Episode Details

Do You Know of a Tool?

I was scrolling Reddit the other day when I saw someone ask if there was a tool they could use to write their podcast script. I couldn't help myself. "Yes," I said. "Your brain." Maybe that was a little snarky. Okay, it was a lot snarky. But I stand by it.

Here's what I'm seeing more and more: people are "AIing" themselves right out of their own show. It usually goes like this. Someone finds a YouTube video that worked well for another creator. Instead of watching it and asking, "how can I do this in my own way and still sound like me," they grab the transcript, feed it to their favorite AI tool, and say "write this in my voice." And on YouTube, where the algorithm rewards volume over connection, it kind of works. Then they ask AI to whip up a thumbnail that looks suspiciously like the original, because on YouTube it really is all about the thumbnail. The problem is, the person doing this often doesn't fully understand what they're now saying on camera or on mic.

Getting My Electronics Degree

That reminds me of my lab partner Gary from college. My first degree, before I got into teaching, was in electronic engineering. I'm pretty sure I only got that associate's degree because of Gary. He was brilliant. I understood the math fine, but the electronics side threw me constantly, so Gary did the heavy lifting, I copied his work, and I walked away with a diploma and not much real understanding of electronics. That's exactly what happens when you let AI be your thoughts instead of your tool. You end up reading someone else's words with all the warmth of a bored McDonald's drive-through worker, then wondering why nobody connects with it. You can't be a thought leader on somebody else's thoughts. Think about how backwards that is. And if that approach ever landed you a speaking gig, then what? You'd have to ask AI to write the speech too.

But AI Helps Me Do So Much More!

I know the counterargument: AI helps you get so much more done, so much faster. I get it, I use it too. But think about two bowls of mashed potatoes. One came out of a box. The other is Grandma's, hand-mashed with a stick of butter and a healthy amount of salt. I grew up on the boxed kind. It's fast, it's easy, and it's fine. But nobody goes back for seconds on boxed potatoes. Grandma's bowl, you eat until it's empty and your stomach hurts. That's the difference. When you let AI write your content, you're serving your audience the boxed version, and they can tell.

They Come For the Content and Stay For the HOST

Here's the thing people forget: listeners come for the content, but they stay for the host. My very first podcast, years before the School of Podcasting existed, was called The Marketing Musician. I'd meet listeners of my current show who'd bring it up, and I'd assume they were musicians too. Almost every time, the answer was "no, I don't play anything, I just think you're funny." They didn't stick around for the topic. They stuck around for me. If you let AI take over as the host of your own show, you're left with nothing but AI. And if I don't need you anymore, I don't need your show either. I can just go ask AI the question myself.

How I Use AI

So here's how I actually use it. I don't let AI write my scripts. I let it help with research and organization. For my next School of Podcasting episode, I recorded my reflections on the Empowered Podcasting Conference by just talking into a microphone. No outline, just a brain dump, the way you'd brainstorm out loud. I ran that recording through Otter to get a transcript, then asked AI to pull out the main topics I'd already talked about and organize them in a way that flowed better, since I knew I'd circled back and added points out of order. I asked for a list of bullet points from what I'd said. Not new content, just my own words organized better. And honestly, it came out better than my original brain