Ask HN: How Do You Retain Anything from Podcasts?

[jgoldstein46]

In my experience, we consume a ton of great insights from podcasts, but don’t retain or apply them.

I'm building a product to help with this problem and would love to hear if it's an issue for others and how they solve it.

Reasons why I think it is hard to actually learn or apply knowledge from podcasts:

1. Podcasts are passive consumption.

   - Episodes don’t pause for reflection, and most people don’t take notes.  

   - Even if you hear something valuable, the episode keeps going, and you forget to act.  

2. No natural retrieval mechanism.

   - Listeners rarely revisit old episodes.  

   - Without recall & reflection, even the best ideas fade fast.  

3. Application requires intentional effort.

   - Many insights are useful only if acted upon, e.g. protocols for health & fitness

Possible Solutions

1. A web app that generates short quizzes from podcasts to reinforce key takeaways and includes spaced-repetition quizzes that blend insights from older episodes. - Turns passive listening into active learning.

  - Strengthens retention through self-testing.

2. A podcast app designed to track and apply insights through multiple features:

  - Intentional reminders (e.g., “Did you try cold exposure this week?”) to encourage action.

  - Quiz recaps for each episode that you can take on-demand to reinforce learning (similar to the web app, but included at the end of each episode by default).

  - Transcript integration to easily view the episode text and bookmark key insights.

How Do You Retain Podcast Insights?

Would either of these tools help you get more out of your podcast listening experience? I’m testing whether there’s demand and would love your thoughts!

How do you personally ensure you remember and apply key takeaways from podcasts?

[sitkack]

This is just me, and I find that I go through periods of listening to podcasts and then it falls off my routine.

When I would think about it, listening to podcasts was low intensity edutainment, it feels like you are learning something but you really aren't, or the learning density is so low that most 45 minute podcasts could be summarized in 10 bullet points. It was not unlike watching a BBC planet earth nature show. Afterwards you know that a bird somewhere can spin its head around twice without breaking its neck but not much more.

Oxford Researchers Discovered How to Use AI To Learn Like A Genius https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPLPpz6dD3A

Use of generative AI tools to support learning https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/ai-st...

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/assigning-ai-seven-ways-of-...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009913332...

Bloom's Taxonomy https://www.phind.com/search/cm6o98lki00002e6g5anos0bv

[jgoldstein46 → sitkack]

Thanks for these links, I will check them out!

I have different listening habits with podcasts -- most times I will listen to long form interviews that are supposed to be insightful, and often feel that way in the moment.

The key thing for me is actually translating those insights into action. - Perhaps to bridge this gap, I need to reconsider my to-do system or build to-do-list integrations into the tool.

[sitkack → jgoldstein46]

I find myself wanting to pause the podcast, go do research, write down questions, and basically debate with the podcast but there isn't a format for that right now.

NotebookLLM (horrible name) has been renamed to illuminate (less worse) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYfonzetUL4 https://illuminate.google.com/home?pli=1

You might look into tools that can let the AI listen/read/watch and then allow you to converse with the podcast.

I think in general, podcasts are pretty lousy format for learning, they are good for entertainment but not necessarily education unless the person speaking is really really good.

[jgoldstein46 → sitkack]

Illuminate seems useful for summarizing and repeating concepts from an article as a way to review, but it's form factor is still passive, which is not great for learning.

Yeah it does seem like podcasts are not the best for learning content-wise either -- most interviews are under the surface a promotion for the interviewee's work and leave out pieces to make you want more info. At least I believe that's the dynamics of the interview podcast-system. Doesn't mean you can't learn from them and there's potential to make them better.

[threecheese]

I’m using an app named Snipd that has a Readwise highlights integration. It changes the “back” button behavior to save snippets while driving, or you can use the app to do so (speech to text). Once the highlights are in Readwise, they become part of a larger info synthesis process within my PKM, where I add them to various ongoing notes. If one were very serious about this, there are various tools for spaced repetition that also integrate with Readwise.

[jgoldstein46 → threecheese]

Cool, I will check those apps out! That made me think of another idea: What if there was a way to record the podcast audio in the background, then get journaling prompts whenever you start journaling in another app.

E.g. if you are listening to a podcast on parenting, and later you start a journal entry in your app of choice, you might get a prompting question related to something you had listened to earlier in the podcast. It might be something that was already in your subconscious and your brain was processing in the background, but by bringing it to the forefront it can make it more actionable and integrate your focused and diffuse modes of problem solving.

[vunderba]

Most of my friends seeking to increase recall and retention already make use of some kind of flash card application, so something like this might be better suited as a type of plug-in.

Personally, I wouldn't want to fragment my knowledge across multiple flash card systems.

The few times where it's been really important for me to remember information from a podcast I've fed the podcast audio file into deep whisper and asked ChatGPT to create a question answer cards to import into Anki.

[jgoldstein46 → vunderba]

I think that makes a lot of sense, thanks so much! I hadn't thought about converting transcript insights directly into Anki cards. Just concerned that the ChatGPT + Whisper -> Anki combo is not 'enough' of a product for people to pay for.

[sitkack → jgoldstein46]

Don't search so hard for a product, build something useful and see what comes out.

[jgoldstein46 → sitkack]

True, thanks for the tip!