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Field notes — A process was described for creating AI-assisted content from podcast episodes, involving a team of specialized AI roles: a managing editor that identifies interesting moments across transcripts, writers that draft pieces, and fact checkers that verify every quote, name, and claim before publication.
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Claude — claude.ai from Anthropic was mentioned as the AI platform being used for content creation work, with the clarification that it’s spelled C-L-A-U-D-E.
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The Marginalian — This website by Maria Popova, formerly known as Brain Pickings, came up as a book recommendation resource. It started as an email to friends and grew into a publication that places books in larger literary and philosophical contexts. Available at themarginalian.org.
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The Biblioracle — John Warner’s Substack newsletter was recommended for book discovery. He’s also a Chicago Tribune books columnist who makes personalized recommendations. Available at biblioracle.substack.com.
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Indigo — Canada’s largest bookstore chain was discussed as a place for book discovery, particularly through browse-and-buy experiences in physical stores.
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Heather’s Picks — The book recommendation program at Indigo stores, curated by founder and CEO Heather Reisman, was mentioned as a trusted source for finding good reads.
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NetGalley and Edelweiss — These platforms for advance reader copies came up in the context of how book reviewers identify themselves in Amazon reviews, often thanking these services for providing review copies.
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Publishers Weekly — The trade publication’s book reviews were noted as appearing in Amazon’s editorial reviews section.
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Amazon reviews — The challenge of navigating book reviews was discussed, including verified buyer badges and the difference between editorial reviews and customer reviews.
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Libby — The library ebook app (powered by Overdrive) was mentioned as a way to borrow digital books through local libraries in both the US and Canada.
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Book discovery — The difficulty of finding good books amid the flood of new releases was characterized as a “huge issue in the book publishing industry.”
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OXO — The kitchen tools company (spelled O-X-O) known for its Good Grips line was used as a metaphor. The ergonomic, easy-to-grab handles were designed originally for people with arthritis.
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“OXO handles on our heads” — A metaphor was offered for how large corporations exploit human psychology—our “ancient brain”—to grab attention and drive behavior, much like OXO’s handles make it easy to grip a tool.
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Jean-Paul Sartre — The quote “Hell is other people” was correctly attributed to his 1944 play No Exit (French: Huis clos). The original line is “L’enfer, c’est les autres.”
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Hyper-palatable food — McDonald’s and fast food were used as an analogy for addictive digital content, with the observation that both are engineered to exploit human psychology.
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Content inundation — Concern was expressed about being flooded with AI-generated and low-quality content, drawing parallels to junk food and its effects on health.
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RSS — Mentioned as an alternative to algorithm-driven social media feeds, allowing readers to choose what content they receive.
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New York State cell phone ban — The K-12 “bell-to-bell” smartphone restriction was discussed, prohibiting phone use throughout the entire school day including lunch.
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Steven Pressfield — The “do the work” philosophy was invoked in the context of creating content because you can’t not create it.
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AI and writers — A nuanced discussion emerged about whether AI writing tools help or diminish creative work, with different perspectives on using AI as a tool versus doing the creative work oneself.
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The Atlantic — Mentioned as an example of a publication that people value enough to pay for, representing quality journalism that readers actively support.
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Stephen King — Referenced as an example of a successful author whose imagination and craft represent what human writers can uniquely do.
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The tall head — Seth Godin’s concept was referenced to describe how top creators (like Stephen King) get paid while a long tail of writers struggle to earn a living.
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AI model architecture — An explanation was offered distinguishing between the frozen model (trained on ingested data) and the conversational layer on top that interacts with users and can adapt within a session but doesn’t permanently learn.
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Training data ethics — The question of whether AI companies fairly compensate the creators whose work was used to train models came up, with acknowledgment that there’s no clear solution.
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Physical books — Strong preference was expressed for physical books over ebooks, including the practice of highlighting passages and adding sticky notes.
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Reading slowly — The practice of deliberately reading slowly to appreciate an author’s craft was discussed as a way to honor the work that goes into writing.
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Tabletop gaming podcasts — Mentioned as an unexpected gateway that drew one person away from social media addiction and into podcasting.
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Social media addiction — The difficulty of breaking free from algorithmically-driven platforms was discussed, with the observation that people need to find something else that captures their interest.
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Books as patient objects — The observation was made that books simply wait for you to open them, unlike digital content that demands attention through notifications and algorithms.
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Perplexity — Mentioned as a free AI alternative to Claude for basic tasks like reviewing written summaries.
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University of Calgary — Mentioned in the context of observations about students pursuing degrees purely for income potential rather than genuine interest.
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New York Times — Referenced regarding their lawsuit against AI companies over training data compensation.
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