What I Learned from Rita Carter’s TEDx Talk
By: Ahmed Ali Mire
I recently watched Rita Carter’s TEDxCluj talk, “Why Reading Matters,” and it changed the way I think about reading fiction. I have always understood reading as a way of gaining knowledge, improving language, or enjoying a good story. Carter, however, presents reading as something much deeper. Her discussion shows that reading fiction is also an exercise for the brain and can influence the way we imagine, think, understand emotions, and relate to other people.
One of the most interesting points I learned from the talk is that not all reading affects us in the same way. Reading an instruction manual, a report, or an administrative document can give us useful information, but fiction requires something different from the reader. When we read a story, we enter the experiences of characters who may have backgrounds, beliefs, emotions, and circumstances very different from our own. We have to imagine their situations and try to understand why they think and behave as they do. This makes fiction more than a source of entertainment. It becomes an opportunity to see the world through another person’s perspective.
This led me to think about the relationship between fiction and empathy. Carter discusses research showing that reading character-driven stories can strengthen what psychologists call Theory of Mind, which is our ability to understand that other people have thoughts, feelings, intentions, and perspectives that may differ from our own. When we follow a character who is experiencing fear, loss, love, disappointment, hope, or uncertainty, we are repeatedly asked to understand an experience from inside another person’s world. Over time, this can help us become more attentive to the emotions and perspectives of people around us.
Another lesson that stood out to me was the connection between reading and brain activity. Carter explains that when we read about an experience, the brain can activate some of the same areas involved in experiencing or imagining that event in real life. For example, reading about movement, emotion, or a physical experience does not simply involve processing words. The brain begins constructing an internal experience from those words. This helps explain why a powerful novel can make us feel as though we have traveled to another place or lived through events that have never actually happened to us.
This idea makes fiction particularly interesting because a book can give a person experiences without requiring those experiences to happen physically. Someone can read about life in another country, another historical period, another social class, or another person’s struggles. Through imagination, the reader can temporarily enter a world that would otherwise remain unfamiliar.
Carter also presents reading as a workout for the brain. She refers to research, including work associated with Emory University, suggesting that reading can produce measurable changes in the brain. The idea that sustained reading can strengthen neural connections made me reconsider what happens when we regularly spend time with books. Reading is often viewed as a passive activity because we sit quietly with a book. In reality, the mind may be actively constructing characters, places, emotions, events, relationships, and meanings while we read.
This is particularly important in an age when much of our information comes through short messages, headlines, social media posts, and brief videos. These forms of communication can be useful, but they often require less sustained attention than a long piece of fiction. A novel asks us to remain with a story, remember earlier events, interpret characters’ motivations, make connections, and tolerate uncertainty before the story reaches its conclusion. In that sense, reading fiction can also train patience and sustained attention.
Perhaps the most important lesson I took from Carter’s talk is that reading can influence how we relate to other people. A society is made up of people with different experiences and perspectives. If individuals become better at imagining what another person may be thinking or feeling, communication can become more thoughtful. Fiction cannot automatically make someone empathetic, but regularly engaging with complex characters gives readers opportunities to practice perspective-taking.
The talk also made me reflect on the importance of stories in my own life. A good story does more than tell us what happened. It allows us to ask why something happened, how a person felt, what another person might have done differently, and what we ourselves might have done in the same situation. These questions can continue in our minds long after we have finished reading.
I also realized that the value of fiction is not limited to writers, students, or people who already love books. It can benefit anyone interested in understanding people and the world around them. A novel can introduce us to experiences that we have never encountered personally. It can challenge assumptions, expand imagination, and make unfamiliar lives feel more understandable.
My main lesson from “Why Reading Matters” is therefore simple: reading fiction is not merely a way of passing time. It is a form of mental activity that can exercise imagination, strengthen perspective-taking, and deepen our understanding of human experience. A book gives us more than words on a page. It gives the mind material to imagine, interpret, connect, and remember.
After watching Rita Carter’s talk, I see reading differently. I am less likely to ask only, “What information did I get from this book?” I am also interested in asking, “What did this book make me imagine? Whose perspective did it allow me to experience? What did it teach me about other people, and what did it change in the way I see the world?”
That may be one of the strongest reasons why reading matters