For the longest time I’ve tried to make podcasts work for me.
While I am a book person and prefer reading to listening I knew that by not listening to some podcasts I was missing out on some important and interesting things.
For example, in his 20+ years at Amazon, Jeff Bezos didn’t do many long interviews. The only way to get a sneak peak at how one of the most successful companies in the world operates you had to read third party accounts or wait for Bezo’s yearly letters to share holders (recommended reading, like Buffett’s letters). But recently he went on Lex Friedman’s podcast where he raved about space exploration, the future of tech and how he makes decisions for more than 3 hours.
Not being able to enjoy podcasts like the Bezos interview meant that I would miss out on a lot of insights. My information diet would not be complete and wholesome.
My main issue with audio content in general is that while it is lower friction—you can listen to a podcast or audiobook anywhere—they are hard to digest. Books are higher friction–you can’t run and read, at least I can’t–but you can jot down thoughts and notes on the margins, or keep a notecard close by to write a few sentences as you read.
I tried all the hacks I could think of.
I tried every transcription tool out there to get the podcasts transcriptions and read through them. I got quite far with Readwise (a tool I can’t live without). The problem is that transcriptions are full of errors and are hard to read when they literally contain the pauses, the uhms and “you knows” of the speakers.
I tried just listening or watching to podcasts clips on Youtube. These are short videos–usually less than 10 minutes–where you get an overview of a topic, or a specific insight. But even this didn’t work.
I was desperate and almost made peace with listening to the odd podcast here and there when driving and not making this medium a core part of my information diet until my good friend Enzo Cavalie, avid podcast consumer and podcaster himself (he’s the host of Startupeable, one of the most popular tech podcasts in Latam) told me about Snipd.
Snipd is a podcast app that uses generative AI features to create summaries of interesting parts of podcasts. As soon as you find something interesting, a simple tap on the phone or triple-tap on your AirPods creates a “snip”: a text summary of a short clip of the podcast (1 minute before and 1 minute after your tap) and a full transcription of that clip.
If audio is a low friction information medium, Snipd is a low friction note-taking tool. It even integrates with Readwise so I can then review all my podcasts notes and highlights directly in my note taking app (Obsidian).
Thanks to this neat AI tool I fell in love with podcasts. I put my headphones on anywhere and takes notes without worrying that I will miss interesting stuff.