay, all you grandparents out there listening, read to your grandchildren. It is important.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  All right, let's move on now to solar flares. I have a question. What is a super flare? And should I be worried here?

• 7:08Regina Barber?

  Yeah, let's talk about a normal flare first. That's a sudden brightening of a star. When this happens on our sun, that can sometimes shoot a lot of energy towards Earth. This happened in May 2024 and caused like irregularities in power grids, disrupted some radio communications. It also created northern lights that could be seen in southern US.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, which were super pretty. So imagine, though, a solar flare that is 10 to 100 times greater than that. That is a super flare, which could have more disastrous effects. And these super flares have been coming from other stars. So the question is, could our sun make them too?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Can it?

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Possibly. So a new study published by the Royal Society looked at solar activity dating back millennia.

• 7:50Regina Barber?

  Now, some of that data was recorded by humans, like old drawings of sunspots, which are associated with solar flares. But other data came from prehistoric material all over the Earth.

• 8:00Speaker 06

  We have things in the ice, we have things in tree rings, we have rocks, we have all this like geological evidence of what the sun is doing.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  That is astronomer James Davenport at the University of Washington, who is not a part of this new study. And he says, we're lucky to have all this data about the sun's past.

• 8:16Speaker 06

  It's the only star that we have that kind of historical record for that we'll never get for other stars.

• 8:20Regina Barber?

  Looking at all these lines of evidence, the scientists behind the study say maybe the sun could produce these super flares like other stars do.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Okay, so what do we do if our sun makes one of these super flares?

• 8:31Regina Barber?

  Well, first, Wana, it's not guaranteed. Just because our sun can doesn't mean it will. And just because a flare happens doesn't mean it will hit Earth. Earth orbits the sun, the sun rotates, the geometry has to be just right.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I hear you, Wana. I have the same concern. What if, right? So we asked James, what would happen? And here's what he said.

• 8:51Speaker 06

  It wouldn't send us back to the Stone Age. It wouldn't permanently knock out our technology, but it would disrupt everything, and we may all lose power for a while.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  And if we do, well, time to pick up a book, right?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Hey, listen, I would not complain about a time to just sit and be away from this screen.

• 9:07Regina Barber?

  To the sun.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  All right, guys, last topic, dinosaur tracks.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yes, every six-year-old's favorite extinct group of animals. So this study has a really cool origin story, Wana.

• 9:18Regina Barber?

  Yeah, it starts with a high school teacher from Colorado. His name is Kent Hups. He was in North Dakota, visiting this area called the Hell Creek Formation, which is really famous for fossils.

• 9:29Speaker 07

  And I kind of looked to my left and I thought, oh, my God, that looks like a track. And I got really excited because I know that the tracks in the Hell Creek are incredibly rare.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Kent is also an associate at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, so he spent a lot of time hunting for fossils. And he says finding these tracks.

• 9:47Speaker 07

  To find that really is like a pinnacle in your life or your career. It really is.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  And were these the prehistoric footprints of a T-Rex?

• 9:57Regina Barber?

  Yeah, exactly. So what was remarkable about this finding is that, as he says, T-Rex tracks are really rare. This is the only trackway of an adult T-Rex ever discovered, even though we found tons of fossilized skeletons of these animals.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  And, Wana, these footprints, there's at least four of them, they're huge, about three and a half feet long, or the size of boulders, yeah.

• 10:19Regina Barber?

  And by measuring the space between the tracks, the scientists were able to determine how fast the T-Rex was walking, a leisurely three or four miles an hour, like a fast hiking speed. Here's Kent's colleague Tyler Leeson.

• 10:32Speaker 06

  I expected more out of T-Rex, to be honest. They were no hurry when they were walking around.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Okay, like, I love the movie Jurassic Park, and remember, they looked like they were running pretty fast in this, but it sounds like I might actually be able to outrun one of these.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  No, unfortunately not, Wana. So scientists think they could run at about 20 miles per hour. I don't know, maybe you can run that fast.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Definitely not.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  So, yeah, they could still catch you for dinner. But this T-Rex was just walking, chilling, according to the study in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

• 10:59Regina Barber?

  Tyler said next they're going to helicopter these giant stone footprints back to the museum to take a closer look.

• 11:05Speaker 06

  I really hope that there's skin impressions preserved on these. Tracks. And I think there's a pretty reasonable chance that we will find scales. So I think that's what I am most excited about.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  We have a lot more dinosaur skeletons than skin impressions. So finding scales would give us a better idea what the animals actually look like.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Ooh, T. rex scales. That sounds fun.

• 11:26Regina Barber?

  And Wanda, there's another bonus fact about T. rexes out in a different journal this week, which looked at a T. rex tooth and determined T. rexes were probably the same temperature as us, 97 degrees Fahrenheit.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Which is surprising because people tend to think dinosaurs were like today's reptiles, you know, cold-blooded. But this shows they were actually warm-blooded and active.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, when I walked into the studio, I was not expecting to get a full-blown dinosaur education, but thanks for that.

• 11:49Regina Barber?

  Yeah, no worries. Welcome anytime.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Well, Wanda, thanks as always for kicking it with us at Short Wave.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Always a pleasure. Enjoyed it.

• 11:56Regina Barber?

  You're always welcome.

• 12:01Regina Barber?

  If you want to hear Wanda be a rock star doing her regular job hosting general news, check out Consider This, NPR's afternoon podcast about what the news means for you.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  This episode was produced by Juan Diego Ramirez and Jordan Marie Smith. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Christopher Intagliata.

• 12:16Regina Barber?

  Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keely and Tiffany Vera Castro were the audio engineers. I'm Regina Barber.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  And I'm Nate Rot. Thanks for listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Dinosaurs.

• 12:37Speaker 00

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