Wonder Tools

I can’t keep up with all the news that interests me. So I’m exploring new ways to get concise, curated updates. Today I’m sharing three new tools I like.
* Huxe Personalized audio shows drawn from your interests, calendar, & email
* Google CC A morning summary of your email inbox
* Yutori Scouts AI agents that monitor your fave topics and deliver reports
Read on for examples of how each works, and how to make the most of them.
Huxe — Personalized Audio Updates
Huxe is a personalized audio app. Whenever I open it I hear a custom podcast it generates on the spot based on my interests, calendar and email. It greets me with what’s important on my calendar and in my inbox. Then the little radio show made for me shares news and feature stories on topics I’m interested in — from AI and tech to teaching and classical music.
Huxe was co-founded in September by Raiza Martin, who left Google after leading the vision and development of NotebookLM, my favorite AI tool.
To set up the Huxe app I picked from a list of categories and added some keywords for topics, teams and tech that interest me. I also gave it permission to access my Google Calendar and Gmail. (Connecting those accounts is optional). Huxe is free for now, on iOS or Android. Follow Huxe on LinkedIn where they post interesting updates.
In addition to a new “for you” audio update generated anytime I open the app, Huxe also has a Discover tab for listening to audio shows curated from online content. Examples of ones I like:
* Product Drops highlights notable new tech, referencing posts on Product Hunt, the best hub online for new launches
* Actually Useful has mini case studies about when AI is demonstrably helpful
* The Tennis Daily gives me interesting updates during the Australian Open
Design your own briefing
* Start by pressing the “+” button at the bottom right of the interface
* On the Research tab, type in a prompt like “What are the latest breast cancer research developments?” or “Newest snack trends in Tokyo?”
* Alternatively, hit the “Use Sources” tab and add a list of specific sites you like, X handles, RSS feeds, or subreddits.
Ideas to try
* Create a personalized learning show with your favorite blogs, newsletter writers, or subreddits you follow. You can add an instruction to give the show a particular focus, tone, or style.
* Make a guilty pleasure show for stressful days. It can be as niche as you want — it’s just for you. No one has to know what’s in it, though you can choose to share it. Add a list of topics that amuse you, from hobbies to food, pet, or sport trends. Or pick guilty pleasures like favorite TV shows, snacks, or singers.
* Example: In 60 seconds I curated my own show called Reddit’s Daily Glow based on a few subreddits with inspiring news and interesting facts.
I used to listen only to podcasts or audiobooks on my commute, but now I mix in these personalized audio updates depending on my mood.
Customize your briefings
* Use the “Join” button while listening to anything to inject a live question into the show. Like the interactive audio feature in NotebookLM, it prompts the AI to respond to your query before returning to the audio briefing.
* In the settings tab, choose two voices you prefer from 19 options.
Features I hope will be added: I’d like to be able to rewind and jump around more easily in the briefings. Down the road I’d love to pull in podcast, YouTube, and newsletter subscriptions as source material, and get Huxe updates by email or WhatsApp. I’d also love to use Huxe as a curator to create my own shows, mixing in my own voice and content.
Alternative: I like Mailbrew for creating curated email digests from my favorite newsletters, blogs, subreddits, YouTubers, and more. Read my guide (for paid Wonder Tools subscribers) for more on why I like it and how I use it.
Another alternative for a quick news overview is Upstract. But that’s basically the entire Internet on one page, which I find overwhelming.
Sponsored Message
Build something Lovable
Create websites and apps quickly by chatting with AI. Lovable makes it easy to turn your idea into something real. No need to write code. Just describe what you have in mind, then guide Lovable with suggestions to shape it.
To avoid doomscrolling, I made a little Uplifting News page that updates from Reddit. I also mocked up a landing page to help educators with AI. Both took a few minutes. Neither required any special expertise. Just an idea.
Whether you want a new business page, portfolio, or an app for your team, Lovable is a fast way to begin without hiring anyone or mastering complex tech. Rather than spinning up a slide deck or spending years outlining a plan, try Lovable for turning your idea into a living site or app.
Google CC — A Personalized Daily Email Update
I’m testing a new Google “AI productivity agent.” It’s basically a personalized briefing Gmail now sends me daily. It’s based on new Gmail messages and what’s in my Calendar. Join the waitlist.
What’s useful about it
* It saves me from missing out. It surfaces messages I might otherwise overlook. Examples so far: a library message about a reserved book ready for pickup, and a volunteering sign-up deadline.
* It links directly to key messages. You can click on any briefing item to open the relevant Gmail message.
* I can reply to customize future briefings. I replied to a briefing asking for Substack-related email updates I might have missed, and it gave me these useful nuggets.
Yutori Scouts — Get Customized Reports
Get updates on whatever interests you. Create a detailed query and a team of AI agents will scour the web to keep you up to date. Specify news, shopping, or professional passions, or get updates on particular products, companies, or opportunities. Set your preferred frequency to daily, weekly, or when new info arises. It’s like a more powerful, AI-enhanced version of Google Alerts, which just searches for keywords. Here’s more on how Yutori’s AI agents work.
How I’m using it…
* To get an inspiring daily story from Reddit. Here’s a recent example.
* To see which AI startups are trending on Product Hunt. (You can remix public queries, which serve as useful templates).
* To keep up with new AI policies in higher ed. I set up a weekly digest to stay up to date for my job at the City University of NY. Here’s a recent update. And this brief video 📺 shows Yutori’s AI agents quickly researching, editing, and delivering the report.👇
More examples of what Scouts can monitor
* Niche clothing trends in Tokyo
* TikTok U.S. daily trends
* Highly-rated new movies available to stream
Pricing: Free for one active query; $15/month for 10 scouts on various topics with up to hourly monitoring.


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Azeem Azhar is the kind of guy who loves both old-fashioned pens and advanced AI.
It was a delight talking with him, not just because he’s a successful entrepreneur, author, and interviewer, but because we share quirky tech tastes.
Azeem and his team publish Exponential View — a Substack with 140,000+ subscribers — about how tech is shaping our future. In our live conversation, we talked about Azeem’s AI — and analog — workflow. The discussion also touched on 18 sites, apps, and gadgets summarized below.
📺 Watch the video for the full chat, or check the highlights and tool list below.
🔎 On AI Research Beyond Google and Wikipedia
Azeem consistently tweaks how he figures out where tech is heading. Check his “Boom or Bubble” dashboard on whether the AI market is overheated for an example of his analysis.
Key takeaway: Azeem’s research workflow has moved almost entirely away from traditional search:
* Why he quit Google and Wikipedia. [16:20] “I spend virtually no time on Google searching for things, nothing on Wikipedia at all, not a moment now.” Instead, he surfaces what matters to him with AI searches and custom tools his team has developed.
* Manus is his research assistant. Azeem and his team use Manus (a Chinese-founded AI startup recently acquired by Meta) the way you’d send a research assistant to “find color—go off and find the case studies, the anecdotes, the famous quotations.” The team runs queries overnight for 30-40 minutes each.
* Shortwave helps with investor intel. This AI tool is superb for searching within your email. Azeem has 40 startup investments. To support founders, he uses Shortwave to search past email to help explore questions like, “How well are they sticking to their milestones? Have they changed the goalposts? Where do they seem to have problems where I can be helpful?” Azeem uses Shortwave to search across 15 years of Gmail messages.
* Julius is a resource for data science. He uses this tool, which he’s invested in, as an AI number cruncher. [My post on Julius]
🤖 How Azeem Uses AI
Azeem set up custom instructions directing ChatGPT to aggressively challenge his assumptions: [6:41] “It can be quite exhausting… it’s like being constantly interrogated.” His follow-up? “I often have to copy the answer and put it into Claude and say, explain this to me like I’m a bright high schooler.” He considers Claude the best coding model and also uses it for text refinement.
Bottom line: Azeem uses the two AI models sequentially to force himself to think deeper.
Other AI Assistants
* Gemini Pro Azeem builds interactive apps with Gemini. “I might explain what I’m looking for, have a discussion, then ask it to build the interactive platform app. Then I can play with the parameters.”
* Perplexity Azeem’s go-to for “instant answers” when he doesn’t need deep research.
* DeepSeek Azeem’s default for “good enough” queries to cut costs. “In general, it’s really good enough. And if on the occasion I don’t think it is, I can fire it out to one of the other models.”
* Grok Azeem experiments with this occasionally as part of his testing.
✒️ “I Dip the Pen in this Bottle of Ink”
Azeem has a fountain pen without an internal ink cartridge. Why?
[9:30] “If I am writing and every 10 or 15 words I have to stop to dip the pen in ink, I’m slowing myself down... In a world where I can move really quickly, I will slow myself down. I’ll get very haptic in the experience and look at what I’m writing and force myself to cross out mistakes, and feel frustrated about mistakes, so therefore slow my thinking down even more.”
In a conversation about AI acceleration, Azeem deliberately builds in friction.
🎙️Voice and Writing Tools 🖊️
* Wispr Flow Azeem reads his handwritten notes aloud into Wispr Flow, editing in real-time as he speaks.
* Kolo Tino Fountain Pen Azeem likes the feel of pen on paper and its deliberate pace.
* Paper Republic Trifold Leather Journal Azeem’s folio holds three separate notebook inserts: “You can have one that’s just for your jotting of your to-do list and then others are for thinking time.”
😰 Azeem: “Are You a Bit Stressed, Jeremy?” 😖
In our recent conversation, Azeem teased me for repeatedly referencing resources for relaxation.
“Are you a bit stressed? Because you’ve talked to me about your squeeze ball. You’ve talked to me about Headspace for meditating. You’ve talked to me about your CMY cube to chill you out. I don’t want to go all shrink on you, but there’s a little hint of intensity there.”
Fair point. I do have a lot of calming tchotchkes on my desk. We both shared a bunch of tools we use, analog and digital, for coping with busy-ness and overwhelm. Below are three Azeem recommends:
Focus & Wellness
* Pzizz Azeem’s most-used app: “[The app’s] run time is probably 10 hours a week on average and has done for a decade.” He paid $50 for a lifetime subscription and uses it for naps, overnight flights, and jet lag recovery.
* Oura ring Azeem uses this for health tracking, as have I, since I first wrote about it in 2021.
* Lacrosse ball Azeem’s essential travel item: “A really hard lacrosse ball to put into your pressure points, like your glutes and your hip flexors, because you want to do that massage, especially once you’ve been on your second 10-hour flight in five days.”
🎧 High-End Audio: Headphones and DJ Mixing
Azeem tests headphones with “Sultans of Swing,” a song by Dire Straits, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, as well as dance tracks.
* Solitaire T Headphones Azeem travels with these for high-end sound with noise cancelling for long flights.
* Beats Fit Pro His everyday choice.
* DJ Studio Azeem uses this digital audio workstation to create DJ mixes while traveling.
🌟 Notable Quotes
* Azeem on the skyrocketing cost of cutting-edge AI: “All of this is expensive. I mean, we spend as a team, I would say probably between $350 and $500 per person per month.”
* My take: we’re nearing a new digital divide. Free alternatives like Jan AI help (see my post), but if you use the best contemporary AI models, your bills add up fast.
* Azeem on why no single AI company will “win” the market. "I haven't seen a strong reason to think that a network effect will emerge.”
* His rationale: “If you get the unique data for clown makeup, and I get the unique data for vineyards in Italy, if I'm not interested in clowns, I'm not going to use your LLM.”
* Azeem says OpenAI’s strategic dilemma, as reported by The Information, is whether to focus on power users or those who just want quick replies.
* [29:23] “They have 1,000 researchers who have built amazing deep research tools, and most people just want to know which movie should I watch tonight, or draw my dad as if he was Spider-Man for his 70th birthday card.”
* On accountability in the AI era: “We’ve essentially said to the team that we don’t have hallucinations at Exponential View because everything is owned by a person. If you copy and paste something out of an LLM that’s got a hallucination in it, that’s you saying it, that’s not the LLM saying it.”
* On the swift pace of change: “I would think that 70% to 80% of my workflows today, the things that I do, are different to how I did them three months ago.”
Thank you to Romaric Jannel, Abbey Algiers, Aysu Kececi, Ondrej Prostrednik, blaine wishart, and many others for tuning into the live video conversation with Azeem Azhar.
You’re Invited! Join me next Wednesday, January 21 at 10am EST for Just Start Writing: Tools For Busy Creators In 2026, a free workshop I’m leading for Medium.com.


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I’ve relied on these 10 tools this year to act as a team of AI assistants. They’ve helped me approach work with a spirit of experimentation and exploration. To read the full post online with all the links and details, visit https://wondertools.substack.com/p/my-2025-ai-favorites


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I rely on Ideogram, an AI image generator, to help me create posters, banners, social posts, newsletter illustrations, and video thumbnails.
Context: Ideogram competes in an exploding market. Gemini’s new Nano Banana Pro makes remarkable infographics, ChatGPT’s image generator produces fantastic illustrations, and Canva, Adobe, and Midjourney keep getting stronger. Yet I still find myself returning often to Ideogram. Read on for 10 reasons why — and a guide to getting started.
10 reasons I like Ideogram 
* Your prompt gets automatically improved. Ideogram’s magic prompt algorithm refines your initial query. You can then approve it or revise. 
* Choose from four options. Each time you submit a prompt, you get back four generated images. Getting to choose one gives you a bit of editorial input.
* Public image galleries are helpful for inspiration. Build on others’ prompts. Browse images of all shapes & styles, and top-ranked images, for ideas.
* Get accurate text within images. Ideogram generates accurate text for social media graphics, thumbnails, banners, and logos. Ideogram’s guidance on text & typography includes excellent examples of prompts and text designs.
* Pick from a variety of styles. Choose from dozens of styles, from Pop Art and Watercolor to Doodle, Travel Poster, and Surreal Collage. I often choose “auto” because I can’t make up my mind. I tend to opt for a clean, modern look for a presentation image, or a more abstract, artsy vibe for creative projects.
* Use negative prompts. Paid subscribers can list specific elements NOT to be included in an image. That can be helpful if a particular detail could prevent your image from being usable, as in the burger example below.
* Choose your image orientation. You can generate horizontal, vertical, or square images. Free users have 11 orientation options. That’s helpful for generating images that will fit your slide, podcast, newsletter, ad banner, site header, or whatever else. Paid subscribers get additional dimension choices.
* Remix anything. Modify images you or others have generated with Ideogram’s remix button. I often tweak what I’ve generated to get closer to what I want. Be specific with your remix query: “dog” may yield a golden retriever instead of the poodle you envisioned.
* Extend images. Ideogram’s Canvas feature lets paid users edit, extend, or combine images. Here’s a 45-second video with examples.
* Create custom styles of your own Upload or pick a few images to generate a new style you can use repeatedly for a consistent look. 📺 Watch the promo video below to get a sense of it.👇  
How to start using Ideogram
* Visit Ideogram.ai and sign up for free with your Google, Apple or Microsoft account.
* Check the welcome guide for starting tips, examples, and sample prompts.
* Explore the public gallery to see others’ images and the prompts they used.
* Describe an image you envision in a few sentences. Don’t worry about precise wording. You can opt to let Ideogram refine your prompt.
* Choose a style. Decide if you want an illustrated or photographic-style image. Or pick ‘auto’ to let the algorithm decide. You can also select a color palette.
* Choose dimensions. Pick a wide, vertical or square image. I mostly generate wide images, which match the width of presentations or web pages.
* Click generate. On a free account, you can generate a limited number of images per day.
* Wait a minute. The service slows free requests to incentivize upgrades.
* Download the image you like and use it any way you choose.
Use an AI assistant to sharpen your image prompts
Avoid getting generic images when using Ideogram by prompting ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to help you craft more detailed image prompts. Here’s how to prompt an AI assistant for this:
* Type a few descriptive phrases about an image you’re envisioning
* Explain how you plan to use the image (for a poster a thumbnail, etc)
* Ask for five surprising, bold, image prompts based on your context for use with your image generation tool.
* Iterate. Pick one you like and ask for three compelling variants. Test one or more of those with Ideogram.
Pricing
* Free for a limited number of image generation credits each day. Depending on traffic to Ideogram, you can expect at least five free images a day. I started on the free plan but now pay for the service
* $7/month billed annually for more images, quicker rendering, and advanced features like Canvas, which lets you modify & extend images.
Ideogram caveats
* Limited free images. I often have to iterate on a prompt several times before getting something usable. On a free plan that may mean getting only one or two quality images a day.
* Reduced image quality on downloads. Free users can only download a 70% quality JPEG image, not the full-resolution version. 
* Public image creation only. All images created on the free plan are public, meaning others can view and remix them.
Alternatives
Gemini Nano Banana Pro
Google recently launched its best image generator with a surprising name and remarkable versatility. You can use Nano Banana Pro for nearly any kind of visual — from a logo, infographic, or slide design, to an edited self-portrait based on your photo or an abstract image of a dog (below).
ChatGPT’s Image Generator
ChatGPT’s built-in AI image generation tool is excellent, particularly for generating cartoons, simple diagrams, or abstract illustrations. You can’t specify the dimensions of an image, but you can use an extended chat to provide context and guidance, and you can ask the AI assistant to iterate on the image result if it doesn’t satisfy you with its first attempts. You can also select an area of a generated image and prompt it to change that part. Here’s my post about it.
Flux
Black Forest Labs, which makes the Flux 2 AI image generator, recently raised $300 million from investors. Flux images are dramatic and distinct. You can create 50 images for free after signing into the Flux Playground, or you can use the model on Hugging Face. Flux doesn’t require any special prompting lingo. I find Ideogram simpler to use, and it has a broader set of features, but Flux is excellent at generating accurate text inside images, and it’s a powerful tool on the rise. Here are Flux versions of the Ideogram image I created at the top of this post.
Adobe Firefly
Adobe has a growing suite of AI tools that keep getting better. Firefly has some unique capabilities. You can customize your image’s camera angle, lighting, color, tone and special effects, among other advanced features. Adobe has also committed to respecting creators by not training on their content without express permission. “Adobe Firefly models are trained on a dataset of licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content where copyright has expired.”
Concerns about AI image generation
* Less control. With editing tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, and Canva, you have full control over the pixels you’re designing. When you generate images with AI, you have less say over a visual’s specifics.
* Risk of confusion. Some AI-generated images look like real people, objects, or buildings, which can be misleading if not explained. An AI-generated photo of a person in an office might be assumed to be a real employee.
* Displacement of artists. Talented professionals may see diminishing demand for their services as people increasingly look to AI services instead of hiring creatives. And lawsuits allege that AI models were unfairly trained on human work. Getty recently lost one such suit, but others are ongoing.
* The rise of AI sludge. With AI image generation spreading, it’s easier than ever to mass produce visual images without thought. It is also easier to imitate anyone’s visual style, so AI-powered copycats may proliferate.
* Error prone. Some AI generation tools still can’t reliably reproduce text well. Words within images may be garbled, like this mangled poster made by DALL-E in 2024.
Resources for non-AI images
* Creative Commons & Openverse — search for free human-made images
* The National Gallery of Art lets you download and use its images for free
* Unsplash and Pexels are free sources for photographs
* 11 tools for diversifying your images (a Wonder Tools guide)
What have you used AI images for? What works best for you? 👇


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NotebookLM is the most useful free AI tool of 2025. It has twin superpowers. You can use it to find, analyze, and search through a collection of documents, notes, links, or files. You can then use NotebookLM to visualize your material as a slide deck, infographic, report — even an audio or video summary.
How to set up a notebook
* Pick a purpose. Start a new notebook for a work project or a learning goal. Examples: I created a notebook to organize materials for the new online bilingual MA program we’re developing at the CUNY Newmark Grad School of Journalism where I work. I also set up a notebook to learn more about Gustav Mahler, a composer I revere. I have numerous others for work and personal projects.
* Find sources for your notebook. NotebookLM recently added a search panel to help you discover high-quality sources. You decide which, if any, of the suggested materials to add to your notebook. The “Fast Research” is quick and focused, unlike a generic Google search that returns hundreds of results, some of which have gamed the search engine system.
* Fast Research surfaces 10 or so documents related to your topic in less than 30 seconds. You can ask it to find sources within your Google Drive, or from the Web.
* The Deep Research prompt option in the same panel will more slowly gather many more sources.
Tip: make your query as specific as possible to surface relevant, useful sources. Here’s an example of a concise, precise query I used.
* Add your own materials. Upload files up to 200 MB and 500,000 words into your notebook. You can add:
* Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets
* PDFs, images (including photos of your handwritten notes), and Microsoft Word documents
* YouTube links and audio, image, or video files (it extracts the transcript)
* Website URLs (it extracts the text)
No other AI tool I’ve used lets you compile as many different kinds of materials in a centralized AI workspace that’s easy to explore and build with.
* Free accounts can create up to 100 notebooks, with 50 sources in each. On a free plan, you may run into limits when creating multimedia materials. You can run free 10 Deep Research queries a month. Students in the U.S. 18 or older can get pro access for free.
* Pro accounts, which cost $20/month as part of Google AI Pro, can host 500 notebooks with 300 sources in each. They can run 20 Deep Research queries a day.
Collaborate and share
NotebookLM now lets you collaborate as you would with Google Docs. You can choose to invite people as viewers or editors. Give them a full view of your sources and notes, or limit their access to the search/chat interface.
You can also publish notebooks publicly. Here are some examples:
* Trends in health, wealth and happiness by Our World in Data
* How to build a life, from The Atlantic
* Shakespeare’s Complete Plays
* Parenting Advice for the Digital Age, by Jacqueline Nesi, PhD of Techno Sapiens
* Earnings Reports for the World’s 50 Biggest Companies
* Secrets of the Super Agers by Eric Topol
Explore your materials
As you add materials, NotebookLM analyzes them and suggests relevant questions. After I uploaded biographical material about Mahler, it suggested search queries — based on the source documents — about why he converted to Catholicism and what poetry collections inspired him. You can also ask any question on your mind or type in any kind of traditional search query.
NotebookLM uses natural language processing to make sense of your documents. When you type in a query, the system understands what you’re looking for. When I queried about the death of Mahler’s loved ones, I didn’t have to mention their names or even their relationship to him — NotebookLM understood what I was asking. These exploratory searches are more powerful than old-fashioned keyword searches, which only work if an exact word combination appears in your document. NotebookLM makes it easy to run abstract queries as well, searching for moments of anger or surprise.
Tip: target specific sources. You can use the checkboxes next to each source to limit your search to particular documents. This precision is handy when you want to search within a specific report or compare information across just two or three key documents.
Visualize information
Use the Studio tab to create shareable reports, slides, graphics, and multimedia out of your notebook material. Unlike other AI tools, NotebookLM’s creations are grounded in your source documents — they don’t pull from the Web or generic training data. Because they draw only from your source material, the creations will change as you add more to your notebook, or if you mark only a subset of sources to be used.
Create a mind map first to get an overview of the topics covered in a notebook. Then create the following elements to understand and share your material.
Infographics
Create polished visual summaries. Choose whether you want a landscape, portrait, or square image, and how simple or detailed it should be. Then type in an optional custom prompt to guide the design. You can include instructions about your preferred color palette, target audience, illustration style, and the kinds of numbers or facts to prioritize.
A caveat: NotebookLM consistently produces clean, readable text. It’s mostly accurate, but I’ve encountered occasional errors. Here’s an example: Mahler’s age of death is wrong at the bottom of this NotebookLM infographic.
Slide decks
NotebookLM’s newest capability — generating slide decks — continues to surprise me. When I ask it to make slides summing up notebook material — it comes up with outstanding results, like this slide deck about Mahler.
You can choose between detailed standalone slides, or simpler TED-style presenter slides meant to accompany a verbal presentation. As with the infographic tool, you can just press the slide deck button to let NotebookLM decide what to generate. But you’ll get something more relevant to you if you write a prompt to guide the visual style and subject matter focus. The slides include a small NotebookLM watermark in the bottom right corner.
Below is an example of a slide deck about NotebookLM I created with NotebookLM. 👇
A caveat: In my testing, the slides have been clean and visually engaging. They’re not perfect, though. A deck about our new bilingual journalism program, for example, included misleading AI-generated images of our faculty members.
Video overviews
Create a video summary of the material in your notebook. Think of it as an AI-narrated slide show. Fortunately, there’s no talking avatar. I like how these videos include facts, examples, quotes, and images pulled directly from your source documents.
Choose between a brief video (1-2 minutes) or a longer explainer (often six to 10 minutes). You can’t specify the exact length. Tailor the approach to your viewers with a prompt. You can even specify a specific audience, whether board members of a charity you’re presenting to, or grandchildren new to your subject matter.
Videos can take five to 10 minutes to generate. Free accounts can generate only a few videos, slide decks, or infographics per notebook before hitting a usage limit. When your video — or other creation — is ready, you can download and share it, or view it within your notebook.
📺 Here’s a video overview of NotebookLM I created with NotebookLM
Podcasts
NotebookLM’s audio overviews became Internet famous for their remarkably human-sounding conversations. When I played a clip for a group of students when this feature launched, they didn’t realize the speakers weren’t human.
Example: Here’s a new “Deep Dive” audio piece I generated about NotebookLM for this post.
* You can write a brief or detailed prompt to guide the style of the audio, and you can choose from multiple formats.
* After a few minutes, the audio file is ready for you to download and share.
* Tip: add an AI-generated label to this kind of audio or any other material you create with NotebookLM. That way people will know where it came from and won’t assume you created each detail from scratch.
You can generate audio pieces from a subset of your documents or your full collection of sources. Here are the four kinds of audio you can generate, with an example of each:
* Debate. Here’s an audio debate I prompted NotebookLM to create about which of its features are most useful.
* Critique. Here’s a critique of NotebookLM I generated from 19 sources I added.
* Brief summary. Here’s a 90-second audio overview.
* Deep dive. Here’s a deep dive NotebookLM explainer.
Text reports
In addition to multimedia, you can generate custom reports. The reports tend to be around 2,000 to 3,000 words, or six to 12 pages. Here are example reports generated by NotebookLM: an advanced guide to NotebookLM and a guide to integrating NotebookLM in a newsroom.
I’ve found the dozens of reports I’ve generated to be thorough enough to be useful for reference or learning. They also help point to sources worth exploring further. Try prompting NotebookLM to create the following kinds of reports:
* Timelines: Organize chronological information
* FAQs: Common questions and answers about your topic
* Explainers: Break down complex concepts
* Teaching guides: Useful if you’re an educator or lead workshops
* Student handbooks: Supplemental resources
* Critiques: Analysis of weaknesses or limitations in your sources
* Debate reports: Multiple perspectives on controversial topics
Flashcards and quizzes
When learning something new, create flashcards or quizzes with multiple-choice questions to test yourself.
* Describe your level of understanding (e.g. “I’m new to this,” or “I’m a professional in this field, but I’m new to this framework,”).
* Choose whether you want small or large number of questions or flashcards.
* Specify concepts you want the quiz or flashcards to focus on.
* You can also ask NotebookLM to focus on a particular source, like a certain link, PDF, or video you’ve uploaded. Example: Check out my NotebookLM flashcards.
5 Projects to Try
1. Organize a work project
Each time you add a file, NotebookLM summarizes it. Its full text is then searchable with citations, so you know you’re not getting AI hallucinations. To assemble a useful notebook, gather relevant documents, including:
* Plans, internal reports, or project memos
* Links to relevant sites
* Meeting recordings or transcripts
* Important emails copied and pasted or saved as PDFs or docs
* Background reports, company manuals, or competitive research
Use your project notebook to:
* Create summary reports or timelines to onboard new team members
* Draft slide decks for internal meetings
* Make infographics to visually summarize complex processes or workflows
* Quickly find relevant quotes, stats, anecdotes, or examples
* Refresh your memory when returning to the project later on
2. Plan a trip
I create travel notebooks to help me find relevant family activities and ideas for outings. I’ve done this before with Perplexity and other AI platforms, but I like the way NotebookLM lets me gather so many different kinds of inputs: links, videos, articles, and local guides—everything I might want to reference when planning weekend activities or hosting visitors. You can find these kinds of resources with a Google or Perplexity search, or do the whole process within NotebookLM.
For travel planning, compile these materials:
* Historical and cultural information
* Entertainment guides and reviews
* Restaurant recommendations
* Local blog posts, event listings, or links to top attractions
Then ask NotebookLM to generate:
* Itineraries
* FAQs about your destination
* Recommendations based on your budget or other constraints
* Slide decks or infographics to share with your travel companions
* Flashcards for learning key phrases if you’re traveling abroad
* Quiz games to play at the airport while waiting in line
3. Learn something
Here’s a meta use-case: I created a notebook about NotebookLM to help me learn about its nooks and crannies. (Try the quiz about NotebookLM it created for me.) I made another one about “deliberative dialogue” to learn more about tactics for encouraging civil discourse between people who violently disagree.
To build a learning notebook:
* Upload relevant YouTube videos, articles, and course materials.
* Use the “Add Sources” panel to add docs from your Google Drive or the Web.
* Generate mind maps, quizzes, and flashcards to test your understanding.
* Create audio guides to learn while exercising, cleaning, or commuting.
* Prompt for timelines, FAQs, explainers, infographics, and slide decks tailored to your knowledge level and learning goals.
Tip: break large documents into smaller pieces
NotebookLM uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG) for search. That keeps it grounded in your material and avoids hallucination. But it also means that when asked to quickly search gigantic documents, NotebookLM may have the capacity to scour only a subset of your source material.
To avoid searches that miss important material, consider breaking enormous documents into smaller pieces and narrowing your searches to specific sources or more precise subjects.
4. Compile reference guides
Build notebooks to help you handle recurring tasks.
* Grant writing. Compile successful applications, guidelines, or evaluation criteria.
* Social posts. Gather style guides, brand guidelines, and examples of past posts that have worked well for you or competitors.
* Technical documentation. Assemble specs, organizational rules, or industry best practices.
* Customer research. Add past surveys, interview transcripts, analytics reports, or testimonials. Tip: as a first step, strip names and emails from surveys or interviews to protect respondents’ privacy.
5. Manage home projects
Create notebooks for life outside of work. NotebookLM is great for this because unlike other AI tools, it lets you input so many different kinds of sources with huge file sizes, whether you have videos, audio files, PDFs, your own handwritten notes, links to various sites, or Google Drive files.
* Recipe collections and guides to various cooking techniques
* Home improvement projects with how-to articles and product reviews
* Hobby research for woodworking, guitar, photography, or gardening
Why NotebookLM Stands Out 📍
* Unlike AI assistants designed around an open-ended chat box, NotebookLM is structured around a more familiar paradigm: a searchable notebook. The closest parallels are Claude Projects or ChatGPT Projects, which allow you to organize documents in a folder that can inform AI queries on those services. Perplexity Spaces is also useful for organizing related search threads. But none of those can generate NotebookLM’s full range of outputs, and each draws on its own training data as well as your sources.
* NotebookLM’s citation system means you can trust its search results, because you can see the cited section in your original document. And it’s unique in being able to generate everything from audio and video to reports, slides and infographics from your source materials.
* Note: Citations aren’t provided within infographics, slide decks, video or audio overviews. If there are tidbits from those you want to trace back to a source, summarize the fact or detail in question in NotebookLM’s explore tab — the chat window — to ask for a citation.
* The free tier is powerful enough for most people. And it keeps improving, adding significant new capabilities every couple of months.
* The bottom line: if I were forced to recommend a single AI tool for many different kinds of readers, I’d pick NotebookLM.
What do you use NotebookLM for? Add a comment 👇
Read more from Wonder Tools about NotebookLM 👇


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