Annie Jacobsen

I can't do math, but I can read.

And now I realize with the amount of people that listen to my audiobooks, listen to your podcast, that maybe is a new 21st century form of literacy.

which really makes my head go in interesting places because language is very different than reading, you know, communicating.

Yes.

And it's digesting the information.

And so where I think the social media parts of it are dangerous is it's, like you said, it's too fast, too disparate.

You go from one thing to the next thing, and that's the way it's all set up.

Whereas a longer form podcast, you're asking people to stay with you with your ideas.

You might go off on a riff about obesity.

I might go off on a riff about literacy.

But the brain is being stimulated.

The brain is being curious.

And then that carries over to your own life.

Right.

And the other argument to that, your friend with the flip phone, I've heard this director, Christopher Nolan, who made the Oppenheimer movie, talk about this, where he says he believes that the experience of sitting in the waiting room is what he wants.

So I think there's a very few rarefied people that can actually, the way they're built, the way they're engineered, the way they are, the way they've become, allows for them to sit in the waiting room and be super interested in observing.

Maybe you're an elite director to do that.

But most people are going to be restless, irritable, and discontent.

And therefore the podcast, the audio book,

It is, but it's also a way to consume new information.