Building a Media Empire: Culture and Influence

Alex Wieckowski is on a mission to make you fall in love with reading again—and he thinks AI can help.

Alex, who writes a newsletter that captures lessons from books he’s read and tips to become a better reader, Alex & Books, is a creator with over 1 million followers across social platforms. He’s also the author of a book of quotes that will inspire you to read more, Learn to Love Reading.

We spent an hour talking about how Alex uses AI to be a smarter reader, and we tested out a few strategies live on the show, including:

• prompting ChatGPT to recommend books that will help me lead a creator-run business better,
• understanding the deeper themes in Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha with large language models, and
• using AI to create an actionable strategy for Alex to build a course based on the frameworks in Alex Hormozi’s business strategy book $100M Offers. 

Alex clued me into what he’s learned about developing a good reading habit, and his best advice on how to reignite your passion for books. We also discuss Alex’s predictions on how companies like Neuralink, which make use of a brain-computer interface—a technology that allows users to control external devices through brain activity—will change the future of reading and books. Here’s a link to the transcript of this episode.

This is a must-watch for book lovers, people struggling to finish books, and anyone who wants to take their reading to the next level with AI.

If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! 

Want even more?

Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It’s usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free.

To hear more from Dan Shipper:

• Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe 
• Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper

Timestamps:

1. Introduction: 00:00:34

2. Choose physical books over e-readers to boost your memory: 00:01:36

3. Alex’s take on how long books will stay relevant: 00:02:54

4. Prompt ChatGPT to find your next read: 00:07:40

5. Articulating Dan’s taste in books with AI: 00:13:50

6. Use AI to find books tailored to solve your problems: 00:15:46

7. How to use AI as a personal study buddy: 00:33:32

8. Prompt LLMs to turn insights from books into actionable strategies: 00:41:19

9. What Alex’s rule around buying a new book is: 01:02:10

10. Alex’s advice for anyone who feels like they don’t have time to read: 01:16:36

Links to resources mentioned in the episode:

• Alex Wieckowski: https://twitter.com/AlexAndBooks_

• Alex’s newsletter: https://alexandbooks.beehiiv.com/

• The self-improvement book that got Alex into reading: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

• The books that Dan is reading: Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism by Richard Rorty 

• The books that Alex is reading: Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire by Andrew Wilkinson, $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, Outlive by Peter Attia