Below is a slightly edited automatic transcript of the first section of this episode

I've been reading a little more in recent weeks than usual. And I posted on social media a couple of days ago. I recommended a couple of books.

This was essentially me recommending a couple of books and saying, Hey guys, please read more books. Watch less TV and read more books. It's a good message. It's a completely harmless message and a healthy message to give to people. Some people got offended in the comments and said, you are acquiring a "holier than thou" tone, just because you like books doesn't mean everyone has to like books, video and cinema have their own value and stuff.

Now, obviously it was not at all my intention to say that video is inferior, but I realized later on that perhaps that should be the message. Perhaps we should point out more and more that the kind of depth you will find in books, you will not be able to find in cinema or television.

Because books involve people giving intense attention to ideas provided by one person over a long period of time. You might say cinema comes really close to it. Or even when you're binge watching a series on Netflix or Prime, you really come close to it. But books require your mind to work more. You are required to fill in the imagination gaps that cinema fills in with visuals, visual effects, audio, dialogue, and music.

None of those are bad things. But to say that cinema offers your mind the same amount of exercise as books too, I think is false. It's just demonstrably false. So at the risk of pissing off at least some people, I'm going to go out and say that books are better than video entertainment.

And I don't think that's a bad message to give, even when I take the business side of things into account, because the comic book industry is not a profitable industry. The publishing industry is not a profitable industry. But Hollywood is doing extremely well. Film industries in multiple countries are doing extremely well. Netflix is not a tiny little company that struggles to pay its bills and people have not stopped wanting to be actors because video entertainment went out of fashion.

However, all those things can be said about a book. A lot of people don't write because they have been told (rightly) that people don't read now. Reading is important in my opinion. And I think that when I give out the message that books are better, I am pointing people in the right direction.

I am pointing out something that deserves to be pointed out. So, yeah, I may not be the kind of a-hole who says that her books are better, but I will be the a-hole who says that books are better because it's, in my opinion, the truth.