To video or not to video? Coupling your audio with a visual element can provide a more immersive experience for viewers, letting them experience facial expressions, gestures, and visual cues that can deepen understanding and connection. Video also boosts discoverability, because it makes TikTok sharing possible. However, audio by itself fosters a unique intimacy. When listeners focus on the content without distractions, they can use their imaginations and multitask, giving podcasts a strategic advantage of visual media when it comes to fitting into busy lifestyles. And what will happen when we get other senses involved, like haptics?

In the height of the pandemic, Lara Ehrlich, author of the story collection Animal Wife created her conversation series Writer, Mother, Monster as a live, online Youtube and podcast conversation series about why she chose Youtube first, and how she multipurposes content into audio only podcasts to reach audiences where they are.

Neleigh Olson gives us a quick ethnography of Joe Rogan's podcasts on Youtube.

We speak with Siciliana Trevino, filmmaker and creator of the world's first augmented reality podcast for Bose bone conducting headphones, which uses haptics. Siciliana takes an audio-first approach to filmmaking, and is passionate about new media. She envisions a dynamic, and even more intensely personalized audio future.

This episode contains a new "labs" segment, an experiment where Neleigh and Josh perform a visual rhetorical analysis of Queen's 1985 Live Aid concert, from which we learn that video requires additional visual communication skills. Exactly what are your background, hairdo, and earrings communicating?

This episode contains voices from a number of smart people, including Diana Opong, Jackie Huntington, and Stacey Copeland, who participated in our production calls, as well as Matja Ilias, Sam Pigott, and Ivan Capalija, podcast fans we spoke with in a bar in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn.

The Big Takeaways

• Lara Ehrlich
  • Lara is the author of the story collection Animal Wife, and the host of Writer Mother Monster, a conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of "having it all" and offering writer-moms solidarity, support, and advice. She is also the founder and director of Thought Fox Writers Den, which builds community and supports writers of all levels with in-person and virtual classes, workshops, coaching, and more.
    • "Personally, I like expressions. I think really close watchers of Writer, Mother Monster will see that embarrassingly I tear up a lot, because these conversations can be very challenging"
    • "I love the moment, and I see it too, that moment where someone's not quite sure if they can say what they're going to say. And, and I try to remind them that this is a safe space and you know, everyone listening is out there because they feel the same way."

• Siciliana Trevino
  • Filmmaker Siciliana Trevino is a recognized leader in immersive tech. She brings over a decade of experience collaborating with global brands, startups, entrepreneurs, and community organizations to drive high impact results using the latest innovations in tech including AI, Web3, virtual and augmented reality. She is the creator of the world's first augmented reality podcast "HG Wells War of the World's Invasion." She is also the creator and cohost of the Zero to Start podcast, about VR development for beginners.
    • "And I thought, okay, we're gonna do War of the Worlds in and build this world in radio, and the Martians are now here for our memes. So all of the components of the game would rely on audio memes from, you know, the golden age of YouTube.
    • [On the rise of AI] "So I think you could see yourself in a few years, you know, being in the holodeck in VR or on your couch, and you sit back and you say, you know, I want to listen to a podcast in a natural setting that's gonna make me feel positive. Or I wanna listen to a horror, um, podcast so you can tell, and I want it read by, you know, um, Stephen King."
    • [On the rise of AI] "It's unprecedented the amount of disruption that's going to occur around what we listen to."

Contact Us

• Tell us what you really think, by emailing [email protected].

Or check us out online:

• Podfly Productions
• How Does Tomorrow Sound
• Neleigh Olson
• Kate Pigott
• Josh Suhy

In our largest production call yet, seven audio makers share takeaways on our Episode 3 findings: 1) How audio memes work in the brain (and what we can steal from them), and 2) spatial audio as a stepping stone toward interactive storytelling. We talk about audio memes (ie. pieces of sound listeners already know the contextual meaning of) that already exist inside of podcasts (e.g. the chime for the news, the creaky door in a horror story, the way the conventions of This American Life have trickled through the ecosystem as best practices). And we brainstorm what else we can borrow or steal from audio memes to make podcasts more compelling. We also dive into spatial audio and surround sound, imagining spatial as a stepping stone interactive audio.

Potential quotes

• "Audio has access to certain topics that they can do really, really well. So stick to those instead of the ones that other people can do well in other forms." - Angie Chatman, Writer, editor, storyteller and pushcart prize nominee.
• "I think as radical as you can get with sound, that's how you'll stand apart. But I think we're slowly going to get out of this formula of what is a podcast, and what is radio, and what is an audio meme. We're all just on our phones and it doesn't matter."- Imani Mixon, longform storyteller whose multimedia work centers the experience of Black women and independent artists.
• "[W]hen sound hits the ears and there isn't necessarily a visual input, it hits different somehow. It enters my brain and my body and has an impact on me that I really feel is different from any other medium."- Skye Pillsbury, Author of the newsletter The Squeeze, former contributor to HotPod and Inside Podcasting. Also hosted interview podcast called Inside Podcasting.
• "What kind of implementations it might have for people who are disabled in some way. [….] I just think that there's a whole world that we haven't explored yet that's related to the various uses for [spatial audio]." -Skye Pillsbury, Author of the newsletter The Squeeze, former contributor to HotPod and Inside Podcasting. Also hosted interview podcast called Inside Podcasting.
• "There could be a world in which there's a Tik Tok for podcasts [….] But I usually just tend to think of it as like the top of the funnel."- Rob Puzzitiello, marketing director of the pro audio brand Mackie.
• "We just struck lightening on the one [viral video] because it was so simple, and because […] we weren't trying to like, sell anything. […] People have this ability to sense when something is authentic or not too."- Rob Puzzitiello, marketing director of the pro audio brand Mackie.
• "It really triggers the emotions in a stronger way than standard audio. But […] I can't imagine wanting to watch the news in spatial audio, for instance, because that would just be too much."- Katie Semro, audio creator of non-narrative documentaries, audio installations, and sound worlds.
• "There's not a law, like if you're being nice to somebody you can use their IP willy nilly."- Marlene Sharp, actress and founder of Pink Poodle Productions, who writes about the entertainment industry in various publications such as Examiner.com and The Baton Rouge Advocate.
• "I think there's something really powerful about tapping into the collective creative nature of people. […] I think audio memes are definitely a part of shifting our creative culture."- Kacie Willis, creator and arts advocate based out of Atlanta, and founder of the production company Could Be Pretty Cool.
• "With audio, I think the challenge of our job is going to be […] to add some flavor and some color and to play with form and structure, but finding that sweet spot between innovation and making sure no one feels alienated. It's a challenge that we're going to be trying to figure out probably our entire careers."- Kacie Willis, creator and arts advocate based out of Atlanta, and founder of the production company Could Be Pretty Cool.

Special thanks to our guests

• Angie Chatman, Writer, editor, storyteller and pushcart prize nominee.
• Imani Mixon, longform storyteller whose multimedia work centers the experience of Black women and independent artists.
• Skye Pillsbury, Author of the newsletter The Squeeze, former contributor to HotPod and Inside Podcasting. Also hosted interview podcast called Inside Podcasting.
• Rob Puzzitiello, marketing director of the pro audio brand Mackey.
• Katie Semro, Audio creator of non-narrative documentaries, audio installations, and sound worlds.
• Marlene Sharp, actress and founder of Pink Poodle Productions, who writes about the entertainment industry in various publications such as Examiner.com and The Baton Rouge Advocate.
• Kacie Willis, a creator and arts advocate based out of Atlanta, and founder of the production company Could Be Pretty Cool.

Contact Us

Tell us what you really think by emailing [email protected].

Or check us out online:

• Podfly Productions
• How Does Tomorrow Sound
• Neleigh Olson (or on Twitter @IkeABoom)
• Kate Tighe-Pigott
• Josh Suhy

This podcast explores the future of digital audio and asks what podcasts might become in ten years.

Do podcasts stand a chance against Tik Tok supremacy? Viral audio borrows cool from pop music and pop culture. Charlotte Shane calls this "brainfeel" in her recent Times Magazine article. Our brains are happiest when something we already like is the vector for new learning. Similarly, pop music borrows cool from licensing old hits, according to Switched on Pop co-host Charlie Harding, after recent precedent ended from the kind of liberal sampling that enabled hip hop and rock to flourish. So is Tik Tok the last bastion of the mashup? Finally, audio engineer Matt Yocum talks mixing with Dolby Atmos. Is centering the listener in a 3-D space the bridge to audio for augmented reality?

If you dig us, please subscribe, review, and share — it really helps. And thanks!

The Big Takeaways:

• Do podcasts stand a chance against Tik Tok supremacy? Are podcasts even in the running? Tik Tok works because of the virality of its audio memes, but how do audio memes work? Some rely on pop music, others reference pop culture, but most, if they're successful, use popular audio to say something new, or to say something old in a new way.
• Writer and publisher Charlotte Shane wrote a piece for the New York Times Magazine called "Why Do We Love Tik Tok Audio Memes? Call it 'Brainfeel'."
• • Charlotte breaks down why certain memes work, like Chris Gleason's "They're Not Gonna Know; They're Gonna know." Neleigh, our resident expert in pop culture, also breaks down this meme into its syntax and anaphones and gets real nerdy on us.
  • "If we get it right, but then there's even more information that kind of accompanies us accurately predicting what was coming next, then our brains are just like, "Holy cow. Whoa, like. This is a big opportunity to learn something."
  • "But I just think that Tik Tok's algorithm is so superior and of course it has way more users. So I do understand why people are afraid of its power. Cause like we, we probably should be. It's ability to influence culture right now [...] feels to me like absolutely unprecedented. I don't know what anyone could point to that would be like that moves as fast and diffusely through countries."
  • "I think podcasts definitely have an aura of they're like upper class compared to TikTok, it's like they're actually like not for the masses, even though obviously they are."
• Neleigh Olson, pop culture expert, lecturer at University of Louisville, and co-host of our show, breaks down the syntax of Nobody's Gonna Know, including the nineties reality TV fight music, and the "anaphones" that reach into listeners brains to create significance.
• • "Even this meme that I looked at – the "Nobody's Gonna Know" – ironically, nobody does know where the original came from, right? I had to look it up [...] and the whole point is that it's morphable, it's a shape shifter."
• Charlie Harding is the co-host of the podcast Switched on Pop about the making and meaning of popular music. He shares with us his recent deep dive into the rise of the interpolation in popular music. In the last five years, there have been twice as many interpolations than in the five years previous. Why is this? What does it mean for pop music? And for how we make culture?
• • "An interpolation isn't a cover; It's not a sample; It's taking pre-existing material and making something new with it."
  • "One of my friends that I spoke with, songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs, she said that, "There's no hook that hooks you better than a hook that's already hooked you"
  • ○ "And people are doing this because they want things to go big on Tik Tok. That's 100 percent the strategy."
  • "I think a great culture podcast can help slow culture down when culture moves so quickly. Even if it's something very silly, like explaining a meme, it can be very rewarding to okay, wait, let's look back. Like, how did this whole thing happen?"
• Matt Yocum, supervising sound editor and rerecording mixer, edited The Left / Right Game by QCODE, one of the first shows to ever be produced in Dolby Atmos surround sound.

• • "Like a lot of people consider sound design to be a technical craft, because we're using computers, we're pushing faders, twisting knobs. But at the end of the day, it's actually the thing that ultimately helps you feel identified with a character as opposed to feeling like a third person viewer."
  • "One of the coolest things about Atmos is that, like, truly, it wasn't really built for one form of content or another. It's just a tool. And to that end, anybody can take advantage of and find new and innovative ways to use that tool. It's really an open sandbox."
• Podcasts already use audio memes, like for example, catch phrases, laugh tracks, sound effects, and the way our show borrowed signifiers and codes from "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me" for the game show we hosted in Episode 2. But podcasts do not have the virality that Tik Tok audio memes have, and that is because our form is interested in, and has a reputation for, slowing culture down, and making sense of it. As Dr. Sylvia Chan-Olmsted said in Episode 2, different media gratify different needs, and occupy different spaces in a consumers' media landscape. So podcasts may benefit from the two competitive advantages of being audio first and of being brainy and slow. Wishful thinking? Only time will tell.
• Sorry we had to kill Neleigh-bot. This episode was too meaty for the sci-fi treatment. That said, it's important we flag that her opening text is adapted from text suggested by GPT-3, which was made widely available in early December. You can sign up to try it, if you dare, here.

Contact Us

• Tell us what you really think, by emailing [email protected].

Or check us out online:

• Podfly Productions
• How Does Tomorrow Sound
• Neleigh Olson
• Kate Pigott
• Josh Suhy

We imagined a second audio future! Then we asked some smart podcasters how we did.

In this bonus track, we air back-to-back conversations with podcast experts. In the first, we spoke with Demetrius Bagley, Nikki Thomas, and Jonas Litton. In our second conversation, we spoke with Jackie Huntington and Diana Opong. These experts share their reactions to E02 ("Like… It's Alive!"). We are grateful for their feedback.

In E02, we suggested that podcast audiences will mature in similar ways that audiences for film and television have, including wanting more interactivity and more immersive and thrilling experiences. We also projected that stories will be popular in the future that reflect the collective unconscious or zeitgeist. What are the monsters we face today? And what monsters will we face in the future? Especially one dominated by AI?

Many thanks to:

• Demetrius Bagley
• Nikki Thomas
• Jonas Litton
• Jackie Huntington
• Diana Opong

Contact us:

We hope this bonus track gets people talking. Tell us what we got right (or wrong!) by emailing [email protected] or leaving us a voicemail at 440-290-6796.

Or check us out online:

• Podfly Productions
• How Does Tomorrow Sound
• Neleigh Olson
• Kate Pigott
• Josh Suhy

We hope the future of podcasts will be one we build together.

What will podcasts become in 10 years? Join us as we explore the future of digital audio.

How will listenership mature in the future? Will we outgrow our evolutionary need for story? Child psychiatrist, author, and horror enthusiast Dr. Steven Schlozman, Dr. Martin Spinelli, Dr. Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, Dr. Sylvia Chan Olmsted, and Podfly's own Corey Coates offer insights. Story audiences mature and trends shift. Plus, with more diverse groups of light podcast listeners tuning in, there's more opportunity to reach new niches. But what kinds of stories will these new audiences want today and 10 years from now? We look at shifts in audience expectations by examining Frankenstein: the book by Mary Shelley, the film with Boris Karloff, and updates like Blade Runner and Terminator. We still fear artificiality and continue to love stories that wrestle with what we most repress. But what monsters do we face today? And what about in 10 years?

If you dig us, please subscribe, review, and share — it really helps. And thanks!

The Big Takeaways:

• Will people tune in to AI chatbots? Why do we listen to podcasts? How are listenership trends changing? How will they change in the future? How will the future of an audience change stories in the future?
• Dr. Steven Schlozman, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth, and child psychiatrist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
  • Author of Film (Arts for Health).
  • Author of The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse
  • TedxNashville Ted Talk "What Horror Films Teach Us About Ourselves and Being Human."
  • TEDxCoconutGrove Talk. "Zombies Are Already Here: But It's Not What You Think"
  • "You go for a walk with a podcast, it's just you in the story. And that's incredibly peaceful." — Dr. Steven Schlozman
  • "We move forward with our ideas about the world, through art. I really believe that." — Dr. Steven Schlozman
  • "The hopeful part here is that now we have this mechanism to use art, which we've used for thousands of years, to make sense of the world and to also have ideas about what to do to fix the world." — Dr. Steven Schlozman
• Dr. Martin Spinelli, Professor of Podcasting & Creative Media at University of Sussex, University of Sussex (on Twitter @exilewriter)
  • Co-author with Lance Dann of Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution.
  • Co-creator with Lance Dann of companion podcast, For Your Ears Only.
  • Executive Producer and writer on The Rez, a sci-fi podcast for 9–11 year-olds that covers a lot of the subjects we've talked about in this episode, especially how to overcome AI ubiquity and promote pro-social human relationships. The clip we played came from Episode 2, "Sav Smarts."
  • "I was totally transfixed. I knew something had shifted in our audio universe." — Dr. Martin Spinelli
  • "It is you speaking to me in my ears, actually in my ear canals, in my skull, in my body, your voice is there inside me." — Dr. Martin Spinelli
• Corey Coates, Creative Director, Podfly
  • "The role of an artist in the world is to observe it, feel it, to interpret it, internalize it, and then reflect it back to you in a way that you've never seen it before." — Corey Coates, Podfly
  • "We're so focused on the medium … that we're losing the plot of what it is we're trying to do — connect our perspective as a human with other humans." — Corey Coates, Podfly
• Dr. Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and American Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University (on Twitter @VampireSorcha)
  • Author of "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: The Birth of A Gothic Monster." History Extra. BBC. London. 1 Feb. 2021
  • Author of Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture, as well as The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Films, and contributor to Starring Tom Cruise, edited by Sean Redmond.
  • "It's so in touch with the liminality between life and death … What is the spark, that Promethean spark, that keeps us alive?" — Dr. Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, Manchester Metropolitan University
  • "We always need our monsters. We need outlets and culture. We need to be able to frustrate and vent and feel that we have purpose and feel that we can change and make a difference and speak back to power." — Dr. Sorcha Ni Fhlainn, Manchester Metropolitan University
• Dr. Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, Professor of Media Production, Management, and Technology and Director of Media Consumer Research, University of Florida
  • Chan-Olmsted, S., & Rang Wang. 10 October 2020. "Understanding podcast users: Consumption motives and behaviors". New Media & Society.
  • "The uses and gratifications paradigm proposes that individuals are very active media consumers. We're looking for something to gratify. We have certain needs." — Dr. Sylvia Chan Olmsted, University of Florida
  • "The biggest development now is we are moving from heavy users to more light users. Now we have a much more diverse group of podcast users." — Dr. Sylvia Chan Olmsted, University of Florida
  • "The biggest growth is 12-plus; 12 to 24-something; we're talking about young kids now listening too. … Maybe they learn something about a certain topic on TikTok that was interesting. And then they use podcasts to dive deeper into that topic." — Dr. Sylvia Chan Olmsted, University of Florida

• How will the future of an audience change stories in the future? This question is hard to answer. Maybe impossible. Here are some frameworks we're using to think about it:
  • Copy the Movies: Look at established media like film and television to see what trends are occurring there that might be primed for podcasts, like casting away framing devices or pushing the boundaries of interactivity.
  • Unleash the Beast: Mine what culture represses, and bring that to the fore, like Mary Shelley did, like Elvis did. One thing we're repressing is the weirdness of ubiquitous AI and constant data collection. Can we make art against that that feels new somehow?
  • Tell Your Truth: You are a wonder of the cosmos, a highly sensitive instrument of love and truth that can nourish the world with your singular voice. Howl into the universe the way only you can … Look at you. You're alive!
  • Stop gaming an audience and make some art.

Other Resources

• Buzzsprout. 4 October 2022. "Podcast Statistics and Data. [September 2022]" Webpage.
• Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein (Project Gutenberg)
• Milton, John. Paradise Lost (Project Gutenberg)
• Frankenstein (film) 1931. YouTube. (Available for rent)

Contact Us

• Tell us what you really think by emailing [email protected] or leaving us a voicemail at 440-290-6796

Or check us out online:

• Podfly Productions
• How Does Tomorrow Sound
• Neleigh Olson (or on Twitter @IkeABoom)
• Kate Tighe-Pigott
• Josh Suhy

We imagined one audio future! Then we asked some smart podcasters how we did.

In E01 ("Like Your New Best Friend"), we suggest that developments in AI might turn podcasts into very compelling chatbots. In this bonus track, podcasters Stacey Copeland, Clif Mark, Naomi Mellor, and Andrea Muraskin share their reactions. We are grateful for their feedback.

Note: Though the track is presented like one large convo, we spliced two longer chats (one with Stacey and Andrea and one with Clif), held at separate times, with a voicemail from Naomi. We didn't include here the editorial suggestions we responded to in revision (since these wouldn't make sense to someone hearing the finished product). Instead, we focus on the podcasters' reactions to our episode's main ideas.

Many thanks to:

• Stacey Copeland, audio producer and Ph.D. Candidate, Simon Fraser University
• Clif Mark, creator and host of the Good in Theory podcast
• Naomi Mellor, producer, founder of The Skylark Collective, a global community for women in podcasting, and the International Women's Podcast Awards
• Andrea Muraskin, producer, writer, host

Contact us:

We don't know the future, but we hope this bonus track gets people talking. Tell us what we got right (or wrong!) by emailing [email protected] or leaving us a voicemail at 440-290-6796.

Or check us out online:

• Podfly Productions
• How Does Tomorrow Sound
• Neleigh Olson
• Kate Pigott
• Josh Suhy

Who knows? Maybe the future of podcasts will be a thing we build together.

Let's imagine some audio futures! This podcast explores the future of digital audio and asks what podcasts might become in ten years.

Podcasts flourished out of the tech of the early 2000s. Now, artificial intelligence is poised to change everything. We speak with Natural Language Processing (NLP) researcher Philippe Laban; science writer Matthew Hutson; professor, programmer, and composer David Cope; and creator of Late Night with Robot, Ana-Marija Stojic. Every day, NLP and speech synthesis more closely imitate human language: Now, imagine AI-generated pods offering a key feature no live producer can: 24/7 interactivity. If the future of pods sounds like the best AI chatbot, one who remembers everything, is it your AI BFF? Or a scammer's paradise? And will we listen?

If you dig us, please subscribe, review, and share — it really helps. And thanks!

The Big Takeaways:

• If the new tech of the early 2000s made podcasts possible, how will new, new tech — artificial intelligence like natural language processing and speech synthesis — change how we make and listen to digital audio?
• Philippe Laban, a researcher in natural language processing and human-computer interaction, has already built an AI-generated news podcast called Newspod, proving it's possible. Now he works on interactivity in the chatbot space, which he believes may be the future of digital audio content.
  • Newspod on Github
  • Laban, Philippe, Elicia Ye, Srujay Korlakunta, John Canny, Marti Hearst. "Newspod: Automatic and Interactive News Podcasts." 27th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. Helsinki, Finland. March 2022
    • "I think this will be one of the very cool things that can happen is podcasts can become kind of a companion and like, accompany you as you learn about the world." — NLP researcher Philippe Laban
    • "It's like, Welcome back Philippe. We haven't talked about Brexit in the last three weeks, but there's been an update since we last talked." — NLP researcher Philippe Laban

• Matthew Hutson writes about AI for outlets like The New Yorker and Nature. He guides us through an exploration of what NLP and AI can already do in creative fields. He connects us to Google's Dall-E2 which uses AI to generate images, and to David Cope's experiments in musical intelligence (EMMY) and Emily Howell, algorithms that compose new music. He mentions a company called Alethia AI that offered to make a chatbot out of him.
  • Hutson, Matthew. "RoboWriters: The Rise and Risk of Language Generating AI." Nature. 3 March 2021.
  • Hutson, Matthew. "Can Computers Learn Common Sense?" The New Yorker. 5 April 2022.
  • Alethea AI
    • "I see more promise in humans collaborating with AI. You might have a person who is at least an editor saying, Let's use these bits of audio, put them together." — science writer Matthew Hutson

• David Cope is Professor Emeritus of Music at UC Santa Cruz. He is a composer and a computer programmer, and he developed algorithms that write music.
  • "Emily Howell — From Darkness to Light — 1 Prelude." YouTube. 7 May 2016.
  • "Emily Howell — fugue." YouTube. 20 October 2012.
  • "David Cope Emmy Vivaldi." YouTube. 12 August 2012.
  • "David Cope Emmy Beethoven 2 beg." YouTube. 13 August 2021.
    • "It's important for me to engage people in thinking about things that they don't ordinarily think about. And [...] to sort of teach them to evaluate what we're all trying to do. And that is some kind of intelligence." — professor and composer David Cope

• Ana-Marija Stojich is a comedian, writer, actor, creator, and host of Late Night with Robot (beams.fm), where she interviews AI versions of famous people, like Amelia Earhart, Barack Obama, Zora Neale Hurston, and Vincent Van Gogh.
  • Late Night with Robot (beams.fm)
  • "I'm just lying on my couch, like texting with AI Barack Obama, and like Albert Camus, and Vincent Van Gogh, and like Zora Neal Hurston. And they're all having different conversations and it's fun because they text you back right away." — Ana-Marija Stojich, Late Night with Robot
    • "I learn things all the time from the AI. Vincent Van Gogh AI was one of my favorites." — Ana-Marija Stojich, Late Night with Robot

• It's easy to dismiss the idea of AI podcasts, but one advantage that AI and NLP pods would have over human pods is that they could be fully interactive 100% of the time (recall the 2013 film Her). In their interactivity, they can retain information about the user, remembering what we say, like, dislike, and who we're in relation with — gathering useful data about us while making us feel heard and valued, maybe even loved.
• Comfort for the lonely? A playland for artists? A marketer's goldmine? A scammer's paradise? It will come down to why we listen. Stay tuned for more on that in Episode 2.

Other resources

Marc Maron experiment

• WTF with Marc Maron
• Rev.com AI transcription of audio used in Marc Maron experiment
• GPT-2 text generator used for Marc Maron experiment. (Kate wrote to Open AI for access to GPT-3 but never heard back.)

Dall-E2 Exploration

• Dall-E2
• Recker, Jane. "US Copyright Office Rules A.I. Art Can't be Copyrighted." Smithsonian Magazine. 24 March 2022.

On the Ethics of NLP

• Sylva, Christianna. "Google fires engineer for saying its AI has a soul." Mashable. 25 July 2022.
• Sozlow, Jack. "Two AIs talk about becoming human (GPT-3)." YouTube. 13 April 2021.
• Emily Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, Shmargaret Shmitchell.
• "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?" FAccT '21: Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. March 2021.

Contact Us

Tell us what you really think, by emailing [email protected] or leaving us a voicemail at 440-290-6796.

Or check us out online:

• Podfly Productions
• How Does Tomorrow Sound
• Neleigh Olson
• Kate Pigott
• Josh Suhy

How Does Tomorrow Sound is a six episode series on the future of podcasts. Hosts Kate, Josh, and Neleigh endeavor to predict what podcasts might look like — or evolve into — in 10 years' time. Expert interviews are braided with funny, experimental, blue sky brainstorming sessions and audio experiments by the hosts. This show will challenge your assumptions, will make you wonder, and will spark new ideas about the road from here to the future of audio narrative.