[aaronbrethorst]

I have an almost-four year old child and not a lot of downtime. I used to listen to podcasts when I was doing dishes, cleaning the house, walking the dog, etc. I've mostly abandoned podcasts in favor of audiobooks. It didn't feel like they were benefiting me in any meaningful way—almost like they were just empty calories for my ears.

I finally made it all the way through The Power Broker recently, which I've wanted to read for years, and am now on Jennifer Pahlka's really insightful Recoding America, which features heavily in the chapter "Govern" in Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's Abundance. The three are actually quite interesting to read back to back.

Audiobooks are definitely slower to get through than just reading, but I find that I can stick with them in a way that books just haven't allowed me to do in years.

[jppope]

Audiobooks are just a different medium. I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways. This doesn't imply one is better than the other either.

For me I don't like audiobooks because its very slow and spoken stories should have a different cadence, velocity, set of dynamics, and diction than a book should (check out "the moth" to see what I'm talking about). I hold nothing against people who don't like to read or people who like audiobooks, or people who like slow things - Suum cuique.

[PsylentKnight]

I agree that it’s a pretty different experience for fiction, where the subjective experience is everything and the narrator can color your experience a lot.

For nonfiction, I think the two mediums are virtually the same depending on the density of the book. Most differences come down to the fact that you’re more susceptible to distraction. Most nonfiction books are light and repetitive enough that I don’t think it’s a big deal

[jimmydddd]

I used to have a 45 minute driving commute each way to and from work. I listened to many non-fiction audio books (on cassette!)during that time and would often listen to them over and over many times. 20 years later I can still quote long portions of those books from memory. I can't do that with any print books. Definitely easier for me to listen to an audio book several times in a row than a print book.

[swed420]

Personally I like to highlight certain passages (non-fiction) for future reference, and this only works on ebooks.

[officeplant]

You can also bookmark audiobooks depending on the platform/playback application.

[loughnane]

Works on print too, no?

[swed420]

In a limited fashion, yes. But ebooks mean you can search highlights, categorize them, see summaries of them, etc if using calibre, zotero, or similar.

[dredmorbius]

Zettelkasten.

[zanellato19]

The fact that people say "I've read 30 books last year" when they heard the book is absurd to me. It is a completely (and honestly quite interesting) medium. I've heard and then read a few books and the experiences are completely different. Also, one of mine biggest things for reading is to completely focus on the text, and the audio book is almost the antithesis of this, because most people like them so they can do chores/driving _and_ listen. Two completely different ways of experiencing the text.

[throwup238]

I also don’t think people realize how often they zone out while listening to audiobooks and miss important details. You can zone out while reading books too but with audiobooks there usually another stimulus by design.

[colechristensen]

>I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways.

Is this attitude a holdover from encouraging small children to read for themselves? I don't know if this is quite the right framing but are you... hearing-illterate to some degree?

Some voice actors definitely add a layer of interpretation, and some are distractingly bad, but otherwise it could not be any more of an equal experience absorbing a book through my eyes or my ears. Unless there was a need to physically interact with the book, quickly flipping between sections or keeping notes in the margin, which I rarely do.

"I didn't really get the full experience until I read it on the page instead of listening" is an absurd statement to me, but maybe people's brains work differently.

There are things missing from text that can be conveyed over audio or with body language in person certainly so those experiences can't be directly translated from real life to the page.

[dqv]

It's not a maybe. People's brains work differently.

For one thing, in the written version, it's way easier to scan backwards precisely to a point in the text to clarify missed details.

Sometimes I like to stop reading for a moment and take in the scenery. With an audiobook, the narrator has already decided to blurt out the next line. Or I'd have to quickly pause it and lose my train of thought. With reading I'm fully in control of when the next bit of information will be introduced.

Audiobooks are great for dialog-heavy stories, but sometimes I want to spend a little bit longer on a particular page when the author is building imagery... what's the equivalent of that in an audiobook, slowing the speech down? Except it's not about speed, it's about soaking in the particular meaning of a word (or string of words) before going onto the next.

I don't think this even scratches the surface of how different they are as mediums of storytelling.

[kriro]

Fair enough, I understand the UX/interacting with the medium argument. Regarding the processing in the brain, there's claims that "The Representation of Semantic Information Across Human Cerebral Cortex During Listening Versus Reading Is Invariant to Stimulus Modality", see: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/39/39/7722

The study has issues but at least the hypothesis of representing information independent of the modality you consumed it in seems like a decent default to me.

[dqv]

Yes, this is where the disagreement between the two camps arises. Some people view reading holistically while others are only concerned with the end result. If only the end result matters, it doesn't matter much how you got there.

This isn't a perfect comparison (since I believe there may be some underlying mechanical difference), but it's like how it's possible to get your nutritional needs met with liquid nutrition or eating whole foods. They have the same end result nutritionally, but some people find liquid nutrition to be horrible.

I think it's especially the case for harder-to-read books that I prefer the textual version. Some books are highly referential. They may take place in a country I'm not familiar with. Take The Stranger by Camus. I have never been to Algiers (or Algeria for that matter), so I want to get a feel for the beach in Algiers. Sometimes the author will refer to a flower I've never heard of, so I will look it up. Stuff like this is important to me for experiencing the story, but for others, it's not important. They use context clues to determine "it's a flower" and just fill in whatever flower they feel like putting there.

[telxosis]

I am sure people are very different in this area.

I love books and audiobooks and I experience absolutely no difference between the two but that is contingent on liking the voice actor's voice.

This year I have really moved to listening to all books read by the synthetic af_heart model. I love that voice so much. #1 Robertson Dean, #2 af_heart.

[jolmg]

> it could not be any more of an equal experience absorbing a book through my eyes or my ears.

With stories, probably. With nonstories, and depending on what kind of nonstory book, I might jump around a lot. I might like to skim quickly (e.g. chapters/sections, starting sentences of every few paragraphs, etc.), then skim more thoroughly (e.g. recheck paragraphs of a chapter to get a general flow of it and how they connect, etc.), then read thoroughly on some sections and less others. You just can't do that with audiobooks. You don't have the same level of control.

Depending on how thought-provoking something is, my mind may stray on thinking of implications. Then, it's easier for my eyes to dart back by the time I notice and reread x or y, than rewinding, listening a little bit, rewind some more, etc. I might just stare at some words sometimes. You can't stare at sound.

Memory in relation to sight and sound is probably different, too. With sight you can kind of make more associations. You read an idea, and you can associate that with the location of where you're reading it (what part of the page, around how many pages have been turned in the chapter, what chapter, thickness of pages on left and right side of the spine). With sound, it's just a single stream. You're not staring at the timestamp location in the file of everything you're hearing and there isn't like this hierarchical location structure.

[wahnfrieden]

I often pause and reflect. Or replay a couple pages or start over with a chapter. Not totally alien to what you’re describing, but most people aren’t so hands on with audio controls, sure. Though you can choose to be with the right tools for it.

[jolmg]

Yeah, the benefit of audiobooks is being able to do it while doing chores or being out and about. The medium's ideal for being hands-off.

[microflash]

> Audiobooks are just a different medium.

When I read I build internal voices of the characters or narrators through the pages as a part of my imagination engaging with the words of the book. With audiobooks this never happens.

[matwood]

Agree. I'll listen to nonfiction because it just feels like a long podcast. Fiction I always read. But in general I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks.

[hahahaa]

A good non fiction book should take a year to "read" though. Because you'll need to stop, reread, scribble, look up online for other help. It should be a challenge!

[picklesman]

Depends highly on the subject matter

[nephihaha]

Audiobooks are heavily dependent on the reader. In one case, I had an audiobook where the translator was the reader. She is an excellent translator but a poor reader.

Many authors are poor readers of their own work.

They are certainly good while you are on a long drive etc, because they entertain you while doing some another task which you wouldn't be able to do while reading. During lockdown, I could not read due to the constant stress and fear mongering, but I had to walk a lot every day and the audiobooks were a good way to accompany that.

[estetlinus]

+1

The best audiobook I’ve ever listened to is Stephen Kings On Writing: A memoir of the Craft, read by the author. One of our times best storytellers, both when it comes to writing them and telling them.

[nephihaha]

I've a soft spot for that book because it saved me from two days of very long and dreary jury service. (They kept us sitting around all that time.) I think I read at least a third of it in there. The only court stuff I heard was for about ten minutes and incredibly unexciting.

[arach]

I've been building a little app on the side that allows me to primarily read my books in epub, mobi or pdf -> text format but generate readouts on demand for only the bits I want (highlight, paragraph, page, chapter) so that I can continue while I'm on the go, without having to bifurcate between apps - this might already exist but I made mine

Naturally, I also added the ability to highlight, leave notes and ... ask questions (via API)

Even with incredible models, it's a decent amount of work to get this to work nicely

[boznz]

When I write a character, I picture not just the character but the voice, same with reading, and going from a paper or eBook to an audio book usually breaks both. Books I write rarely include characters from Manchester (UK), so reading voices with my strong accent would definitely break a lot of my books. It is also the reason I sometimes don't enjoy movies if I have read the book. It is not a one way street though, some really good narrators can improve the experience a lot, same with good directors.

[freefaler]

There is also another benefit to books, on average they are much better than a random 3 hour podcast. If you care about what you read, you'd be getting something that the author has spend a lot of time, skill and energy to write, the editor would have spend a lot of time and skill to improve with the author.

I have a measure for all content I consume, quality/hr of reading/listening. If it's just a long video that has 2-3 questions that has caught my attention I'd be listening only those. If it's a long text that I might find something interesting I'll ask the LLM to summarize the main ideas as a filter before I decide to dive in.

Books, and their audiobooks version have on average much more bang per hour than random podcasts, because they're structured, authors had spend more time on them and you can cherry pick from a structure.

I also have caught myself using sloppy content as excuse not working on planned tasks with excuses like "this might be useful", or watching "productivity porn" videos. I think LLMs are good as a pre-filter for that.

[WalterBright]

I gave up on podcasts because of the excessive insertion of commercials, and the execrable user interface of the iphone podcast app.

[dredmorbius]

This is a frustration for me as well. A few useful tricks, and some areas I'm looking to explore:

- AntennaPod (Android: https://antennapod.org/about/) doesn't specifically block ads, but does make skipping them fairly painless. I'm not familiar with the iOS app space.

- Seek out, and add a classification tag for ad-free podcasts. When you're not in the mood for dealing with ads, play these.

- Protip: if you learn, or want to learn, German, Deutschlandfunk (and a number of other German-language broadcasters) have a set of excellent, ad-free, podcasts. This includes a number of podcasts for learning German (generally through the Goethe Institute or Deutsche Welle).

- If your podcast app permits it, set your forward-skip to 30 or 60 seconds (the length of most ad beds), and backwards to 5 seconds. You'll be able to navigate past most ad blocks more easily. You can also set begin/end skip periods for start/end of episode advertising.

- I've thought of manually editing episodes from a desktop session using audio editing software (Audacity or similar). That's ... a bit of additional overhead, but as with other mise en place techniques, you incur the overhead once and don't have to worry about the interruptions when you're in the middle of listening to an episode. Audacity shows sound signatures and I'm expecting that most ad blocks will be readily apparent. I also suspect AI tools might be able to remove ads fairly reliably, though haven't looked into this yet.

I've definitely noticed that I deliberately avoid listening to podcasts which have ads when I don't have the bandwidth / freedom to deal with them (e.g., doing other tasks, walking etc.). And advertising has become more pervasive, longer, more intrusively inserted, and annoying with time.

Other ad-free English-language pods: Tech Can't Save Us, History of Philosophy (Without Any Gaps), and Philosophy Bites (and several affiliated podcasts). All are highly informative, well-produced, don't fixate on current events and politics (which ... I find maddening). And several of those would appreciate any support as well.

[dredmorbius]

Late add: the German-originated ad-free podcasts include several English-language channels as well, covering not only language-instruction but culture, news, technology, science, and other topics.

Other national English-language broadcasters (NPR, PBS, CBC, ABC (Australia), etc.) have podcast channels, but most have succumbed to advertising. That isn't to say they don't have good programming, but don't expect ad-free listening. For a number of cultural reasons, Germany seems to have incorporated the idea that advertising itself has deep costs and its avoidance strong benefits.

[elAhmo]

There are other apps too, such as Overcast, and ads on podcasts are really easy to skip.

[WalterBright]

Yeah, I can skip forward 30 sec, then back up, blech. It's just not worth it when you constantly have to interact with the podcast app.

Scott Adams' podcasts were different. He inserted very few commericials, and they were short enough there was no reason to skip forward. I tried many other podcasts after he passed away, and they all were largely long, boring commercials. Yuck. I now listen to Pandora or Soma FM instead.

[apparent]

> Yeah, I can skip forward 30 sec, then back up, blech. It's just not worth it when you constantly have to interact with the podcast app.

Fortunately this can be done much more easily now, with headphone-based controls and smartwatch-based controls. It takes maybe 1-3 seconds for me to get through an ad break and be back to listening.

[heyheyhey]

Comparing a podcast to a book is like comparing a 30-minute TV episode to a 3 hour Scorsese movie. Similar mediums with completely different goals.

[dredmorbius]

It really depends on the podcast as well.

There are podcasts which are just free-association rambling (or worse), others which are very closely scripted and edited.

I very much prefer the latter, and the best of those approach books in structure and/or value, if they don't directly produce books themselves (e.g., Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy, which is both a podcast and a book series).

[kelvinjps10]

For me audiobooks are okay for non fiction but for fiction I need to read it to be able to immerse in the story and imagine the characters. Also no all non fiction it's okay either, for philosophy that's a little complicated I need to read it too.

[dredmorbius]

Fiction read by a skilled actor (voice or performance) can be a real insight. My reading voice is quite distinct from what such an actor can bring to a work.

Not all narrators are actors, and depending on the narration you may or may not gain from this.

For a good set of examples, I'd recommend Selected Shorts (Symphony Space), which is a set of podcasts and broadcasts voiced by stage and screen actors. They're usually at least good, and often excellent.

<https://symphonyspace.org/selected-shorts>

Recent episodes: <https://www.symphonyspace.org/selected-shorts/episodes>

Two personal all-time faves:

- "The Appropriation of Cultures", by Percival Everett, read by Ruben Santiago Hudson.

- "The Smoker", by David Schickler, read by Robert Sean Leonard: <https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=5XbSI5swx1E>.

[j45]

Agreed, there's no one medium fits all in all stages of their life and a lot of the takes rooted in such a perspective can lead people to seek convenience (scrolling) instead of engaging.

Reading does force you to slow down to let more enter your brain.

Audiobooks can do the same in a different way.

Either way, longer form content helps the brain unpack and retain bigger/longer picture things which is the kind of focus that many want to improve.

Reading also helps one be more articulate.

Articulation is a helpful skill in using AI.

[orochimaaru]

I used to do that when my children were little. However, in another 3 years your child will not require you as much anymore and your downtime duration will improve.

My problem has been that once I started doing the audiobooks/podcasts, it has been really hard to reclaim my focus to read. I used to be able to power through books. Now, there always seems to be a distraction at hand.

[Balgair]

I'll echo this too. I've liddles in the house and books are a no go right now. If they even let me the minutes to read, that would be great. But I know from repeated experience that books are too fragile for them to have around, let alone the stains and stickiness that young children affect on every surface.

Audiobooks have been a god send and then the Libby app manna from upon high. Free, high quality, adult-level infotainment?! I'll never go back.

One thing if do is up the reading speed. It takes time but I'm comfortable at 2.6x these days, even on the fragmented sleep a teething toddler grants you. For really in depth stuff I'll slow it down a lot, but a Stephen King dime store novel or John Grisham thriller? Oh yeah, speed it up no worries

[password4321]

I would audiobook 24/7 with the open ear headphones (Shokz etc) but I don't think I could afford to pay for that much that was worth listening too / low maintenance.

[dqv]

https://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks

As others have pointed out, libraries often have Libby access which can have pretty huge selections of audiobooks. There's a discovery feature that lets you search by vibe, which I am finding useful.

[singpolyma3]

Use the library

[j45]

Libraries certainly have great apps for borrowing ebooks, audio books and more.

[kaashif]

I only even heard about Jennifer Pahlka from Tyler Cowen's podcast, I think there are still some podcasts worth listening to.

Your point is well taken and very reasonable though.

[crossroadsguy]

Audiobooks are great if one likes the sound, tone, speed, etc, etc of the narrator. Not very easy to land at this combination.

[coffeefirst]

I got a Libro.fm sub when my son was born last year and am finding the same.

I actually think this is about quality. Podcasts that take real effort (Hardcore History, Fall of Civilizations, Gastropod) are absolutely worth my time, but they're basically mini-audiobooks in their own right.

[theoreticalmal]

Hardcore History is phenomenal. It’s a bummer the release cadence is so slow, but I understand why

[mcv]

After a long reading hiatus, audiobooks helped me pick up speed. I read faster with audiobook than without. For a few books, I combined regular and audiobook, so the audiobook forces me to keep reading, and hearing what I'm reading gives me something to hold on to, and helps a bit to prevent my thoughts from distracting me. But I don't have an audiobook for all the books I want to read.

[beloch]

"Avoid even audiobooks. Big corporations want to grab your attention by trying to market audiobooks as books for busy people, but don’t fall for the trap. A book is just boring black text on a white page because that’s how it’s meant to be consumed, and it requires your entire attention. Listening to audio while cooking or cleaning or whatever you do is not the same thing; you are not 100% concentrated on the content. "

----

I disagree with the author of this post. Audiobooks are fantastic in certain settings. e.g. Driving, or any form of transit if you're prone to motion sickness. Yes, listening is different from reading, but you're still getting information into your brain. There are definitely books that don't work as audiobooks (e.g. Anything with equations), but there are also books that are, perhaps, best consumed as audiobooks. Homer was passed down orally for generations before being written down. Anyone who poopoo's an audiobook of Homer deserves to be ridiculed.

[brandall10]

Wow, listening to the Power Broker now, about 1/3 of the way through.

Audiobooks completely changed things for me... in the past 2 years, 'read' about 40 books, almost entirely listened to on my daily runs. The prior 2 years? Only 3 or so.

[hombre_fatal]

Same. Though for me I just can’t and don’t want to sit for hours. I still read 15-30min to go to bed, but with an audiobook I can listen for hours to amazing content while doing everything else I want to do in life like exercise and cook.

Now it’s at the point where I can’t wait to go for a run or do the dishes because it means I’ll get farther in a great book. Finally a real life hack.

[technothrasher]

I cannot ever manage audiobooks, because I tend to wander while I'm reading, thinking about what I just read, processing it, mulling it over, or exploring it in some other way. With a book, I just go back to where I stopped reading when ready and carry on. But with an audiobook, it keeps going while I'm thinking and not listening, and I miss it and have to rewind an unknown amount, over and over.

[cubefox]

> Avoid even audiobooks. Big corporations want to grab your attention by trying to market audiobooks as books for busy people, but don’t fall for the trap. A book is just boring black text on a white page because that’s how it’s meant to be consumed, and it requires your entire attention. Listening to audio while cooking or cleaning or whatever you do is not the same thing; you are not 100% concentrated on the content. Also, reading is faster than listening, so use your time wisely.