Here is a technology experiment. This is me indulging my curiosity about artificial intelligence. I’m wondering if these tools can assist the human creative process, rather than usurping it. Like many of you, I’m rather skeptical of AI. But I also recognize the limitations of my own time and energy: I think of myself as a creator but I rarely allow myself the permission to actually create anything new.
So the other morning I took a couple pieces of content and forged them into a podcast. One of the pieces I wrote: an intro to my own personal blog from many years ago. The other piece is ChatGPT’s response to my prompt asking for anthropological insights from the TV show “A Handmaid’s Tale.” Kim and I hadn’t started watching it yet, but we’d committed to being dressed as handmaids with a small group for Halloween (photo below). I turned to AI for a little encouragement to get in to watching the show.
ChatGPT’s written response was a bit long for my taste. So I asked it to create a podcast-style production of its little essay. The result was an unlistenable robot voice droning on and on. So I asked for more professional options and ChatGPT obliged with a couple suggestions of services it could connect to. The connections didn’t really work, but with some trial-and-error and a $3 investment in a test drive of the software, I was able to create the podcast with two different human-like voices.
I manually added some minor timing adjustments to give the dense thoughts room to breathe. I sourced some sound bytes from the show online to illustrate the points. I added a music track I licensed years ago. And the result is a 17-minute production that seems not terribly unlistenable.
Why do all this? Not as a test of packaging AI’s “insights” as my own, no. I just wanted to see if these tools might make more efficient the process of packaging my own content to make it more accessible for audiences. I’m encouraged. I could see using tools like these to help dramatize highlights from old family letters, cooped up in our attic. I could see dusting off my own work from the past half century and giving it new life. But for now, I welcome your reactions to this simple production. Thanks for indulging me!
Halloween 2026 at the Stanley Hotel