What is *Radical Honesty* by Brad Blanton about?

*Radical Honesty* advocates for complete truthfulness in all interactions to reduce stress, build authentic relationships, and overcome emotional burdens caused by lies. Brad Blanton, a psychotherapist, argues that honesty about feelings, thoughts, and past actions fosters clarity and connection. The book outlines practical steps to practice truth-telling, including confronting hidden emotions and dismantling societal norms of politeness.

Who should read *Radical Honesty*?

This book suits individuals seeking deeper relationships, improved communication, or relief from anxiety caused by dishonesty. It’s valuable for those tired of superficial interactions, therapists exploring client communication tools, or anyone interested in personal growth through vulnerability. Critics note its confrontational approach may challenge readers uncomfortable with direct feedback.

Is *Radical Honesty* worth reading?

Yes, for its provocative insights into how dishonesty harms mental health and relationships. Blanton’s methods, like expressing anger directly and admitting past lies, offer tangible steps toward authenticity. However, some find its extreme stance impractical or socially risky, citing critiques of Blanton’s seminar tactics as overly abrasive.

What are the three levels of truth-telling in *Radical Honesty*?

1. **Revealing facts**: Disclosing past lies or secrets to clear emotional baggage. 2. **Expressing feelings**: Articulating real-time emotions, even judgmental ones. 3. **Exposing fiction**: Rejecting false identities (e.g., “perfect parent”) to embrace authenticity. These levels aim to dismantle self-deception and societal masks.

How does *Radical Honesty* suggest handling anger?

Blanton views anger as natural and advocates direct expression to prevent resentment. Instead of suppressing it, he encourages phrases like “I’m angry because…” to foster resolution. Critics argue this risks harming relationships if not paired with empathy.

What are practical ways to apply *Radical Honesty* daily?

- Start with low-stakes truths (e.g., admitting a mistake at work). - Share feelings immediately (“I feel hurt by your comment”). - Join honesty-focused groups for support. Blanton warns progress requires tolerance for discomfort and potential conflict.

What are common critiques of *Radical Honesty*?

Critics call it socially irresponsible, arguing unchecked truth-telling can damage relationships or careers. Others label Blanton’s seminars cult-like, citing accounts of aggressive coaching. Despite this, supporters praise its mental health benefits and focus on accountability.

What iconic quotes define *Radical Honesty*?

- “Lying is the primary cause of human stress.” - “Anger is just energy—use it to connect, not attack.” - “Yesterday’s truth is today’s bullshit.” These emphasize adaptability and rejecting stale societal norms.

Radical honesty Summary

how to transform your life by telling the truth

Brad Blanton

3.81(2961 Reviews)

Radical honesty Summary Overview

"Radical Honesty" challenges you to strip away deception in every interaction. Featured in "Silicon Valley" and "Bones," this controversial self-help phenomenon asks: what if lying - even small white lies - is what's truly making you miserable? A.J. Jacobs tried it. Could you?

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Chapter 1

The Radical Honesty Revolution: How Truth-Telling Can Save Your Life

We all lie like hell. This simple yet profound observation forms the cornerstone of Brad Blanton's controversial bestseller "Radical Honesty." First self-published in 1991 before becoming a cult phenomenon, the book has influenced millions, including celebrities like Jim Carrey and Louis C.K., who credit its principles with transforming their lives and creative work. What makes this book so powerful is its unflinching challenge to the polite deceptions that structure our everyday lives. Blanton, a psychotherapist with over 30 years of experience, argues that our collective addiction to lying-to others and ourselves-is literally killing us through stress, disconnection, and psychological suffering. His radical proposition? Total, unfiltered honesty as the path to psychological freedom and authentic connection. It's a message that continues to resonate in our era of carefully curated social media personas and "alternative facts." The question Blanton poses is both simple and terrifying: What would happen if you told the complete truth about everything, to everyone, all the time?

Chapter 2

The Disease of Moralism: How We Learned to Lie

As children, we begin life fully connected to our immediate experience. We feel what we feel, want what we want, and express ourselves without filter. But as we grow, we learn to abstract, generalize, and evaluate our experiences. We become attached to our assessments and begin predicting and controlling events by avoiding pain and recreating pleasure. Life transforms into a story with moral lessons to follow-what Blanton calls "moralism," a disease we all suffer from. Most adults believe children should receive moral instruction, unwittingly passing on this disease. Schools become central agents in transmitting moralism. The disease manifests as hysterical faith in the mind, and paradoxically, our survival mechanism becomes self-destructive, allowing us to develop technologies that harm humans and the environment while rationalizing suffering. Adult moralists are perpetually angry people who become increasingly hysterical when confronted with messy real-world experience. Lawyers exemplify this disease-trained to argue by rules, which fails completely in personal relationships. After enduring bar exams and years of 70-80 hour workweeks to "make partner," lawyers become workaholics who orient themselves solely through principles rather than experience. These are the people who become our judges and political representatives-the mind of our culture. Moralism progresses as we become detached from our direct experience. Without physical survival demands grounding us, we depend on ideas, principles, and rules for orientation. We cling to roles and rules, fearing we'll lose control without them. The more intensely we defend these rules, the further removed from experience we become. Psychological experiments on field dependence show how some people rely on external frames of reference while others use their own bodies for orientation. Field dependent people take cues from external references rather than internal judgment, while field independence correlates with creativity and social independence. Artists tend to be field independent, while lawyers and Catholic school students tend toward field dependence, making "better sheep than people." The death-grip on principles causes unhappiness and anger. Rather than trying to cure moralism, we must manage it by telling the truth like children do before losing their innocence. The good news is that field dependent, socially dependent people can learn independence if they're willing to tell the truth.

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Chapter 3

The Original Being: Who We Were Before We Learned to Lie

Before we constructed our personalities and identities, we existed as pure consciousness - a state of undifferentiated awareness that preceded all mental constructs. Our first experience was the dawning of awareness in the womb-a profound unity of experiencing that lasted an eternity in our perception, where time had no meaning and separation did not exist. All religions, gods, metaphysics, and philosophies throughout human history are essentially attempts to remember and reconnect with this lost sense of primordial unity. True enlightenment is the direct knowing of this unity, not merely intellectual understanding or philosophical discourse about it. In the beginning, we existed in an unseeing world of sounds and sensations-like intestines rumbling, blood flowing through vessels, or dolphins calling underwater in the vast ocean depths. This background of pure sensation was our entire reality, without separation between perceiver and perceived. We can return to this state through deep meditation, where the artificial boundaries between self and experience dissolve. After what seemed an eternity, the dramatic experiences of birth, blinding light, first breath of air, and physical sensation flooded our being, creating the first ripples in our ocean of consciousness. The mind, with its capacity for differentiation and categorization, emerged gradually from this overwhelming flood of raw experience. Following birth, we began the process of demarcating smaller areas from our vast ocean of experience-mother's breast became distinct from the background, our hand became a separate entity, our body emerged as a boundary. This process transformed our unified experience into a sea of mental suggestions and conceptual divisions. However, who we actually are remains far more expansive than these mental images and conceptual boundaries. We exist primarily as the experiencer of what's momentarily present, secondarily as the multi-sensory recorder of experience, and least significantly as the rememberer of past events. Our fundamental nature is being the creator of our world through direct sensing and perception. After forming a personality and losing touch with our original wholeness of being, we must undertake the challenging journey of rediscovering that wholeness-though initially experiencing it as a threatening dissolution of our carefully constructed personality. This process of disintegration and reintegration-metaphorically dying and being reborn-requires immense courage and patience, often taking years or decades of conscious work. Like fish arguing about the existence of the ocean while swimming in it, we struggle to recognize the perpetual ocean of experience that has always been our true nature. Both internal and external experiences exist within our field of consciousness-we are the experience itself happening. The mind, born from this ocean of pure experience, paradoxically becomes the very thing that obscures our original being through its constant categorization and conceptualization. Meditation serves as a practical path to reunify our first sense of being with our present experience, dissolving the artificial boundaries created by the mind. We are beings alive behind the mask of personality, and direct experiential knowledge of this truth is gaining ground as traditional religious doctrine loses its authority. The path from doctrine to direct knowledge represents a natural evolution beyond childhood moralism, but many individuals become psychologically damaged by rigid doctrinal teaching and stop growing spiritually. With the existential threats of nuclear weapons and other destructive technologies looming over humanity, we can no longer afford to wait for natural evolution-we must make a sudden advance in consciousness or risk our own extinction. This urgent need for collective awakening makes the rediscovery of our original being not just a personal quest, but a crucial imperative for human survival.

Chapter 4

The Path of Truth-Telling: Three Levels of Honesty

Truth-telling is the path to freedom from the roles we hide behind. When we remove these protective facades, we stand vulnerable yet powerful, capable of genuine connection. Through telling the truth, we kill nothing but false roles, images, and lies, while our authentic selves survive and thrive. The first level of truth-telling involves revealing hidden facts and clearing up past lies. This process creates freedom from the restrictions of our constructed identities. We must first develop an identity through adolescence, then surrender our attachment to it, integrating our original being with the identity we've developed. Most people find that revealing long-withheld secrets doesn't produce the catastrophic reactions they fear. Parents often barely remember the incidents, or spouses respond with their own confessions. This first level of truth-telling creates breathing space and renewed relationships, freeing up energy previously spent maintaining secrets. The second level of truth-telling involves continuously revealing emotional truths and judgments as they occur. This is where many people take a "flight into health," thanking the therapist and leaving before facing this more demanding work. Beth's story illustrates the healing power of level two honesty. After Mark left her for another woman, Beth's suffering continued until she faced him directly, expressing both her resentments and appreciations. This honest exchange allowed both to grieve properly and transformed her resentments into appreciations. Through telling the truth, Beth forgave Mark and herself, experiencing love and letting go of hatred and grief. At level three of truth-telling, you must overcome the very egotism that comes from thinking you're great for telling the truth. The hard-earned humility is immediately followed by pride in that humility, creating a new trap. Continuing at this level means owning that there's no virtue in owning up. What emerges is an innocence similar to what existed before developing an identity-you have an identity but with little attachment to it. Learning truth-telling parallels learning golf: first mastering fundamentals, then polishing skills, and finally reaching the professional level where you realize thinking about your experience won't help-only being present to each moment matters. The hardest advancement is from good to professional, requiring exceptional dedication. When we reveal more through truth-telling, we have less to hide, become less worried about being found out, and can better attend to others-making intimacy and freedom possible.

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Chapter 5

Being Abnormally Honest in a World of Lies

When the being speaks, it uses descriptive language, while the mind uses evaluative language. Truth-telling frees us through simple description of what is, evoking feelings of affirmation and appreciation for being alive. The secret to a good life is not suffocating in the mind's protective but limiting bullshit. An honest person experiences freedom by not being lost in their own mind. They use both descriptive and abstract language, but always with the intention to accurately describe reality regardless of propriety. This creates bodily sensations and movement both in the speaker and listener. Eventually, the feeling of insecurity transforms from something dreaded into a valued form of excitement and aliveness. Words are merely labels for pictures of reality, not reality itself. Language is inadequate for complete communication, especially about feelings and experiences. Telling the truth requires precision in description to evoke similar feelings in others-this is the creative power shared by poetry and honest speech. Telling the truth means revealing everything you've hidden to those who would be most hurt, angry, surprised, or embarrassed by it. If you've had an affair, you must disclose all details to your spouse-who, when, where, how often, how it felt-and answer all resulting questions. It means sharing all secrets and expressing feelings authentically regardless of social norms. The first barrier to overcome is politeness-modifying your experience out of "consideration" for others' feelings. Honest people speak simply, using language more to describe than evaluate, while liars primarily evaluate with just enough description to seem believable. Most people are unhappy-it's normal to be disappointed and just getting by. What's abnormal is being honest. Normal people focus on crafting good cover stories that present them favorably, while honest people focus simply on saying what is so. Honesty rescues us from normality, bringing us back to basic reality from the clouds of elaborate stories. The most free, alive human beings are truth-tellers who accept greater insecurity by relying on fewer beliefs for protection. While beliefs don't provide actual security, they insulate us against reality, making us feel protected despite our fears. Learning to make uncertainty pleasant resembles enjoying the controlled fear of a rollercoaster-initially uncomfortable but eventually exciting. This "comfortable uncertainty" becomes the foundation for a creative, fulfilling life where growth happens instead of stagnation.

Chapter 6

The Taboos Against Excitement: Sex, Anger, and Joy

Modern psychology's history deeply reflects our cultural taboos against excitement, with each era revealing different aspects of our collective discomfort with intense emotions. Freud's psychoanalytic theory emerged as a direct response to Victorian sexual repression, attempting to cure the cultural sickness of sexual guilt that permeated society. While sexual shame has decreased significantly since then, we still engage in complex social dances to negotiate mutual control over excitement, desperately trying to avoid embarrassment or loss of control. Repressed sexuality doesn't simply vanish but inevitably resurfaces in various manifestations. Sometimes it appears as moral crusading against perceived "filth" in society, but more commonly through compensating excitements that become socially acceptable addictions: overeating, overworking, excessive shopping, smoking, drinking, or drug use. These substitutes provide similar physiological arousal while avoiding the taboo of sexual expression. Similarly, after two world wars starkly revealed our collective problem with anger repression, Fritz Perls developed groundbreaking theories on transforming aggression into personal growth rather than directing it toward external causes or enemies. Our disowned internal warfare gets projected outward in numerous subtle ways. Rather than experiencing immediate anger in the moment, we engage in mental criticism and hateful thoughts, making ourselves physically and emotionally sick through denial. This unacknowledged anger ultimately controls us, manifesting in various forms - from weight gain used as protective armor to artificial niceness that paradoxically increases our isolation from authentic connection. When we finally allow ourselves to experience and express our anger fully, it often transforms or simply disappears. Beneath anger usually lies deep grief, and beneath that grief lies joy - perhaps our most primitively repressed emotion in modern society. Adults systematically suppress joy to protect themselves from potential hurt, operating under the unconscious belief that loving freely inevitably opens them to devastating pain. We develop a profound distrust of happiness, superstitiously believing that too much joy will invite tragedy or downfall - a belief often reinforced by cultural narratives and personal experiences. Neurosis is fundamentally about refusing to accept what's happening in the present moment - denying any form of excitement occurring right now, whether pleasant or unpleasant. A neurotic person constantly demands that life be other than it is, creating an exhausting internal struggle. While we all occasionally avoid experience, earning the clinical label of "neurotic" depends on how frequently and intensely we deny our feelings, sensations, and immediate experiences. Human awareness can only focus on three distinct domains: immediate environmental events, internal bodily sensations, or thoughts and fantasies. Most of us habitually fixate on the endless mind-stream of thoughts, losing vital connection with what's actually happening inside our bodies and in the world directly before us. Effective therapy helps those trapped in endless thoughts about experience to refocus on the immediate reality of what's happening here and now, reconnecting with the wisdom of direct experience rather than mental abstractions about it.

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Chapter 7

The Transformative Power of Anger

Anger, like a grenade in war, is often treated as a life-threatening force we must sacrifice ourselves to contain. We smother our anger to protect loved ones, believing we're heroic when we're actually being foolish. Unlike grenades, anger isn't inherently destructive-it's our mishandling of it that causes damage. The tragedy is that these sacrifices are meaningless. When we suppress anger to protect relationships, we paradoxically poison them. The person making the sacrifice grows resentful when others don't appreciate their "heroism," while those "protected" resent being withheld from and lied to. Withheld anger destroys relationships by draining their vitality. Successfully expressing anger requires giving up constraints like trying to be "decent and fair" while angry. We can inhibit violence while still allowing ourselves to be authentically angry. Only after fully expressing anger can we return to being decent and fair-attempting both simultaneously prevents either from being authentic. Anger itself isn't problematic-it's natural like love or fear. Children get angry, express it, and move on. Adults, however, persist in using ineffective learned strategies for handling anger. In our culture, we're taught to hide anger rather than express it directly. We learn we should only get angry at certain times, at certain people, and only when "right." Since our actual experience contradicts these rules, we learn to deny our feelings, which distorts our perception of the world and relationships. When anger isn't expressed directly, it emerges indirectly-expressed but not experienced. Without bodily experience and acknowledgment, anger doesn't complete its cycle of discharge and dissipation. Instead, it converts to thoughts, judgments, and imaginary conversations about the resented person. This displaced anger manifests as forgetfulness, mild criticism, "accidents," hurtful "slips," and other indirect expressions. Telling the truth about anger means making present-tense statements about your experience while angry, directly to the person with whom you're angry. This isn't a moral principle but a functional rule-it lets you function better pragmatically. When you're willing to have an experience be as it is without categorizing it as "good" or "bad," you gain choice in how to respond. The forgiveness process requires six non-negotiable steps: 1) Tell the truth face-to-face about specific behaviors you resent; 2) Be verbally uninhibited regarding volume and propriety; 3) Pay attention to bodily sensations and the other person while speaking; 4) Express any appreciations that emerge with the same attention to feelings; 5) Stay with emerging feelings like tears or laughter regardless of how you think you look; 6) Continue until you no longer feel resentful. Only then are you ready to discuss the future or make agreements.

Chapter 8

Radical Honesty in Relationships: The Path to Intimacy

Blanton reflects on the trade-offs in committed relationships-sacrificing freedom for the greater creation and different freedom that comes with commitment. Drawing from his own experience of four previous marriages and his 23-year relationship with Amy (which included 16 years of marriage before divorce), he argues that honest commitment is essential for successful relationships, whether in marriage or divorce. In powerful relationships, our nature as human beings is revealed through how we relate to each other. Blanton draws on Martin Buber's philosophy about the "twofold" nature of human relationships: the I-You relationship involves our whole being, while the I-It relationship objectifies the other person. When we say "I," we're referring to ourselves either in relation to a "You" (another being) or an "It" (a category). The difference is profound-relating to a person with PMS versus relating to PMS itself; relating to someone slightly inebriated versus "a goddamned drunk." For couples wanting to grow together, Blanton offers a five-item checklist for intimacy: 1) Tell each other your entire life story (about 3 hours each); 2) Share your complete sexual history in detail; 3) Masturbate to orgasm in front of each other without assistance; 4) Disclose any affairs, near-affairs, flirtations or daydreams since you've known each other; 5) Take turns with 30-minute monologues expressing all resentments and appreciations, followed by discussion. Partners should share their sexual histories in detail, including first sexual experiences, masturbation, techniques, fantasies, and methods of seduction. The key is to relive these experiences while telling them so that more detail emerges, speaking at a descriptive rather than abstract level. Partners should also openly discuss attractions to other people and share sexual fantasies about them. Whether monogamous or polygamous, the critical factor is truthfulness, not exclusivity. The blissful "in love" state at the beginning of relationships connects us with our sense of being through another person. The problem comes when this feeling becomes a belief to be preserved and defended, which paradoxically makes the feeling disappear. We resent our partners for "changing" (though it's often we who have changed), and arguments ensue when both partners expect the other to live up to previous expectations.

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Chapter 9

Freedom: The Ultimate Goal of Radical Honesty

When we shift from moralistic thinking to experiential being, our mind-bound, "shouldistic" warrior self moves to the background while our natural, present-moment experiencer comes to the foreground. This shift happens through grace, not force, and good therapists help create conditions for this transformation. People discover their own power when they reconnect with their bodily experience rather than obeying the shrill internal voice of shame-based moralism. Power resides in persons, not techniques. We are already integrated beings who produce exactly the results we choose. Our apparent contradictions-the dieter who can't stop snacking, the workaholic longing for family time-are smokescreens hiding our true intent. The frightening reality is that we direct our lives with unchecked power, and our unwillingness to acknowledge this keeps us stuck. The truth changes through being heard. At a psychotherapy conference, R.D. Laing demonstrated this by simply engaging a homeless woman in genuine conversation-listening to her abstract theological statements and sharing his own thoughts. Beyond creating connection through listening, Blanton wants conversations with the creator being about creation itself. People interested in creation notice that what they notice changes, escaping self-fulfilling prophecies of previous worldviews. Learning to lie is a necessary developmental stage for cognitive growth. We learn to categorize experience for efficiency-like a three-year-old who glances at an airplane and says "airplane" instead of watching it with the fascination of a one-year-old. The problem arises when we treat unpredictable people like predictable categories. Emotionally-loaded reductionism from childhood becomes our adult worldview. Our category systems consume our attention, leaving us starving for genuine contact. Blanton cherishes the independent witness-being that observes our mind's moralism, thoughts, and experiences. When we adopt this witness perspective, we gain freedom to use all our mental "MEs" creatively rather than being trapped by them. This witness is always present but often obscured by mind-stuff in suffering people. A person operating from this expanded consciousness chooses relationships from freedom rather than security, values experience over protection, and prioritizes discovery over carefulness. The path to maturity follows five stages: birth of being, growth of mind, mind domination over being, liberation of being from mind, and finally, mind used by being. Liberation involves disorientation followed by reorientation based on bodily awareness and noticing the world. In this freedom, thinking becomes just another thing to notice and use rather than the ruler of our being. Being willing matters more than being right. Unlike the "will power" that fuels life-poisoning moralism, willingness comes from identifying with our fundamental being that exists prior to rules. Don't let conscience be your guide-it leads to self-condemnation and a vicious circle. When we question whether life is worth living, we must ask who's doing the asking-the judge who has poisoned experience through alienation. When you lie or withhold information or feelings, you're always protecting something meaningless-usually a memory to preserve a constant state of being. You can't see that what you're protecting is meaningless because the illusion of the self you're protecting blocks your view. When you destroy that illusion through truth-telling, you see its meaninglessness. That's where your power lives.

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Key Themes in the Radical honesty Summary

unfiltered truth-telling
overcoming moralism
direct sensory experience
psychological transparency
authentic connection

Best Quotes from the Radical honesty Summary

We all lie like hell.
Life transforms into a story with moral lessons to follow.
Lawyers exemplify this disease.
We are the experience itself happening.
Truth-telling is the path to freedom from the roles we hide behind.

Characters in the Radical honesty Summary

Brad BlantonAuthor and psychotherapist with 30 years experience
Jim CarreyCelebrity who credits the book's principles
Louis C.K.Celebrity influenced by the book's message

About the Author

W. Brad Blanton, author of the bestselling self-help classic Radical Honesty: How To Transform Your Life By Telling The Truth, is a pioneering psychotherapist and founder of the Radical Honesty movement. A clinical psychologist with decades of experience, Blanton specializes in interpersonal communication, stress reduction, and authentic living through radical truth-telling. His work bridges psychology and social philosophy, rooted in his civil rights activism and transformative group therapy sessions in 1970s Washington, D.C.

Blanton’s expertise extends to multiple bestselling books, including Practicing Radical Honesty, Honest to God (co-authored with Neale Donald Walsch), and Radical Parenting. His TEDx Talk in Romania and frequent podcast appearances amplify his contrarian approach to relationships and emotional freedom. A former U.S. congressional candidate, Blanton’s methods are taught globally through workshops and his Radical Honesty Online Course.

Radical Honesty has sold over one million copies worldwide and been translated into twelve languages, cementing its status as a landmark in personal development literature.

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At the start I needed a while to understand how to create podcasts in italian language and boom! It is so great! I can ask to explain every argument and it does so well and so smartly!

@matteo77

BeFreed has become my daily app for audio books tools... What I like the most is the way you put your text and come with an audio that you can listen on the go.

@kotanzu1

I love the fact that I can get useful, condensed, information and ideas in a 8 - 15 minute podcast style audio. I'm not a general fan of podcasts because of all the fluff, but this cuts through all that.

@BeFreed user

I am finishing up my doctorate, and have to read a lot of unfamiliar material... With BeFreed, you simply enter a prompt, and the app finds source material for you and generates an audio podcast. I find the process in BeFreed to be more streamlined than NotebookLM.

@Brad

I often search YouTube for something to listen to whilst making breakfast, when I'm out walking, commuting, etc, and BeFreed has provided an even more targeted approach, without the adverts and the fluff!

@BeFreed user

The absolute best part about this platform is its versatility. There is literally no subject that is off-topic. It handles whatever you throw at it... It is rare to find an learning tool with zero limitations that actually delivers on its promises.

@jayallen

BeFreed is fantastic. The user-friendly design means I spend less time navigating and more time learning. The mix of audiobooks, podcasts, and learning plans is a genius combo that has completely changed my daily routine.

@BeFreed user

At the start I needed a while to understand how to create podcasts in italian language and boom! It is so great! I can ask to explain every argument and it does so well and so smartly!

@matteo77

BeFreed has become my daily app for audio books tools... What I like the most is the way you put your text and come with an audio that you can listen on the go.

@kotanzu1

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