Get Smarter-Please!

A Plea to Get Smarter: Brain Fitness, Reading, and Escaping the Attention Economy Jason Wright asks listeners to intentionally “get smarter” by strengthening their ability to reason, focus, and tolerate boredom, arguing society is regressing in communication and thinking and that this correlates with widening wealth gaps. He warns that “free” digital services (Pluto TV, Gmail, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook) make users the product by monetizing attention, and encourages replacing doom-scrolling with reading and other “brain fitness” habits. Citing books and thinkers like Greg McKeown (Essentialism), Arthur Brooks (The Meaning of Your Life), and Cal Newport (Deep Work, Big Questions), he frames reading as pushups for the brain and suggests puzzles, learning guitar, timers/deleting apps, and reading a few sentences before checking social media. He urges reduced dependence on LLMs by thinking first, researching independently, writing by hand, and using AI mainly to polish, and recommends using history to contextualize current events, ending with a call to be a better thinker over partisan identity. 00:00 Welcome and a Plea 00:57 Why Society Feels Dumber 02:56 Free Apps and You Are Product 04:12 Books and Digital Minimalism 06:13 Brain Fitness Through Reading 07:34 Beat Doomscrolling With Three Sentences 10:04 Use LLMs Less Think More 10:57 Write by Hand to Think Better 13:01 History Repeats Itself 14:21 Final Plea and Closing 15:40 Outro and Calls to Action