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I wonder how much of the annoying aspects of the podcasters can be controlled by the custom user instructions. I hate sitting through the patter of how "we're not political, just reporting the views of the sources."

"We have some REALLY interesting sources that we're discussing today"

Yeah I think the podcasts were just a clever hack until AI is fast enough to support realtime. It’s practically there now, so a fake podcast is a funny relic and hard to sit through.

The new ChatGPT voice has a MASSIVE vocal fry, like to ridiculous levels.

It did tone it down when I asked though, but a crazy default.

Too much friction in notebookLM - several minutes to make a podcast, and they disappear after a while, and the interrupt feature is super-janky.

> Too much friction in notebookLM

This was my main problem with it. Loved it otherwise, but the lack of an API or other automation so I could dump stuff in it and have a podcast ready to download and listen to on my subway ride made me turn away.