Closed Stacks: Read Better, Remember More

Closed Stacks is a show about reading more effectively: how to build comprehension rather than just finishing books. Episodes explain why note-taking often fails to help you remember, how to work through difficult prose without endless rereading, and what changes in your brain when you read fiction versus nonfiction. It also explores how skimming habits shaped by the internet affect the way we absorb long-form texts, and questions like whether audiobooks feel different from paper or what a translator actually does to a classic. Each episode takes one reading problem and unpacks the mechanics beneath it.