NotebookLM Will Change How You Learn – Here’s Why!

think about how often you encounter the

following scenario there's a task you're

trying to complete but in order to do

that simple task you have all this

background you have to have all these

documents you have to read slide

presentations to go over people you have

to talk to Concepts you have to

understand the problem is who in a crazy

busy workday has time to sit down and

spend hours reading

things hey everyone about a year ago I

released a YouTube video on a new

experimental AI platform from Google

called notebook LM but you know I

thought this is probably not going to go

anywhere it's just a beta just an

experiment but let me tell you I was

completely wrong let me show you the

five biggest new features that notebook

LM has come up with and no this video is

not sponsored now before I show my

screen I want to answer what I think is

a really fundamental question which is

what is notebook

lm4 especially how is it unique and

different from some of the other AI

tools out there like chat GPT well I was

reading one of the blog posts that the

notebook LM team had written and in that

post they called it a tool for

understanding and I think that's the

best simple description I've seen it's

the ultimate tool for understanding

things there's a lot to cover so buckle

up grab a cup of coffee and let's Dive

Right In first let's talk about audio

overviews imagine if you were setting

something or learning something or

reading something and you just happen to

come across a podcast in your podcast

app between two super engaging

knowledgeable hosts explaining that

thing to you well now you don't have to

be lucky you can generate exactly that

conversation on demand anytime you want

what you see here on my screen is the

main interface when you log in at

notebook lm. goole.com it's very simple

each one of these squares contains all

the material for a specific project so

the first thing you're usually going to

do is Click create new and add some

sources these are the sources that you

want it to know about that you want it

to site and draw from so the project I

have in mind is an upcoming trip to

Guatemala that my family and I are

planning to take this summer this is

exactly the kind of project that I would

love to spend lots of time on

researching the country their culture

their history all the itineraries the

destinations we could visit the

activities the cultural experiences but

if I'm really honest with myself it's

also the type of project that is likely

not to be prioritized I have a lot going

on over the next few months I'm writing

a book I have two young kids so it's the

kind of thing that I know I really could

use ai's help with so the first thing

I'm going to do is look for some sources

that I want to draw on and this can be

as simple as opening up Google and

typing best places to visit in Guatemala

and I'm going to scroll through here

these look like great sources these

three right here so I'm just going to

hold down command and click each one of

them which opens them up in tabs along

the top up here now I'm not going to

read them not going to dive into them

all I want them is to stay open right

there then let's try YouTube and here

I'm going to be a little more specific

I'm going to say underrated places to

visit in Guatemala so let's open this

one again I'm going to hold down command

and click I'll do that one and then I

even like that this one is specifically

about an underrated location so let's

add that one all right so this is a good

start I have three websites and three

YouTube videos which might not seem like

a lot but it kind of is it would take me

probably an hour or two hours to really

dive deep into those so what I'm going

to do instead of reading them myself is

just add them as sources in Notebook LM

let's open up the first website here I'm

going to do command L to highlight the

URL here and then command C to copy it

and then back in Notebook LM you can see

right down here I can add Google Drive

documents I can add links and I can add

pasted text so I'm going to go ahead and

click website and then command V to

paste and then insert no that I can

click on the source right here and this

little purple panel will open up called

The Source guide The Source guide is

just a one paragraph summary of The

Source let's go to our second website

command L to highlight the URL command C

back to notebook LM I'm going to click

this add source button right here at the

top left website paste it add that as

well all right so now I have two sources

I'm just going to take a minute here and

do the same with this

last website

and then it looks much the same with

YouTube videos you just click the video

command L copy the URL of the YouTube

video add Source this time click YouTube

paste it right

there I just remembered a friend who was

Guatemalan also sent me a country guide

a quite long extensive PDF kind of

highlighting and showcasing some of the

best places to visit so I'm going to go

ahead and add that as well to do that

I'll hit add source and this time click

choose file to add a file for my

computer and I can see it's in my

downloads folder right there there we go

you can see it right there and there's

one more thing I want to add which is in

my notes which is this suggested

itinerary that the friend who is the one

getting married who we're going to visit

actually suggested for us so they

suggested a 6 day 7 night itinerary

definitely want to take that into

account so I'm going to go ahead and do

command a to select all that text

command C to copy head back over to

notebook LM and this time I'm going to

hit add source and right over here where

it says copied text what that allows me

to do is to Simply paste whatever text I

want right into the little window here

hit insert and that is now a source as

well this is a good start you can see

here I have eight different sources I'm

working with and before I click this big

generate button here I'm going to

customize the conversation a little bit

so I'm going to say just give it some

context and details

and then I'll click generate this is

what you're going to see it says

generating conversation there's a little

circle here and this will take somewhere

between around 3 to 6 minutes so I

usually go get a cup of coffee or go to

the bathroom or just take a little

stretch break while this is generating

all right so we're fast forwarding here

a few minutes 3 or 4 minutes but you can

see here it has now generated a 21

minute 12 second podcast conversation

that I would love to share with you now

here it is okay so get this our listener

is heading to Guatemala summer of 2025

nice a week they say and they want the

authentic experience yeah did you know

that some of the world's most sought

after coffee beans come from the

volcanic slopes surrounding Antiga I did

I actually saw something about that

apparently Antiga has this like booming

coffee scene not just plantations but

like Artisan Roasters and cafes yeah I

think one of the Articles recommended

this place called artista de Cafe oh

nice saying it was like this hub for

local artists and coffee connoisseurs

I'll go ahead and pause that now but you

can see that this conversation is not

just perfectly realistic and

indistinguishable from a human

conversation but it's completely

customized based on the instructions

that I gave them but you know what you

can even customize this further and that

is through a beta feature called

interactive mode where believe it or not

you can actually click a button and join

the conversation in real time yourself

so I've just remembered a key detail

that I forgot to mention so let's go

ahead and enter interactive mode and

chime in on this conversation so I'll go

ahead and start playing the podcast

again okay so get this our listener is

heading to Guatemala summer of 2025 nice

a week they say so watch what happens

when I click this join button and

interrupt the conversation oh hey there

how can we help hey guys I appreciate

this but I forgot one key detail which

is that we're going to have two small

kids with us ages 2 and four could you

please give us a recommended itinerary

taking that into account oh wow okay

that's definitely a key detail yeah

traveling with a two and four-year-old

changes things okay so let's unpack this

and tailor our itinerary a bit yeah

we'll need to balance adventure with

kid-friendly options right we were about

to get into how to experience Guatemala

like a local and honestly that's totally

doable with kids it's going to mean

adjusting the pace a little exactly like

maybe fewer super long travel days and

more focus on activities that engage

young ones all right so I don't know if

you caught that but this is the most

remarkable demonstration of AI that I

think I've ever seen I think this is so

powerful for a few reasons one is

there's a lot of people out there who

don't learn best by reading reading is

actually really taxing and boring they

need to listen to it but there's another

reason which is think about the typical

chat interactions that people have with

AI in a chat format the onus the burden

is always on you to keep the

conversation moving forward you have to

think of a question you have to think of

a prompt you have to keep putting an

effort to make progress this is

completely different this is Two Hosts

who are very knowledgeable about the

topic and the sources having their own

conversation completely independently of

you it's more passive in many ways but

that's good very often especially in

your first encounter with something you

want this kind of superficial surface

level survey of the landscape that way

you even know what topics are relevant

what questions to ask I've been using

audio overviews exactly that way anytime

I want just a kind of General summary or

survey of a topic I go straight here and

generate a personalized podcast

conversation on that topic I'm going to

go ahead and close this window here on

the side and one last thing I want to

show you is that you're not limited to

the audio overview if the hosts talk

about something you find interesting and

want to know more about well you have

all the sources already loaded up here

you can go right here at the bottom to

the little chat window and ask anything

you want for example I'm going to say

why is antia so underrated I'm kind of

afraid maybe it's dangerous maybe it's

not super safe so I I want to know why

do tourists not tend to go there and

there you go you can see a much more

in-depth bullet point by bullet point

summary of what makes it so underrated

and each one of those statements is

cited and if you click on one of those

little citations it takes you exactly to

that part of the source that it's

referring to and then last thing you can

also create structured documents so

let's say that you are studying

Guatemala and you actually really decide

you want to go deeper if you click this

button right here the study guide it

will generate an entire document with a

quiz answer key essay questions glossery

of key terms looks like a lot of the

specific destinations it's mentioning so

you're not limited to a surface level

conversation you can go as deep and as

detailed as you want now there's one

more example of what you can do with

with audio overviews that I want to show

you so let's head back out to the main

interface I'm going to create a new

notebook and the example I showed you

with my Guatemala trip was an example

that uses external sources sources that

you can find on the internet but you can

also use your own internal thoughts

feelings ideas journal entries and

that's what I want to show you next so

I'm going to go ahead and click on

Google Docs and then right down here I

have my endof year journaling at the end

of every year I do something called an

annual review or a year-end review where

I think back to the past year and just

reflect and journal on different

Milestones that happened Precious

Memories goals that I achieved lessons I

learned and all that journaling is

contained in this document right here

which I'm going to insert as a source

called thiago's 2024 year-end journaling

you can see that there's a summary here

of what this document is about and I'm

just going to add that single source and

go ahead and generate an audio overview

I'll fast forward a few minutes here and

now we can listen hey everyone and

welcome to uh another Deep dive with us

yes welcome today we're going to be uh

looking at Thiago Forte's 2024 year in

review which is something that uh he

recommends people do and uh he practices

what he preaches so yes does and it's

also kind of interesting that he

actually expresses some anxiety about

doing the review oh really even though

this is kind of his area of expertise I

know I was going to say this is kind of

his thing yeah is to like reflect and

review and he even has anxiety about it

he does he's worried about coming across

as performative or you know not digging

deep enough all right I'll spare you the

rest of that what I found so fascinating

about this is several things first of

all it gives me such an interesting kind

of Outsider perspective on my life you

know I can go back and read my own

journal entries but hearing what feels

like two other humans talking about it

in depth they're fascinated by the

insights I've come up with they're

impressed at some of the the goals that

I've accomplished they're empathetic and

they sympathize with some of the hard

painful lessons that I had it really

helps me just get out of my own

perspective uh see my life from this

more objective point of view which

honestly gives me so much more

appreciation so much more gratitude

helps me kind of be more objective about

even the life and the year that I had uh

which is just kind of a really powerful

tool for personal growth it's something

that I'm definitely going to make part

of my my journaling practices going

forward next up we have feature number

two which is an expanded context window

I know this might seem like a boring

backend technical feature you're like

why do I care about this I don't even

know what a context window is but this

is in some ways actually the most

important this single seemingly backend

technical feature completely radically

changes what is possible with AI imagine

if you had a guidance counselor who

could recommend the perfect Next Step in

your learning based not just on guessing

or a few small details about you but on

the entire history of everything you've

ever read and consumed notbook LM uses

Google's Gemini 2.0 flash aai model

which can now take in get this up to 50

sources each one of which can have up to

500,000 words just to do the math for

you that's up to 25 million words of

context that is so much higher than any

other AI tool out there and basically

means you're never going to hit the

limit almost any conceivable use case

can fit within 25 million words but let

me take a step back and explain what is

a context window and why does it matter

think of AI as having two kinds of

memory just like humans there's

long-term memory and there's short-term

memory an ai's long-term memory is

basically what's called its training

data all the data that went into its

creation and basically these days all

the major AI models have the same same

training data more or less which is the

entire internet they're all trained on

the internet which means paradoxically

that there's no real advantage in its

long-term memory in its training data

because it's the same across all the AI

models a short-term memory is the data

that it's working with right now like

what is the conversation it's having

right now the problem it's trying to

solve right now the person you it's

talking with right now most of the

advantage of working with AI now comes

from that short-term memory the

specifics of the problem you're trying

to solve the history of the product or

your company your specific skills and

resources you have access to things

you've tried and whether they worked or

not that kind of data which we call your

context is what you supply to the AI for

it to know something about you the

context window this term I keep using is

simply the limits of how much context

you can give the AI until recently it

was maybe a few thousand words or 10,000

words or maybe 30,000 words now with

Gemini 2.0 flash that has radically

expanded to 25 million words let me give

you some examples imagine you work in

product development and you could load

up an entire folder full of hundreds or

even thousands of in-depth customer

interviews and then ask notebook LM to

evaluate and analyze an idea you have

for a new product based on all those

past interactions imagine if you work in

a nonprofit and you can upload an

archive of every every single Grant

you've ever won plus a directory of

hundreds of currently open grants and

then ask it to tell you which Grant

proposals you're most likely to win and

then to actually write the proposal

drawing on the mission statement of your

organization imagine if you're having a

mysterious medical problem and you can

load up your entire medical history and

ask it to identify any recurring

patterns even across different

Specialties imagine if you could upload

the entirety of your personal notes from

years of reading and highlighting and

note taking and every time you encounter

a new idea such as in a book you could

ask the AI if there are any existing

connections to that idea in your notes

you know what let's make this concrete

let's actually take that last example of

loading up all your notes and do it in

real time so I'm going to go ahead and

create a new notebook and I actually use

a service called readwise which

automatically syncs all of the

highlights that I make from any ebook

that I read read or uh any online

article or other online content that I

save in a centralized Place rewise

actually has a partnership with notebook

LM that allows you to export the

entirety of all those notes and

highlights to Google Docs in a format

that's perfectly designed to be loaded

up into notebook LM you can check out my

first video for more details on how that

works what this allows me to do is to

open up my Google Drive here and I'll

find five Google Docs worth of all those

highlights so what I'm going to to do is

Select each of these by holding down

command as I click them I'll click

insert and there we go took about 2

minutes but you can see in this one

little paragraph right here that it's

essentially summarized a broad swath of

my learning my research my interests

across over a decade of my life and this

is where it really gets fun at this

stage because I can ask at some really

deep penetrating questions about the

history of my my personal growth my

learning my educ a in my career for

example I can say please summarize a

list of my most common recurring

interests based on these

notes there we go we can see not taking

in Knowledge Management types of notes

the value of externalizing thoughts

habits and routines the importance of

making connections all huge areas of

interest but then let me go beyond what

is found in this message here and say

what are some other ideas topics and

areas of interest that are likely to

resonate With Me based on this

list so it's essentially like a teacher

suggesting other things that I might

want to learn about now let's go beyond

that and say please create a study guide

and reading list to help me dive deeper

into these topics it's broken up into

chapters and then each chapter has key

questions activities and readings

including including my own book I love

this using AI as a tool here's a bigger

reading list and additional

recommendations each one of these

recommendations is drawing on so much

existing knowledge about me they're not

random or one siiz fits-all this is a

perfectly personalized learning

curriculum that has been generated based

on years of my notetaking do you get why

an expanded context window is so

critical the possibility that this is

opening up is a completely different way

of interacting with AI it's not about

designing these crazy extensive prompts

it's not about meticulously organizing

your sources it's really just about

pointing the AI at a massive repository

of information and letting it do the

work let's talk about new feature number

three which is multimodal sources

multimodal is just a fancy word that

means many different kinds of formats

notebook LM can now take basically any

kind of format that you want to throw at

it there's URLs from web pages and

YouTube videos like we saw you can put

in PDFs you can put in text Google Docs

audio files you could take a little

voice memo note while walking around

your neighborhood and then upload that

but the most exciting and newest one is

images specifically images within Google

Slides think about how often you

encounter information in modern work

especially in the form of slides

presentations that someone is giving to

you or you're giving to someone else

sales calls technical specifications

slides are a very common format these

days and you can now work with those

directly in Notebook LM let me show you

what that looks like as always I'll

start by creating a new notebook and

then I'm going to click right here where

it says Google Slides go over to recent

and let's use as an example a recent

presentation that was sent to us by our

insurance agent proposing a couple new

health benefits packages for our

employees so this is the kind of

information that is important has high

stakes it matters that I pay attention

to it but it's also just so incredibly

mindly boring that I want to spend as

little time loading up this information

into my brain as possible so I've loaded

it up as a source as you can see here

you can see there's a little summary

which is that uh they're proposing two

new health benefits packages okay so my

first question is please compare and

contrast the two proposed packages so

you can see here there's a summary uh

comparing their deductibles their office

visit costs monthly and annual cost but

you know what this is a little bit too

extensive so I'm going to say please

summarize more succinctly what is the

core difference between these plans and

there we go the core difference is in

the cost of office visits and the

overall monthly cost with A1 the first

option being more expensive so as the

founder and CEO of this business that is

really the bottom line for me I don't

really need to know all the fine grain

details that is for our insurance agent

that's for the operations person on my

team the decision of which plan to go

with Falls with me and what matters at

the end of the day is the cost so I'm

actually going to ask it to perform an

analysis of what the cost difference

would be between these two plans for six

employees over the the course of a year

and there we go its analysis is that the

first A1 plan would cost 15,000 almost

$166,000 more per year so this is the

part that is actually most important to

me I'm actually going to highlight this

part and say save to note which is what

I do anytime the AI gives me something

that is actually valuable longterm that

I want to keep track of I just click

that button and it saves it over here in

this little uh right hand bottom corner

but the purpose of this demonstration

was to show you how it works with images

and slides so what I'm going to do is

let's say I would like to know the

source of this I want to check that it's

accurate myself I can go ahead and click

this little one here which is the

citation and it takes me directly to the

table where it shows that price

difference so notice when we look at the

slides here how complex this information

is it's multicolored it's in columns

rows it is not an easy thing to absorb

but diagrams charts IM images

photographs all these kinds of things if

they're embedded in slides can now be

understood by notebook LM and that's the

multimodal capability now let's talk

about feature number four which is a

redesigned interface if we head back to

our Guatemala notebook as an example the

whole interface for a given notebook is

divided into these three columns which

they call panels on the left is the

sources panel this is simply what

sources the AI is working with and

drawing from and you can expand that or

once you've sort of settled on the

sources and you're not going to do a lot

of changes here you can just collapse

that so you have more space for the

other ones the second panel which is

this middle part is the chat panel which

is where you actually speak with and

interact with the AI it's nice to make

this large because sometimes it gives

quite extensive answers that you want to

be able to see in this wider format for

example if I click this question what

cultural and historical significance

shapes Guatemala's top destinations you

can see it's probably around 500 Words

so if I like this answer and I decide I

want to keep it for later I can just

scroll down click the save to note

button and it saves just this one answer

which I've decided is valuable over here

on the bottom right this is called the

studio panel this one on the right and

it does a number of things this is where

you create and interact with audio

overviews it's where you have these

pre-made options such as creating a

study guide or a briefing document or a

frequently asked questions or timeline

for example if I click the FAQ button

it's now generated in a question and

answer format a summary of the different

sources that we're working with so I can

go ahead and close that but I'd say the

most important part is these notes when

you have a conversation with an AI

unless you take an action it kind of all

just disappears over time so you want to

be sure if you get a good answer to just

click that little save to note button

and over time you'll have here at the

bottom right almost you can think of it

like the final output the gems the

Evergreen insights that you want to take

away from this conversation are all

going to be saved here in the notes

section so that's the overall interface

but for me by far the most important new

addition over the last year has been

these little numbers see those there's

kind of a big problem with most modern

AI tools which is they hallucinate they

make things up which is kind of a

paradox because the more you depend on

AI to execute important tasks and even

make decisions the less you can trust it

because you never know if it's

hallucinating one thing I really

appreciate about the notebook LM team's

philosophy is they had from the very

earliest prototypes this idea of source

grounding what source grounding means is

that especially for information that is

in the context window that short-term

memory that we talked about it's

basically not going to hallucinate or

very very rarely you can check that it's

not hallucinating you can essentially

double check the ai's answers by simply

clicking one of these little numbers

which are the source citations I'm going

to go ahead and click on the 16 and it

not only opens up the original source

which is this YouTube video it takes me

to and highlights exactly the point that

that came from this is a huge deal you

guys you have to be able to trust what

the AI is telling you and this new

interface with inline citations is a

huge step forward for that and finally

feature number five let's talk about it

for the very first time there is now a

paid upgraded version of notebook LM the

basic version which is most of what

you've seen here is free and I would

expect it to remain free most of

Google's core tools are free but if you

work on a team or a company or

organization that wants to use notebook

LM it may be worth checking out there's

actually three separate ways to get

notebook LM Plus either through Google

workspace which you may have as part of

your company through Google cloud or

through Google one which can be

purchased individually the pricing

depends on exactly how you purchase it

but it seems to be something around $20

per month and there's four main things

that you get as part of notebook LM plus

the first one is an even bigger context

window so instead of 25 million words

you can have and this is just kind of

mindboggling up

to 15 million words the only use case I

can think of for that is if you're at a

company and you want to put in like all

of the company's data into a prompt the

second thing you get is five times

higher usage limits so that means you

can create five times more audio

overviews and have five times more

notebooks again mostly useful if you're

working with a lot of other people on a

team or in a company the third plus

feature is what are called chat modes if

you click on this button right here you

can give notebook LM certain almost like

personalities that it takes on in your

interactions so let's say in this

conversation you want it to take on the

role of an analyst it will become more

critical and more analytical or it could

be more of a guide almost like a teacher

or you can Define your own personality

so let's say you wanted to act as a

marketing expert or a life coach or a

research assistant you can actually

Define that and describe it right here

in this box and then you can also

customize it to make its responses

longer or shorter but the fourth and I

think by far the most important plus

feature is the ability to collaborate

within notebook LM think about it have

you ever had a particularly interesting

interaction with an AI you're getting

some real insights and some real New

Perspectives and then you think I want

to share this there's often not an easy

way to do that except copying and

pasting things and sending them to

people via email or slack or whatever

but then you lose all the interaction

it's just a static piece of text with

plus you could actually get this entire

notebook click this share button right

here customize the permissions at a

welcome note if you'd like and then

choose whether you want to share the

full notebook with all the sources that

you've added with all the customizations

with all the notes you saved or you can

make it chat only you could give the

people on your team or the people who

work for you your employees or or even

external collaborators the ability to

talk with and go back and forth with the

essentially custom AI model that you've

created without you having to copy and

paste stuff once you've decided on the

settings all you have to do is click

this link right here to copy the link

and send it to them and they'll have

access via their own free Google

notebook LM account overall I would say

plus really makes the most sense for

people who have adopted notebook LM

pretty seriously and are using it with

others as part of companies like I

said okay I've shared a lot with you so

let's take a step back and kind of

summarize the big picture here I think

the big shift that's happening right now

with notebook LM with this much bigger

context window is just like a great

teacher it's gaining a really fantastic

shortterm memory think about how

important it is that a great teacher can

follow the thread of the topic that it's

teaching you a great teacher can

reference previous conversations what

you just said a few minutes ago they can

think into the future and plan out

different stages of a curriculum that

they're going to be teaching and

coaching you through we're living in a

time of just incredibly Fast Change in

no small part because of AI but if

there's one thing that I can say for

certain it's that we're all going to

have to learn much faster and much more

often having an AI powerered worldclass

teacher with a fantastic memory sitting

next to you and guiding you through this

unpredictable landscape is just a world

changing and even life changing

phenomenon that we all now have access

to if anything that I covered resonated

I encourage you to create a free account

at notebook lm. goole.com and let me

know what you think