The Nomad is a series of stories, fascinations, encounters, observations, experiences, joy of the moments by me, Ulrike Reinhard – all around my travels. Stay tuned!
Recently, I uploaded the PDF of my book – first draft, a solid 498 pages, my autobiography – to NotebookLM, mostly out of curiosity. I just wanted to play around a bit: ask a few questions, generate some flashcards, maybe get ideas for a slide deck.
Then I remembered that NotebookLM also makes podcasts. So, on a whim, I asked it to create one. Less than five minutes later, it delivered this:
I find it both impressive and a little unsettling – the realism of the voices, the way the content is selected, and how naturally it unfolds as a dialogue. The podcast also comes as a high-resolution audio file, which makes it surprisingly easy to work with and edit.
Have a listen and decide for yourself.
There is only one factual mistake I should point out. The podcast claims that Global Voices declined a donation from the Soros Foundation for its 2010 summit in Chile. That isn’t correct. What was true is that there was an ongoing internal debate among key figures in the Global Voices community about whether to accept large donations from institutions such as the Soros Foundation or corporate sponsors like Google. Google did, in fact, support the Chile event with a six-figure contribution.