AI Honestly

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Can I make an AI podcast?

Episode 2 · June 15, 2026 · 00:05:41

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Drew answers a question he gets all the time: can you actually make a whole podcast with AI? The proof is the show itself — this episode is built end to end with AI tools — and he walks through his exact pipeline, from rambling into a phone voice memo to a published feed. Along the way he's candid about where the human still has to step in and where the costs hide.

In this episode

  • The full workflow: talk into a voice memo, turn the auto-transcript into a script with AI, clean out the AI 'tells' by hand, then render it through an ElevenLabs voice clone.
  • AI gets a script about 80% of the way; the last 20% is Drew manually cutting the em-dashes and 'it's not this, it's that' phrasing people can smell.
  • A counterintuitive voice-cloning lesson: a too-polished clone sounds fake, and Drew's naturally flat, monotone delivery actually hides the AI tells.
  • Real costs are small but watch the credits — ElevenLabs Creator plan is $22/month and re-rendering edits burns credits fast; Cloudflare hosting runs to pennies.
  • A Claude Code pipeline publishes everything on command: show notes, the feed Apple/Spotify/Amazon pick up, a website page, analytics, and auto-extracted social clips.
  • The honest catch: AI solved production, not distribution — getting anyone to actually listen is still the real, unsolved job.

Timestamps

  • 0:00 — The question: can AI make a whole podcast?
  • 0:13 — What AI Honestly is
  • 0:29 — Why people ask: skipping the tedious parts
  • 0:57 — The workflow: just talk into a phone
  • 1:13 — Turning a transcript into a script
  • 1:33 — Cutting the AI tells by hand
  • 2:01 — ElevenLabs, voice cloning, and music
  • 2:20 — Why polished isn't always more real
  • 2:47 — What it costs to do it yourself
  • 3:13 — Publishing with Claude Code and Cloudflare
  • 4:02 — Analytics and auto-generated clips
  • 4:24 — The catches: pipeline setup time
  • 4:45 — AI fixed production, not being heard
  • 5:05 — So, can you do it? Yes, with a catch
  • 5:30 — Send in your question

Tools mentioned: ElevenLabs, Claude Code, Cloudflare.

Got a question you've been wondering about — can AI do this thing? Send it to [email protected].

AI Honestly is a Work and Whistle production. More at workandwhistle.co.