Do books engage us more deeply than other media (TV, film, YouTube)?
In 2012 John stopped thinking the medium matters and by 2015 valued movies in themselves; in 2025 he still said books are deeper than TikTok. Hank says books have had an outsized impact on him: most works that changed how he sees the world were books.
Axis: books engage more deeply than other media ... the medium does not matter; depth depends on the work and the attention brought to it
Positions by date: 9 records in 9 videos. shift and revise mean the position moved; tension — disagreement with the other speaker.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-09-18 (said on 2012-09-16, implied) | revise | John says he was wrong to argue that books are the solution to a distracted life: he no longer thinks the medium matters. | Existential Airport Anxiety 00:01:30 |
| 2015-06-16 (said on 2015-06-13, implied) | revise | John says he used to think of movies as lesser novels, but Nat Wolff has helped him see movies as valuable and fascinating in themselves. | Paper Towns Madrid with Nat Wolff! THE TOUR BEGINS 00:02:04 |
| 2018-08-28 | restate | A written story lives in the reader's mind in an intensely personal way movies can't match, while movies engage sight and hearing as books can't. | The Book Was Better? 00:03:14 |
| 2019-06-11 | restate | John says books are quiet, interior experiences in a very loud world, as are his favorite podcasts, and thanks viewers for listening regardless of medium. | Why I Haven't Written a New Book 00:03:27 |
| 2021-01-12 | restate | Under 'read books, not tweets', John says reading Annie Dillard, Terry Tempest Williams or even Paul Farmer's upsetting book on Sierra Leone and Ebola leaves him informed and engaged, without Twitter's panicky dopamine rush. | My 2021 Vision Board 00:02:45 |
| 2025-10-21 | restate | John argues books can still compete with TikTok for some people: TikTok is better entertainment but books are deeper, letting you visit otherwise inaccessible rooms in your mind. | Is Book Publishing Dying? An Author's Perspective 00:03:52 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-02-28 | first on record | Hank thinks 20 hours of reading a book is probably more enriching than 20 hours of playing Grand Theft Auto. | The Cost of Fun 00:02:44 |
| 2018-01-26 | restate | Hank thinks this is because books have an outsized impact on him: other media do too, but most creations that deeply changed how he sees the world were books. | I Wrote a Book. I WROTE A BOOK. How did I do that? 00:00:30 |
| 2024-09-26 | restate | Hank calls it a good book: he was desperately grateful for a chance to do human things with a book rather than inhuman things with a screen. | Something Very Strange Has Been Happening to Me 00:03:15 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).
Timeline notes
- John: first recorded event is revise (earlier stance may be outside 2007–2026 or unrecorded)