(source: https://x.com/karepack77/status/2041935429705068647)

Taking it up another notch, doing them both simultaneously was the clear winner. If I listen to a reading assignment while following along visually reading the text, it’s like a one-and-done and ready to take the test at the end of the semester with no further studying.

I believe there’s some research that confirms your anecdote in that kids with reading comprehension difficulties had a much easier time reading when they were both reading and listening to the text at the same time. Entirely possible it’s applicable to the general population too (or maybe you just have undiagnosed dyslexia or something).

audiobooks and reading books both activate the same language related areas of the brain

This doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. This is an area of ongoing research (because audiobooks have only recently become very popular) so there are surprisingly few studies on the topic, but the general consensus is that they’re not the same thing. For example, while reading you go at your own pace and can easily re-read or skim words or sentences, but you can’t do this when listening to audiobooks.

I’d link you to a nice essay I read(!) on this last year in a Finnish newspaper, but it’s in Finnish so most users here probably won’t get much out of it… Actually what the hell, I’ll link it anyway: https://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/art-2000011260022.html

Cancer rates are not 1 in 1000. Something like 40% of people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives.

Thousands or tens of thousands of people is not statistically insignificant.

We increase the background rate in a city of 10 million people to say, 200 mSv/year for five decades and do the experiment to see if their genetics can handel it to get statically meaningful data?

As the video points out, there already is such a city of Ramsar, Iran, though it’s not 10 million people but rather some thousands or tens of thousands. It’s one of the places used for these studies.