NotebookLM: decoded

A tiger’s roar can be heard from 3 km away.

That’s not a roar, that’s a long-distance threat.

Nature gave them surround sound.

What’s in store:

Read Time: 4 minutes

NotebookLM is full of smart features to help make sense of your notes and your thoughts. We started experimenting with the tool to help us sort out our ideas for a few projects we’re working on, and got super into it. That was until we noticed the ‘Audio Overview’ tool peeping at us from the right-hand corner… that piqued our interest.

This tool is WILD, and we were so impressed with it. Here’s how you can use it to create a podcast out of your own personal ideas, stories, or content you like.

Log into NotebookLM and hit ‘Create New’. NotebookLM doesn’t really work unless you feed it something first, so you’ll need to upload a Google Doc or other items from your Drive, link to a URL, or other files like images. That being said, there is a ‘Discover’ tool that can find information for you.

Click ‘Add’ to add more ‘sources’, and once you gather all the materials relevant to your ‘notebook’, which gives it a ton of context. At this point, NotebookLM will give you a summary of your notebook based on those sources, and you can use the Chat feature to understand more about your sources.

It’s like having a private notebook that you can have a conversation with. Yes, this is the AI version of Tom Riddle’s diary. All of this information will be useful when it comes to creating your personal podcast.

Once your sources are in, look to the right and hit ‘Audio Overview’ under ‘Studio’. Click ‘Deep Dive – Two Hosts.’ In minutes (and you can leave the notebook and it will still process), the AI turns your content into a natural-sounding, back-and-forth podcast. Think NPR meets your Notes app.

These ‘hosts’ break things down, ask each other questions, and explain your content like they’ve been reading it for years. It’s weirdly good.

Here’s the cool part: you can also jump into the audio. (I’d recommend listening to it once, first). Then, listen again, and click ‘Interactive mode’. Play the audio again and click ‘Join’ at a given section.

The ‘host’ will essentially invite you into the session, and you can ask a question or give a take. The AI hosts will then respond, as if you’re part of the show (or, at least the conversation) They adjust the conversation in real time to include your thoughts.

Ultimately, if you’re stuck on an idea or just want to hear how it lands out loud, this is a solid way to test it with low effort and no pressure.

You can also have it translated into another language. When you’re done, you can download it or share it.

Remember, this is a notebook tool, so it’s more focused on YOU, your ideas, etc., and less about putting things out to the world. But, hearing our ideas back to us was really cool, and we felt as though we were a famous celebrity where people were having a discussion about our latest bestseller.

NotebookLM’s Audio Overview isn’t a podcast studio, but it is one of the most straightforward podcast tools I’ve seen, even if it’s accidental.

If I had study tools like this when I was in school, I’d have gone to Harvard.

Anyone can ask a chatbot to forge soulless content. But top creators use personalised prompts and pointed context to post hit after hit, while 90% of AI content gets ignored. We studied the exact system that drove 97K followers and 30M impressions.

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On this day in 1860, Britain’s first tramway opened. The inaugural tramway began operating in Birkenhead near Liverpool, marking the start of urban public transit in Britain.

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