With a decline in reading is our capacity to think eroding?

Thanks to AI, it's easier than ever to avoid reading books — but that convenience may come with a cost. IDEAS explores how our digital landscape, coupled with the decline of reading, is changing the way we think. *This episode originally aired on Feb. 19, 2026.If you like this episode, listen to our podcast with Geoffrey Hinton, the 'godfather of artificial intelligence' who says AI must develop empathy and 'maternal instincts' or we risk human extinction.Guests in this episode:Adriaan Van der Weel is a professor emeritus by special appointment at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. He's also the co-author of The Ljubljana Manifesto on Higher-Level Reading.Maryanne Wolf is director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and the author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (2018).Naomi Baron is a professor emerita of World Languages and Cultures at American University and the author of Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters (2026).Leah Sargeant is an author and senior policy analyst at the Niskanen Center.Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) at the University of Edinburgh, where she is also appointed in Philosophy. She is the author of The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (2024).