With AI-powered apps like Sonar promising to give you "just the highlights" from podcasts, and services like Blinkist condensing books into summaries, I'm asking the hard question: Are we missing the point of content consumption entirely?
In this episode, I dive into why I think these summary services fundamentally misunderstand what makes content valuable. Spoiler: It's not just about the facts - it's about the personality, perspective, and promise that creators bring to their work.
I share my thoughts on why most business books are fluff, why many podcasts are "meandering unstructured messes," and what separates great content (like "Sponsor Magnet" by Justin Moore and "The Rest is History" podcast) from the forgettable stuff.
Featured in this episode:
- My experience testing the Sonar app
- Why Blinkist is just "listening to a book report"
- Examples of content that gets the balance right
- The importance of knowing exactly who you're talking to
What's your take on AI summarization tools? Let me know at streamlinedfeedback.com
00:00:00 --> 00:00:05 Do people really just want summaries? There are
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 times when just the highlights are fine. If I
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 miss the Yankee game, for example, I'm not going
00:00:11 --> 00:00:15 to watch the entire 2 -3 hour game. The excitement
00:00:15 --> 00:00:20 for me is watching it play out live before there's
00:00:20 --> 00:00:24 an outcome to know. If the game is over, I'm
00:00:24 --> 00:00:28 happy to watch the highlights. On rare occasion,
00:00:28 --> 00:00:32 there's a movie I'm tangentially interested in,
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 but don't feel like watching. So I might just
00:00:35 --> 00:00:39 read the summary to know what happens. Many people
00:00:39 --> 00:00:42 will think this is blasphemy, but I did that
00:00:42 --> 00:00:45 with Breaking Bad. I did not care about that
00:00:45 --> 00:00:49 show until I just read how it ended. But most
00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 of the time when we consume content, we're doing
00:00:52 --> 00:00:56 it for more than just the dry regurgitation of
00:00:56 --> 00:01:00 facts. This is why I hate services like Blinkist.
00:01:00 --> 00:01:04 You're not reading a book. You are listening
00:01:04 --> 00:01:09 to a book report. But let's put a pin in that
00:01:09 --> 00:01:13 for a minute. Because I read a few months ago
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 about a new app that I thought I would just kind
00:01:16 --> 00:01:19 of ignore. And then I started hearing more people
00:01:19 --> 00:01:23 talk about it and the idea of feeding long form
00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 content into things like Google LM. so that they
00:01:26 --> 00:01:29 could just get the summaries. So first, what
00:01:29 --> 00:01:32 is Sonar? Sonar is an iOS app I learned about
00:01:32 --> 00:01:35 a couple months ago that claims to do something
00:01:35 --> 00:01:39 fairly impressive. You give it a prompt on the
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 type of content you're interested in listening
00:01:42 --> 00:01:46 to and then it clips a bunch of podcasts and
00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 seamlessly, seamlessly in heavy quotes here,
00:01:49 --> 00:01:52 edits them together. The idea is that you don't
00:01:52 --> 00:01:57 have to listen to an entire podcast, just the
00:01:57 --> 00:02:01 highlights. The problem is it promises what Blinkist
00:02:01 --> 00:02:06 promises, a dry regurgitation of facts from the
00:02:06 --> 00:02:11 content. And most of us don't consume content
00:02:11 --> 00:02:14 just for facts. And as a quick sidebar here,
00:02:14 --> 00:02:18 I did try this and it was really, at least when
00:02:18 --> 00:02:22 I tried it, only for sports. Basically. And so
00:02:22 --> 00:02:25 I thought, all right, well, let's let's get a
00:02:25 --> 00:02:29 Yankees. I'm a Yankee. I'm a Yankee fan. And
00:02:29 --> 00:02:33 it gave me so you can get an idea of when I actually
00:02:33 --> 00:02:38 tried this. It gave me a bunch of like really
00:02:38 --> 00:02:42 douchey broey podcasters talking about how happy
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 they were that Garrett Cole needed Tommy John
00:02:45 --> 00:02:49 surgery, which even if you don't like the Yankees,
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 Being happy that somebody is getting surgery
00:02:54 --> 00:02:58 that will put them out of their job for a year
00:02:58 --> 00:03:02 or more is just like a gross, like you're a gross
00:03:02 --> 00:03:06 human being if you are happy about that. So like.
00:03:08 --> 00:03:11 This is part of the problem, right? I don't know
00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 if that guy or those guys were joking. They probably
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 weren't, but I don't have any of their personality
00:03:17 --> 00:03:24 and we do it. We consume content for the personality
00:03:24 --> 00:03:29 that goes along with the facts. We could just
00:03:29 --> 00:03:34 Google facts or ask ChatGPT facts. But an author's
00:03:34 --> 00:03:38 personality is what makes a book worth reading.
00:03:38 --> 00:03:42 A host's personality is what makes the show worth
00:03:42 --> 00:03:46 listening to. One of my new favorite podcasts
00:03:46 --> 00:03:50 is The Rest is History. New to me, not new in
00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 the course of podcasts. But one of my favorite
00:03:53 --> 00:03:57 podcasts is The Rest is History. They'll do deep
00:03:57 --> 00:03:59 dives on all sorts of historical events. They
00:03:59 --> 00:04:03 actually did America in the 1960s last year leading
00:04:03 --> 00:04:07 up to the U .S. election. And it was fascinating.
00:04:08 --> 00:04:11 I could have just read the Wikipedia page on
00:04:11 --> 00:04:15 the 1960s. But what fun is that? I got to listen
00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 to, I think it was a six part series. with two
00:04:18 --> 00:04:21 history buffs, both British, so like that was
00:04:21 --> 00:04:25 also a really interesting perspective, talking
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 about this and adding their personality and perspective
00:04:28 --> 00:04:34 to it. Sonar threatens to do what AI writ large
00:04:34 --> 00:04:38 threatens to do to content. Remove the personality
00:04:38 --> 00:04:42 in the service of spitting out facts. But it
00:04:42 --> 00:04:45 also highlights a much bigger problem in the
00:04:45 --> 00:04:50 content creation world. And that's that most
00:04:50 --> 00:04:54 content doesn't strike the right balance. There
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 is a reason Blinkist is popular and that Sonar
00:04:57 --> 00:05:03 might take off. Very few content creators, authors,
00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 writers, whatever, strike the right balance between
00:05:06 --> 00:05:10 facts and personality. My friend Justin Moore
00:05:10 --> 00:05:14 does this exceedingly well in his book Sponsor
00:05:14 --> 00:05:17 Magnet. The Lonely Island Seth Meyers podcast
00:05:17 --> 00:05:21 and How We Made Your Mother both do this very
00:05:21 --> 00:05:26 well in audio form. But most business books are
00:05:26 --> 00:05:30 fluff and most podcasts are meandering unstructured
00:05:30 --> 00:05:36 messes. This Is Strategy by Seth Godin, considered
00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 one of the greatest marketers of our time. His
00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 latest book This Is Strategy is literally just
00:05:42 --> 00:05:47 blog posts. It's just blog posts. Fake Doctors
00:05:47 --> 00:05:51 Real Friends, a Scrubs Rewatch podcast, which
00:05:51 --> 00:05:53 I was really excited about because Scrubs is
00:05:53 --> 00:05:57 one of my favorite shows, spent little time,
00:05:57 --> 00:06:02 very little time on the actual episodes. And
00:06:02 --> 00:06:04 so I stopped listening to that. Maybe it's gotten
00:06:04 --> 00:06:08 better, but I stopped listening to it. The main
00:06:08 --> 00:06:10 difference between Sponsor Magnet and Lonely
00:06:10 --> 00:06:14 Island and Seth Meyers podcast versus this is
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 strategy and fake doctors real friends, is the
00:06:17 --> 00:06:20 former ads personality while delivering on their
00:06:20 --> 00:06:26 promise. The latter do not. So what can you do?
00:06:27 --> 00:06:30 Well, you can make content for your audience.
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 This sounds simple, but something I've learned
00:06:34 --> 00:06:37 both from podcasting for over a decade and from
00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 coaching podcasters. is we don't do a good job
00:06:40 --> 00:06:45 of defining our audience. I am convinced Seth
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 Godin could tell me that this is not true to
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 my face, but I am still convinced Seth Godin
00:06:50 --> 00:06:54 put together this strategy as a way to monetize
00:06:54 --> 00:06:58 his blog and nothing else. Zach Braff and Donald
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 Faison, two guys who I think are great, I love
00:07:01 --> 00:07:04 their work, but they basically treated the podcast
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07 as a public way to catch up with each other and
00:07:07 --> 00:07:11 their friends. The best thing you can do is have
00:07:11 --> 00:07:15 a great answer to the question, who am I talking
00:07:15 --> 00:07:19 to? My friend Seth Silvers says that you should
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 act as if you're talking to one person. Picture
00:07:22 --> 00:07:26 them and create content just for them. Make them
00:07:26 --> 00:07:33 a promise and deliver. So I realize I've formed
00:07:33 --> 00:07:36 this opinion by putting in very little time with
00:07:36 --> 00:07:40 Sonar. But my concerns about the direction of
00:07:40 --> 00:07:43 content creation started with AI when it began.
00:07:44 --> 00:07:46 And I'm worried that it's just kind of starting
00:07:46 --> 00:07:49 to sound generic as a whole. So perhaps it's
00:07:49 --> 00:07:53 time for me to revisit Sonar. Maybe I'll like
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 the format. Or even better, perhaps I'll discover
00:07:56 --> 00:08:02 some more podcasts to actually listen to. That's
00:08:02 --> 00:08:04 it for this episode of Streamline Podcaster.
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think
00:08:07 --> 00:08:10 about this or any topic, how AI is affecting
00:08:10 --> 00:08:15 content creation. You can write in over at streamlinedfeedback
00:08:15 --> 00:08:18 .com. That's streamlined with a D feedback .com.
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 Thanks so much for listening and until next time,
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 I hope you find some space in your week.