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“Do we need to read, or can we just get everything through audio, like podcasts and audiobooks?” – Sebastian L., 15, Skanderborg, Denmark
Let’s start with a thought experiment: Close your eyes and imagine what the future might look like in a few hundred years.
Are people intergalactic travelers zooming between galaxies? Maybe we live on spaceships, underwater worlds or planets with purple skies.
Now, picture your bedroom as a teenager of the future. There’s probably a glowing screen on the wall. And when you look out the window, maybe you see Saturn’s rings, Neptune’s blue glow or the wonders of the ocean floor.
Now ask yourself: Is there a book in the room?
Open your eyes. Chances are, there’s a book nearby. Maybe it’s on your nightstand or shoved under your bed. Some people have only one; others have many.
You’ll still find books today, even in a world filled with podcasts. Why is that? If we can listen to almost anything, why does reading still matter?
As a language scientist, I study how biological factors and social experiences shape language. My work explores how the brain processes spoken and written language, using tools like MRI and EEG.
Whether reading a book or listening to a recording, the goal is the same: understanding. But these activities aren’t exactly alike. Each supports comprehension in different ways. Listening doesn’t provide all the benefits of reading, and reading doesn’t offer everything listening does. Both are important, but they are not interchangeable.
My colleagues and I use brain scans like this MRI to study what the brain is doing when a person reads.
Rajaaisya/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
Different brain processes
Your brain uses some of the same language and cognitive systems for both reading and listening, but it also performs different functions depending on how you’re taking in the information.
When you read, your brain is working hard behind the scenes. It recognizes the shapes of letters, matches them to speech sounds, connects those sounds to meaning, then links those meanings across words, sentences and even whole books. The text uses visual structure such as punctuation marks, paragraph breaks or bolded words to guide understanding. You can go at your own speed.
Listening, on the other hand, requires your brain to work at the pace of the speaker. Because spoken language is fleeting, listeners must rely on cognitive processes, including memory to hold onto what they just heard.
Speech is also a continuous stream, not neatly separated words. When someone speaks, the sounds blend together in a process called coarticulation. This requires the listener’s brain to quickly identify word boundaries and connect sounds to…
