NotebookLM for Podcast Interview Prep
NotebookLM helps me unlock an additional 3-5 hours a week of research time for each interview I conduct for “A History of Marketing.” It's become an invaluable research assistant for me. Here’s how I use it:
I plug in YouTube videos, PDFs, and other web articles about an upcoming guest or topic, then I generate “Deep Dive” audio conversations. They’re like AI podcasts.
This lets me listen while I’m riding my bicycle to work and driving my kids to their activities in the evenings and on weekends. (My girls have grown used to hearing these AI podcast hosts talk about marketing.)
Of course, this helps me learn about a topic and the guest’s work.
But while I’m listening, I also ask myself, “How can I make sure my interview is 10X better than this AI-generated one?”
I also think, “How can I make sure my real conversation is differentiated vs. what an AI tool would be able to generate?”
I’ve also been using the “Interactive mode” where I can interrupt the AI hosts and ask them questions.
I practice questions that I’m considering asking a guest. Just the act of saying a question aloud and having the AI respond helps me evaluate the quality of the question, so I can rephrase or discard it if it’s not very good.
The other thing NotebookLM does is it helps me dig through lots of material faster. I still go down research rabbit holes, but NotebookLM points me to the right rabbit holes that are most likely to be relevant to my topic.
For example, a recent guest sent me several PDFs of their material. Some of these PDFs were 500-page marketing text books. It would not be feasible for me to read every word.
NotebookLM helped me find sections in each of them related to the topic I’d be discussing with the guest. It summarizes them in non-academic speak and then points me to the citations so I can read the original passages myself.
It also helped me find connected ideas between multiple PDFs, so I could weave multiple sources together when asking questions.
I find that this multi-modal approach to research – listening to audio, asking questions aloud, reading text, typing notes – helps me absorb the information in a way where I’m able to retain it.
I recommend giving NotebookLM a try if you haven't used it already!