I was amazed to hear an insightful discussion of my book SCAN ARTIST: HOW EVELYN WOOD CONVINCED THE WORLD THAT SPEED-READING WORKED on a podcast largely devoted to game design! My thanks to game designers and authors Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws, who dedicated a portion of their Feb. 19, 2021, podcast to an entertaining and fast-moving summation of my book’s main points. As they noted, there was a “mystical tinge” to Evelyn Wood’s pseudoscience.
The podcast is here. The segment about SCAN ARTIST starts about forty-five minutes in, or at counter 45:00. The preceding discussions of roleplaying games and films are also worth a listen.
Indeed, there are striking similarities between the belief in speed-reading and the belief in mystical experiences or the paranormal. Interviewed about the experience of speed-reading nonfiction, Wood told of the “breakthrough” moment when she ceased reading the words of a novel as mere text. Instead, Wood said, she found herself walking in the Venezuelan rain forest described in the book, experiencing the sights and sounds as if in a movie. In the early 1960s, students in Evelyn Wood “institutes” were encouraged to strive for similar moments. Speed-reading a book about the Chicago fire, one young student shouted out, “I’m on fire,” much to satisfaction of the instructor, as well as the company. A journalist who was present reported this without a whiff of skepticism.
It is amazing that Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics classes were organized in both chambers of the US Congress and that a host of senators, most of them Democrats, endorsed this hoax for decades—as did Fortune 500 companies, including Boeing. As the podcast mentions, it’s no coincidence that Wood’s entrance into Washington DC in 1959 was first noted by a mimeographed newsletter, “The Little Listening Post,” which also reported flying-saucer sightings.
My favorite quote from the podcast: “It’s a great social history as well as a history of this particular all-American scam.”
