Google NotebookLM: AI, Ingest, Create a Podcast | Turn the Lens Ep38

Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick

2,500 pages. How can you quickly and easily digest 2,500 pages of material? More than just a summary or table of contents, what if you could dive into the core issues, pull up a timeline, or even create a study guide?

That’s exactly what you can do with Google NotebookLM, a powerful new free AI tool that requires no training, coding, or even RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) expertise to put the power to work on any assets you please. Simply upload your documents, videos, and other digital assets, start asking questions, and let it do the heavy lifting. And if you prefer a podcast format, NotebookLM can even output a podcast style audio file for you to listen to, making content incredibly consumable. Your favorite podcast hosts explaining it all to you during your daily walk, run, or commute.

Recently, a friend introduced me to NotebookLM. At the same time, Jack Smith dropped another 1,600 pages of evidence in four appendices related to the January 6th trial, full of dense assorted text material, tweets, book excerpts, interview transcripts, and pages of redactions to interrupt any sort of consumption flow. Add to that 165 pages in Document #252 and the 845-page January 6th commission report, and I had over 2,500 pages of information to put the NotebookLM to the test. So I uploaded all of it into NotebookLM and started asking questions.

But what I’ve never seen before, and couldn’t wait to try, was the ‘’generate a podcast.’ feature. As a longtime media producer, podcast host, and guest, I was intrigued. How would it turn thousands of pages into a conversational podcast between a host and an educated guest?

I hit "create podcast," and in less than 10 minutes, I had a 15-minute podcast ready to go. I added some simple talking head animation, to give a face to the voice, and hit ‘play.

(the male host sounds a bit like Leo Laporte, legendary long time tech podcast host).

The result is simply amazing. The podcast is a very digestible way to consume the key points from the all those PDF files. It is an early version, and there are places where the sentence gets divided between the voices a bit more then necessary, but I think you’ll be amazed.

Jump to 03:54 to get to the start of the podcast, within a podcast.

AI and GenAI are accelerating its impact on our lives faster than we realize. These tools are not novelties, they're reshaping the way we work, consume, and generate media, often making information more accessible. We must understand and familiarize ourselves (or master if you can) with them before they get even further ahead. Don’t wait. Start integrating tools like this into your workflow today. Experiment. See what AI can do for you.

We are getting supercomputers in the palm of our hands, that we can talk to, no coding required.

Google NotebookLM: AI, Ingest, Create a Podcast | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick Ep38

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