“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. You just have to get people to stop reading them.” —Ray Bradbury.
In so many ways we do inch closer and closer to living in the reality of Fahrenheit 451 each day. In a stupid and likely accidental way, OP is right about reading audiobooks being a skill. But rather than dumbing down audiobooks, just fucking hone the skill. Honestly. Not everything has to be tailored to the lowest common denominator. Either audiobooks aren’t for you or you do the work to be able to handle the extra “cognitive load” (which I guess just means paying attention ???)
I always considered listening to an audiobook to be the same as reading because it does require a similar amount of attention, albeit a different kind. Just admit you don’t want to dedicate the time and attention to learning and move on. Don’t advocate for simplifying something that doesn’t need to be simplified. If you want some dumbass podcast to spoonfeed you garbage you barely pay attention to then do that, but don’t be mad when you are dumber for it.
