Active Recall

Taking the time to actively recall throughout literary material is another reason I believe reading has much more potential for long-term recall than watching an equivalent YouTube video. Even if a video is educational, most people aren’t inclined to pause it. The pace of information is set by the "director", not the viewer.

With a book there's much less friction with taking a brief repose to ruminate, make connections and let your mind wander where it will.

Anecdotal but the way I’ve always made sure I can recall something is by pausing after anything I consider particularly salient and then trying to connect it to other things I already know. I deliberately use a kind of guided free association + mindfulness to weave a stronger web.

For example, I remember when I first read about the cake zuppa inglese, an Italian dessert that’s basically a soppy liqueur cake whose name translates to “English soup,” I immediately thought of the Coffee Talk SNL sketch: “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Discuss.” which itself borrowed from Voltaire’s famous remark.