WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Speed Reading

0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:06.120
<v Speaker 1>Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and

0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:09.160
<v Speaker 1>there's Chuck. Jerry's hanging out here being a weirdo creeper,

0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:12.479
<v Speaker 1>but she's standing in for Dave, who just doesn't show

0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:15.800
<v Speaker 1>up ever, which is sad, but it's all right. M

0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:19.440
<v Speaker 1>This is about speed reading. And you made a very

0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:21.320
<v Speaker 1>good point because you put this together for us that

0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:24.079
<v Speaker 1>if we did the same job today without the Internet,

0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:29.840
<v Speaker 1>you would get a podcast episode about once every two weeks. Yeah, tops,

0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:31.840
<v Speaker 1>because that's how long it would take for us to

0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:36.080
<v Speaker 1>go to the library and do all the analog research

0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:37.839
<v Speaker 1>that would take to get one of these episodes in

0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:41.680
<v Speaker 1>the can. But now we have the Internet and that

0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:44.360
<v Speaker 1>research is much more streamlined as it is for everyone else.

0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.000
<v Speaker 1>It's it's crazy, like when you think about it that way,

0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:51.120
<v Speaker 1>just the revolution and information that the Internet provides just

0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.319
<v Speaker 1>so easy to take it for granted today, but when

0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:56.120
<v Speaker 1>you stop and think about what people had to do

0:00:56.200 --> 0:01:02.320
<v Speaker 1>just thirty years ago, basically, um, it's it's pretty amazing.

0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:04.520
<v Speaker 1>The problem is is up to this point, up to

0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:08.480
<v Speaker 1>the point, um where the Internet became like uh widely

0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:13.120
<v Speaker 1>available to people through search engines, Um, we had decades

0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:15.080
<v Speaker 1>and centuries of people who did have to go to

0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:17.280
<v Speaker 1>the library to do all sorts of research, and they

0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:19.600
<v Speaker 1>still had to do jobs, They still had to find

0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:22.240
<v Speaker 1>out the answers to things, and there was a lot

0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.280
<v Speaker 1>of information, but all of it was trapped inside books,

0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:27.560
<v Speaker 1>and to get it out of there, you had to

0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.120
<v Speaker 1>basically guess what book had the information that you were

0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:34.160
<v Speaker 1>looking for, and then go find the book using the

0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:37.360
<v Speaker 1>card catalog, and then skim that book until you found

0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:40.120
<v Speaker 1>the fact or the information you needed. And that was

0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:44.240
<v Speaker 1>really slow and really hard to deal with. So it

0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:47.319
<v Speaker 1>kind of in that context, Chuck, it makes a lot

0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.360
<v Speaker 1>of sense that Evelyn would, the woman who founded a

0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:55.240
<v Speaker 1>company called Reading Dynamics which taught people for a hundred

0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:59.400
<v Speaker 1>fifty bucks about and fifty dollars today um, starting in

0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:05.040
<v Speaker 1>nineteen nine, would become an international sensation with this technique

0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:08.840
<v Speaker 1>of speed reading. Not a few hundred words, which is

0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:13.040
<v Speaker 1>around the where most people topped out, but thousands of

0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:17.200
<v Speaker 1>words per minute. That's right. I think the fastest readers

0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:20.920
<v Speaker 1>can read about four words per minute, and that's absorbing

0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:24.480
<v Speaker 1>what you're reading. It's a big, big point, it is,

0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:26.760
<v Speaker 1>and I have gotten into debates with friends of mine

0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:30.040
<v Speaker 1>who claimed to be um super fast readers, and I

0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:34.000
<v Speaker 1>would do what they do. I would read that try

0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:37.720
<v Speaker 1>and read that fast as a test independently, and it

0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:39.920
<v Speaker 1>just seems very dubious. I'm like, man, I can I

0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:42.840
<v Speaker 1>can barely even move my eyeballs as quick as you

0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:45.560
<v Speaker 1>say you're reading, Like, I don't think you're retaining as

0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:47.800
<v Speaker 1>much as you think, because it might be because I'm

0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:52.080
<v Speaker 1>a little defensive, but I've always been a very deliberate reader.

0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:55.600
<v Speaker 1>I just read very slowly, and I read it as

0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:58.480
<v Speaker 1>if I'm reading out loud to another person. That's how

0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:01.440
<v Speaker 1>I read to myself. And then when you factor in,

0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:03.959
<v Speaker 1>like your mind wandering, and you're like, oh wait, I

0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:06.480
<v Speaker 1>have to get back to reread this paragraph. It takes

0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:08.480
<v Speaker 1>me a very long time too, But I like to

0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.120
<v Speaker 1>feel like I got what I was reading afterwards. It

0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:13.040
<v Speaker 1>was worth a certain time, you know, not like these

0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:18.760
<v Speaker 1>skimmers come on right. So Evelyn Wood was very adamant, like, no,

0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:21.960
<v Speaker 1>I'm not teaching you skimming, because everybody would be like, yes, skimming,

0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:24.359
<v Speaker 1>we all do that in the catalog or the library,

0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.680
<v Speaker 1>standing up by the card catalog. We skim. Just think No,

0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:32.760
<v Speaker 1>I'm talking about reading really really fast. And what she

0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.600
<v Speaker 1>said she had was a technique UM that she said

0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:40.960
<v Speaker 1>was quote the greatest inventions since the printing press UM

0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:45.200
<v Speaker 1>and it was it used what she called finger pacing um,

0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:49.720
<v Speaker 1>which was, in her view, a way of show pointing

0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.920
<v Speaker 1>out to your eyes huge chunks of text, if you

0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:55.440
<v Speaker 1>were really good, an entire page of text that your

0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:58.000
<v Speaker 1>eye would just absorb, like a different kind of reading.

0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:00.640
<v Speaker 1>That's what Evelyn Wood said that she was teaching people.

0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:03.120
<v Speaker 1>And like I said, it was a smash hit. It

0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:06.240
<v Speaker 1>was very popular in the in the mid cent mid

0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:12.840
<v Speaker 1>twentieth century. Yeah. Their motto was we're not skimming, we're scamming, basically,

0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:16.360
<v Speaker 1>And I think that's a good point for our commercial break.

0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:18.800
<v Speaker 1>So we'll be right back after this to talk about

0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:23.120
<v Speaker 1>the scam that is speed reading. That's why SKA a

0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:29.479
<v Speaker 1>little bit that you should know. Y SKA should know.

0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:48.159
<v Speaker 1>But Josh Clark, alright, so it is a scam. Uh.

0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:52.400
<v Speaker 1>Their website or they didn't have a website. Their workshop,

0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.239
<v Speaker 1>I knew it started with a w Their workshop boasted

0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:57.960
<v Speaker 1>that you could read five to seven thousand words per

0:04:57.960 --> 0:04:59.880
<v Speaker 1>minute and you could get through Warrant in Peace in

0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:05.839
<v Speaker 1>eighteen minutes. Immediately upon hearing that I'm surprised anyone said, well,

0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:09.479
<v Speaker 1>this sounds revolutionary, Sign me up. I figured percent of

0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:11.800
<v Speaker 1>the people in the world would have said, there's no

0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.919
<v Speaker 1>way that's impossible. This has got to be a scam.

0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:18.560
<v Speaker 1>But everyone from John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon to

0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:25.760
<v Speaker 1>Charlton Heston were early adherents of uh Wood's speed reading program. Yeah,

0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:28.159
<v Speaker 1>and I mean it makes sense because in the mid

0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:32.040
<v Speaker 1>twentieth century in America there was like a real trendy

0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:36.800
<v Speaker 1>nous about like intellect and you know, the engineering mindset,

0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:40.440
<v Speaker 1>lots of efficiency. Everything is very buttoned down and compartmentalized.

0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:42.960
<v Speaker 1>So the idea that you could wade through this enormous

0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:46.839
<v Speaker 1>amount of information trapped in books really quickly was it

0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:48.440
<v Speaker 1>was a way to show off that you were an

0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.320
<v Speaker 1>intellectual number one, but also was like I'm going to

0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:54.159
<v Speaker 1>leave the rest of you idiots behind. I'm gonna go

0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.200
<v Speaker 1>learn to speed read and you'll never catch up with me. Um.

0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.640
<v Speaker 1>So there was a lot of adherence to it. The

0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.880
<v Speaker 1>thing is there was also very simultaneously from a very

0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:07.800
<v Speaker 1>early um period. I think her first workshop was offered

0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.240
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen fifty nine, and by nineteen sixty two the

0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:16.520
<v Speaker 1>Saturday Evening Post had Um a story titled speed Reading

0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:19.360
<v Speaker 1>His Bunk. So there was criticism of it and skepticism

0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.400
<v Speaker 1>of it um from the outset, but she managed to

0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:26.000
<v Speaker 1>hang in there and actually reading dynamics is around today still,

0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:29.800
<v Speaker 1>it is. Uh, there have been I think the Washington

0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.640
<v Speaker 1>Post wrote a big criticism in nineteen eighty. Uh, there

0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.800
<v Speaker 1>were some other There's a woman named Marcia Biederman who

0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:41.880
<v Speaker 1>wrote scan artist colon how Evelyn would convince the world

0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:45.960
<v Speaker 1>that speed reading worked. And one of her criticisms was

0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.839
<v Speaker 1>this whole finger pacing thing, like even if that was

0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:51.920
<v Speaker 1>a thing, like you could do that yourself. You could

0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.599
<v Speaker 1>run your hand down a page and learn how to

0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.960
<v Speaker 1>do that stuff without paying what amounts to these these

0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:01.960
<v Speaker 1>day dollars, like over hundred bucks for someone to teach

0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.560
<v Speaker 1>you this bunk. And uh, the whole idea was I

0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:07.320
<v Speaker 1>think the Washington Post said said it was a new

0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.120
<v Speaker 1>way to teach readers to take in whole ideas rather

0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.160
<v Speaker 1>than words. So you know, I think if you looked

0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:16.600
<v Speaker 1>at a page of a book and went and went

0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.840
<v Speaker 1>down it, you might pick out, you know, let's say,

0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:23.080
<v Speaker 1>fifteen keywords where maybe you could say, I think the

0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:26.840
<v Speaker 1>character went to the hospital and they got better. But

0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:30.720
<v Speaker 1>like that's not the same as reading something right. Um.

0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:34.280
<v Speaker 1>So there was also like this kind of veneer of

0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:39.800
<v Speaker 1>religiousness that was assigned to reading dynamical, very culti kind

0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:43.440
<v Speaker 1>of scientologist eye a little bit um there. There was

0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:45.680
<v Speaker 1>you were supposed to have faith number one in your

0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.960
<v Speaker 1>ability to speed read. You also had faith you had

0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:53.240
<v Speaker 1>to have faith in the process, the procedure um, and

0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:56.040
<v Speaker 1>people who weren't any good at it didn't have enough confidence.

0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:58.400
<v Speaker 1>They didn't have enough faith. Uh. And that was born

0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:01.360
<v Speaker 1>out of Evelyn Wood's background is a Mormon. I believe

0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:04.280
<v Speaker 1>she was a very religious person. So that that definitely

0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:08.360
<v Speaker 1>kind of um was something that that Reading Dynamics was

0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:11.239
<v Speaker 1>draped in as well. But it also kind of has

0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.960
<v Speaker 1>a like you say, a culti view of culti um

0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:20.200
<v Speaker 1>technique of blaming the student rather than the actual workshop,

0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:23.480
<v Speaker 1>which is pretty terrible because it really was the workshop

0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:26.280
<v Speaker 1>that was the problem. And one of the things they did,

0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:29.840
<v Speaker 1>Chuck was like you can't have you can't be around

0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:33.080
<v Speaker 1>for decades and you know, do millions of people, Like

0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:36.120
<v Speaker 1>millions of people took this course. This is like dollars

0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:40.720
<v Speaker 1>for for the workshop. Millions of people took this course, Um,

0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:44.000
<v Speaker 1>you can't just dupe them without some sort of rigging.

0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:46.440
<v Speaker 1>And so what they did was they rigged what's called

0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.000
<v Speaker 1>the reading index. And the reading index was basically the

0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:53.800
<v Speaker 1>measure of how fast you could speed read by timing

0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:58.080
<v Speaker 1>how fast you read and then scoring it against your comprehension, right,

0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:01.200
<v Speaker 1>so you would get a comprehension test at end. And

0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:05.520
<v Speaker 1>what the Harvard Crimson in nineteen seven UH sort of

0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:10.319
<v Speaker 1>uncovered and pointed out was they very simply made those

0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:16.599
<v Speaker 1>first comprehension tests way harder than the final comprehension tests.

0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:19.760
<v Speaker 1>So the idea is as you progress each test, you're

0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:22.720
<v Speaker 1>going to get better and better scores for your comprehension.

0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:26.680
<v Speaker 1>And the first ones are very complicated and the last

0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:30.439
<v Speaker 1>ones are maybe like multiple choice UH and just kind

0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:32.640
<v Speaker 1>of super easy, to the point where the University of

0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:38.000
<v Speaker 1>Missouri did some experiments on the reading dynamics UH testing

0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:41.040
<v Speaker 1>and they found that you could score about a sixty

0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:43.920
<v Speaker 1>percent read and I assume this is for the later tests,

0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.160
<v Speaker 1>but you could score about a sixty percent reading comprehension

0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.080
<v Speaker 1>without even looking at the material. Yeah, I think that

0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:53.239
<v Speaker 1>was the final test that that that's how easy yeah, exactly,

0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:56.720
<v Speaker 1>and I mean they also Reading Dynamics was also known

0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:01.160
<v Speaker 1>for threatening or actually filing lawsuits against its vocal critics too,

0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:05.920
<v Speaker 1>to sign them scientology. So, um, the thing is is

0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:09.040
<v Speaker 1>like there's still this desire to speed read. I was

0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:12.760
<v Speaker 1>reading this article I'm Wired, and it said speed reading

0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:16.360
<v Speaker 1>is or sorry, speed reading is a scam um, And

0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:18.800
<v Speaker 1>there's still today. There's different iterations of it. And I

0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:23.240
<v Speaker 1>think part of it, probably especially when you're looking at

0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:26.599
<v Speaker 1>the original founder of like a speed reading technique or

0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.120
<v Speaker 1>something like that, before it becomes like a business, that

0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.600
<v Speaker 1>person probably really does think this works, and they really

0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.480
<v Speaker 1>do want to learn to speed read, and that desire

0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:38.760
<v Speaker 1>is still around. But I came across this um this

0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:43.800
<v Speaker 1>article by a guy, an author named Mark Seidenberg who's

0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.080
<v Speaker 1>researched this, and it's basically he points out that the

0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.680
<v Speaker 1>brain is just not equipped to absorb information that fast,

0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.840
<v Speaker 1>and that when you're reading words on a page, you're

0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:58.640
<v Speaker 1>each little bit you absorb and then you move on

0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:00.679
<v Speaker 1>to the next bit. Each of those is called a fixation,

0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:03.600
<v Speaker 1>and we can take between a roughly seven and eight

0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:08.920
<v Speaker 1>letters per fixation, right. Each fixation lasts between a quarter

0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:12.480
<v Speaker 1>to a fifth of a second, and that um, really

0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:16.800
<v Speaker 1>what you're taking in. If you calculate something like seven

0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:22.400
<v Speaker 1>letters per fixation, you could do six eighty letters per minute,

0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:26.079
<v Speaker 1>which divided by five letter words plus a space is

0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.000
<v Speaker 1>two eighty words per minute. Two eighty words per minute

0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:32.000
<v Speaker 1>is what the average person can read at So the

0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:34.720
<v Speaker 1>idea that somebody could read seven thousand words per minute

0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.720
<v Speaker 1>and have any idea what they just read is it's

0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:41.160
<v Speaker 1>just it's bunk. As the Saturday Evening Post put it,

0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:44.160
<v Speaker 1>it's total bunk. And the one thing that is also

0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:47.960
<v Speaker 1>very much Scientology like, as they count on pride and

0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:54.960
<v Speaker 1>shame to kind of keep former adherence to the program quiet. Um,

0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:59.040
<v Speaker 1>maybe you're shameful that you paid thirty dollars for Scientology

0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:01.480
<v Speaker 1>programs and nothing out of it and you don't want

0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.360
<v Speaker 1>to say anything about it. Or maybe you paid that

0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.640
<v Speaker 1>equivalent in the nineteen fifties and you didn't learn how

0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:11.400
<v Speaker 1>to speed read and you didn't want to go around

0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:13.480
<v Speaker 1>telling people you dropped that much money. And they kind

0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:16.839
<v Speaker 1>of count these organizations, and it is funny how much

0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:19.679
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of close to Scientology, but they count on

0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:23.160
<v Speaker 1>people kind of keeping their failures quiet because of that

0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.000
<v Speaker 1>pride and that shame and it it worked. It's funny.

0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:28.720
<v Speaker 1>If you read some of these, um, these contemporary articles,

0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:31.560
<v Speaker 1>you'll see interviews with people who are like, yeah, I

0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:33.800
<v Speaker 1>really used to have it, but you know, my my

0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:37.240
<v Speaker 1>comprehension score has gone down because I haven't kept up

0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:39.440
<v Speaker 1>with it. That's what they say. I am kept up

0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:42.480
<v Speaker 1>with it. I let it go, I'll let it slip. Uh.

0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.360
<v Speaker 1>So it's pretty yeah, so, um speed reading is not

0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.600
<v Speaker 1>a thing, and it's actually a pretty interesting little world

0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:52.240
<v Speaker 1>two trapes into. So if this caught your attention, go

0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:54.599
<v Speaker 1>check out more of it. And I think, chuck that

0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:57.959
<v Speaker 1>short stuff is out, don't you. It's out as out

0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:03.559
<v Speaker 1>can be. Stuff you should know is a production of

0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:06.920
<v Speaker 1>I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit

0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:09.760
<v Speaker 1>the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:13.760
<v Speaker 1>listen to your favorite shows. H