CCATP #831 — Adam Engst on Reading Trains Your Internal LLM
From Chit Chat Across the Pond by Allison Sheridan
March 18, 2026 · 40 min
About this episode
Adam Engst discusses how reading influences the brain's internal language model.
In this fascinating discussion with Adam Engst, we discuss how he used to think that reading added information to essentially a database in his brain. Recently, though, he has started to think about his brain as a large language model, and that instead, reading is changing the weights of the model to include new information. Here's a link to the article on tidbits.com/... where Adam explains this concept in full detail. Join the Conversation: allison@podfeet.com podfeet.com/slack Support the Show: Patreon Donation Apple Pay or Credit Card one-time donation PayPal one-time donation Podfeet Podcasts Mugs at Zazzle NosillaCast 20th Anniversary Shirts Referral Links: Setapp - 1 month free for you and me Wispr Flow - 1 month free for you PETLIBRO - 30% off for you and me Parallels Toolbox - 3 months free for you and me Learn through MacSparky Field Guides - 15% off for you and me Backblaze - One free month for me and you Eufy - $40 for me if you spend $200. Sadly nothing in it for you. PIA VPN - One month added to Paid Accounts for both of us CleanShot X - Earns me $25%, sorry nothing in it for you but my gratitude
People in this episode
Host: Allison Sheridan
Guest: Adam Engst
Topics covered
- reading
- language models
- brain function
- information processing
- cognitive science
Keywords
- reading
- language model
- cognition
- information
- brain
- weights
- database
Sponsors
Patreon, Apple Pay, PayPal, Setapp, Wispr Flow, PETLIBRO, Parallels Toolbox, MacSparky Field Guides, Backblaze, Eufy
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: tidbits.com
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