Retain everything
you consume
online

Remember anything from that
scroll session yesterday?

Get semi-automatic spaced repetition recall cards from the videos, podcasts, and articles you're already consuming. As automatic as retaining gets.

Supported platforms
Same algorithm that medical students use to remember 30k ideasBacked by 317 published experiments
BrainRetain quiz screen

You spent thousands
of hours on YouTube
videos,
podcasts, and articles

How much do you remember?

BrainRetain, the Anki for entertainment-education, helps you remember everything you intentionally consume.

It auto-creates recall cards on what you already watch/read/listen to, then our algorithm resurfaces them at precisely the right moment, so the ideas move into long-term memory.

Backed by
0
scientific experiments.
0
of memory research.
0
of US med students use spaced repetition to study.

The average person spends45 waking daysa year on videos, podcasts, and articles.

Mostly forgottenYour waking year
12% — Spent on videos, podcasts
and articles

Backed by a century of science and some of the smartest people on the planet.

Here's what they say, in 34 quotes:

"Memory ceases to be a haphazard phenomenon, something you hope happens: spaced repetition systems make memory a choice."
Andy Matuschak
Andy MatuschakResearcher, tools for thoughtBuilt the spaced repetition essay Quantum Country; formerly Apple and Khan Academy.andymatuschak.org
"The spacing effect is one of the most dependable and replicable phenomena in experimental psychology."
FD
Frank N. DempsterCognitive psychologist, UNLVWrote the most-cited 1988 review of the spacing effect.American Psychologist (1988)
"The long-term advantages of distributing practice sessions over time have been demonstrated repeatedly for more than a century."
Robert A. Bjork
Robert A. BjorkDistinguished Professor, UCLAOriginated the 'desirable difficulties' framework; past president, Association for Psychological Science.UCLA Bjork Lab
"Repeated retrieval with long intervals between each test produced a 200% improvement in long-term retention relative to repeated retrieval with no spacing between tests."
Jeffrey D. KarpickeAlthea Bauernschmidt
Karpicke & BauernschmidtPurdue · J. Exp. Psychol., 2011Karpicke leads Purdue's Cognition and Learning Lab, a top retrieval-practice group.J. Exp. Psychol.: LMC (2011)
"There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that spacing study time leads to better memory of the material."
Daniel T. Willingham
Daniel T. WillinghamProfessor of Psychology, UVAAuthor of Why Don't Students Like School?; writes the 'Ask the Cognitive Scientist' column.American Educator (2002)
"Periodic practice arrests forgetting, strengthens retrieval routes, and is essential for hanging onto the knowledge you want to gain."
Henry L. Roediger IIIMark A. McDanielPeter C. Brown
Roediger, McDaniel & BrownMake It Stick, 2014The bestselling book on evidence-based learning; Roediger is in the National Academy of Sciences.Harvard University Press
"The spacing effect is one of the oldest and most reliable findings in research on human learning."
Shana K. Carpenter
Carpenter et al.Educational Psychology Review, 2012Lead author Shana Carpenter (Iowa State) on a major review of spacing in instruction.Educational Psychology Review (2012)
"Hundreds of studies in cognitive and educational psychology have demonstrated that spacing out repeated encounters with the material over time produces superior long-term learning, compared with repetitions that are massed together."
Sean H. K. Kang
Sean H. K. KangCognitive scientist, Univ. of MelbourneA leading authority on spacing and retrieval practice in real classrooms.Policy Insights Behav. Brain Sci. (2016)
"The empirical evidence for the benefits of distributed (over massed) practice is overwhelming."
John Dunlosky
John DunloskyProfessor of Psychology, Kent StateLead author of the landmark 2013 review naming distributed practice a top-two study strategy.American Educator (2013)
"The positive effects of spacing on long-term recall are large and robust, and have been demonstrated in a variety of domains."
"Delaying of reviews produces an actual increase in the efficiency of learning."
Harold Pashler
Pashler et al. (IES)U.S. Dept. of Education, 2007Federal expert-panel practice guide; its #1 recommendation is 'space learning over time.'IES · U.S. Dept. of Education (2007)
"Spacing presentations of to-be-learned information across time, rather than massing them, can have a very large positive effect on long-term retention."
Robert A. BjorkElizabeth Ligon Bjork
Bjork & BjorkUCLA Learning & Forgetting LabCo-directors of the lab behind much of the modern science of study.UCLA Bjork Lab (2011)
"[Spaced repetition] offers something like a 20-fold improvement over (say) ordinary flashcards."
Michael Nielsen
Michael NielsenResearcher & essayist, Quantum CountryHis 2018 essay quantified the gains of spaced repetition from years of his own practice.augmentingcognition.com (2018)
"Our experiments demonstrate that powerful spacing effects occur over practically meaningful time periods."
DRHarold Pashler
Rohrer & PashlerCurrent Directions in Psych. Science, 2007Foundational work on spacing and interleaving in math learning.Current Directions / ERIC (2007)
"The general conclusion is that the best retrieval schedules are those that involve wide spacing of retrieval attempts."
Henry L. Roediger IIIAndrew C. Butler
Roediger & ButlerTrends in Cognitive Sciences, 2011Defined the role of retrieval practice in long-term retention.Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2011)
"Once you review, you can review less often. So I went on just to measure how often we need to review. Once I measured optimum intervals for review, I started using them in real life and it was just an avalanche of ideas for improvement since then."
PW
Piotr WoźniakInventor of SuperMemoBuilt the first computer spaced repetition algorithm (1987), the basis for Anki and most SR apps.Medium interview (2016)
"It sounds unassuming, but spaced repetition produces impressive results. [Students] who relied on a spaced approach to learning had nearly double the retention rate of students who studied the same material in a consolidated unit."
Annie Murphy Paul
Annie Murphy PaulScience writer, The Extended MindAcclaimed science journalist (NYT, Scientific American, Time).KQED MindShift (2013)
"The technique is called distributed learning or, more commonly, the spacing effect. People learn at least as much, and retain it much longer, when they distribute—or 'space'—their study time than when they concentrate it."
Benedict Carey
Benedict CareyScience writer, How We LearnLongtime New York Times science reporter, twice a Pulitzer finalist.Penguin Random House
"Increased spacing of training sessions greatly enhances long-term retention of vocabulary."
Harry P. Bahrick
Bahrick et al.Psychological Science, 1993The 8-year family study proving spacing holds across years, not just minutes.Psychological Science (1993)
"Whether students engage in retrieval practice over days, weeks, or months, research shows that any spacing is better than none."
Pooja K. Agarwal
Pooja K. AgarwalFounder, RetrievalPractice.orgCognitive scientist and co-author of Powerful Teaching.RetrievalPractice.org
"Left to itself every mental content gradually loses its capacity for being revived, or at least suffers loss in this regard under the influence of time."
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Hermann EbbinghausFounder of memory science, 1885Discovered the forgetting curve and the spacing effect.Ebbinghaus, Memory (NIH/PMC)
"When retrieval practice is spaced, allowing some forgetting to occur between tests, it leads to stronger long-term retention than when it is massed."
Henry L. Roediger IIIMark A. McDanielPeter C. Brown
Roediger, McDaniel & BrownMake It Stick, 2014The bestselling synthesis of cognitive science for learners.Harvard University Press
"More than 100 years of distributed practice research have demonstrated that learning is powerfully affected by the temporal distribution of study time."
Nicholas J. Cepeda
Cepeda et al.Psychological Bulletin, 2006The same 184-article meta-analysis of distributed practice.Psychological Bulletin (2006)
"Students will retain knowledge and skills for a longer period of time when they distribute their practice than when they mass it, even if they use the same amount of time massing and distributing their practice."
John Dunlosky
John DunloskyKent State · PSPI, 2013Same landmark review of the ten most-studied learning techniques.American Educator (2013)
"Research shows that a delayed review typically has a large positive impact on the amount of information that is remembered much later."
Harold Pashler
Pashler et al. (IES)U.S. Dept. of Education, 2007The federal practice guide whose first recommendation is to space learning over time.IES · U.S. Dept. of Education (2007)
"When you space out practice at a task and get a little rusty between sessions, or you interleave the practice of two or more subjects, retrieval is harder and feels less productive, but the effort produces longer lasting learning and enables more versatile application of it in later settings."
Henry L. Roediger IIIMark A. McDanielPeter C. Brown
Roediger, McDaniel & BrownMake It Stick, 2014Distilled a decade-long research program into one accessible book.Harvard University Press
"The timing of learning sessions can have powerful effects on retention when study time is equated."
Nicholas J. Cepeda
Cepeda et al.Psychological Science, 2008The 1,354-subject study mapping the optimal study gap to your retention horizon.Psychological Science (2008)
"We rated two strategies—practice testing and distributed practice—as the most effective of those we reviewed because they can help students regardless of age, they can enhance learning and comprehension of a large range of materials, and, most important, they can boost student achievement."
John Dunlosky
John DunloskyKent State · PSPI, 2013First author of the most-cited modern review of evidence-based learning.American Educator (2013)
"The longer intervals yield substantially higher recall in spite of their adverse effects on acquisition."
Harry P. Bahrick
Bahrick et al.Psychological Science, 1993Established 'permastore' through multi-decade vocabulary-retention studies.Psychological Science (1993)
"When learning is harder, it's stronger and lasts longer."
Henry L. Roediger IIIMark A. McDanielPeter C. Brown
Roediger, McDaniel & BrownMake It Stick, 2014The definitive popular treatment of how learning actually works.Harvard University Press
"Using memory changes memory—and for the better. Forgetting enables and deepens learning, by filtering out distracting information and by allowing some breakdown that, after reuse, drives retrieval and storage strength higher than they were originally."
Benedict Carey
Benedict CareyScience writer, How We LearnHis How We Learn is a widely-read popular account of the science of memory.Penguin Random House
"Spaced retrieval practice (that is, practicing retrieval at fairly long intervals) really helps long-term memory."
Henry L. Roediger III
Henry L. Roediger IIIDistinguished Professor, Washington Univ.One of the most-cited memory researchers in the world.Digital Promise (2014)
"Only 12 of 271 comparisons of massed and spaced performance showed no effect or a negative effect from spacing, making the spacing effect quite robust."
Nicholas J. Cepeda
Cepeda et al.Psychological Bulletin, 2006The definitive 184-article meta-analysis of distributed practice.Psychological Bulletin (2006)
"[Spaced repetition] makes memory a choice."
Michael Nielsen
Michael NielsenResearcher & essayist, Quantum CountryPopularized spaced repetition as a personal memory tool in his widely-read 2018 essay.augmentingcognition.com (2018)
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How it works:

A YouTube video open on a phone, ready to share into BrainRetain

Share a content that you want to remember forever to BrainRetain.

BrainRetain answer screen with Again, Hard, Good and Easy rating buttons

We will ask you to recall it,
and you rate how well you remembered.

BrainRetain review screen: a question with Reveal Answer, 87% likely to recall today, and the review-streak grid below

Based on your answer, the algorithm optimizes how soon to ask for another recall. Sooner if it was hard, later if it was easy.

BrainRetain home screen: 104 sources collected, with the library of saved videos, podcasts and articles below

See proof you're building a library of ideas you're retaining.

BrainRetain runs on the latest spaced-repetition technology, from the same family of algorithms used in Anki.

0

medical students, every year, trust spaced repetition to retain what they learn.

0

people across 317 experiments confirm spaced repetition is a superior method for retaining information.

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FAQ:

Where can I share from?+

YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TikTok, Medium, Wikipedia, Substack, blogs, and news articles (ungated for mobile). If it has a share button, it likely works with BrainRetain.

Do I have to write my own recall cards?+

BrainRetain generates recall cards from whatever you share, and you decide whether or not you want to edit them. You also get a point-by-point summary, so you can pick which bullets to turn into recall cards as well.

What exactly is spaced repetition?+

It is a review method that times each repeat exposure to land right before you would naturally forget it. It is based on the forgetting curve (the drop in memory that follows learning something new) and an algorithm that pushes your next review further out when you get something right and pulls it closer when you do not. Over time the gaps stretch from days to weeks to months, and the memory gets sturdier at every step. It works because it is timed to how your brain actually forgets instead of a fixed schedule, which is why it consistently beats cramming in head-to-head studies.

How much time does it take?+

A few minutes a day; reviews are short.

Is my data private?+

Your library is yours. We don't sell your data, and your collections stay private to you.

If a YouTube video was watched, but none was retained, was the video watched?

Download BrainRetain now.

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