Spyglass Aloud

Since the dawn of Spyglass, easily one of the most consistent requests I get is for an audio version. That is, posts read aloud. As someone who has listened to nearly everything I read for years and years at this point, that obviously resonated with me. So I'm happy to say that now it's here for you to hear.

I'm launching this today as a feature for members of The Inner Ring. Whenever I publish a 'From Afar' column, paid members will also get access to an audio version – henceforth dubbed 'Spyglass Aloud' – just in case you prefer to consume the content audibly.

Thanks to a new partnership between Ghost and the podcasting service Transistor, this is fairly seamless. With your subscription, you'll get access to a private audio feed tied to your account. This feed will allow you to listen in your podcast player of choice with a couple clicks. If you unsubscribe, you'll lose access to the feed, as this is all synced in the background between the two services.

Note that I'm only enabling this for columns – i.e. longer posts, not the shorter ones – and it will only be for posts going forward at the moment. I may record some older hits retroactively over time, which would show up in your podcast feed.

Speaking of recording, I suspect this will be somewhat controversial, so I won't beat around the bush: I'm using AI. Specifically, I've used the service Eleven Labs to clone my voice.

YOU DID WHAT?

It actually requires quite a bit of work – well, quite a bit of reading aloud – to get the voice up to a quality that I think is solid. And I honestly think it's quite a bit better than me actually trying to read every single post aloud and recording it that way. Believe me, I tried. After countless demo runs, I realize that I sort of suck at reading things out loud. Especially longer works, where you're inevitably going to trip up and have to go back/edit. It's not like a podcast where you just power through, it's fairly tedious – which I don't mind, again this is a paid feature – but again, the end result, if I'm being honest, just isn't as good as the AI version. I did a lot of tests on this. It wasn't even close.

Again, I know that some people won't like this approach philosophically, especially right now because AI is such a hot-button issue. But I don't think this should be controversial, I'm opting in with my own voice. Am I worried that there will be an army of robot M.G. Sieglers in the future walking around talking your ear off in my voice? I mean, that would be sort of fun. As long as they weren't murderous.

Honestly, the technology is fairly incredible (and as such, not exactly cheap at the moment). It's not perfect, of course, but it's actually more perfect than what I was able to achieve the old fashioned way, talking into a mic like an animal.

Shout out to my friend Casey Newton who had the courage to journey down this controversial path first. After he launched an audio version of Platformer, it immediately became the way I prefer to consume his content. It's good and fun/nice to hear it in Casey's voice. Even if it's RoboCasey.

Anyway, I'll embed the first such recording below so everyone can get a taste of what it sounds like. And if you're interested, you can join The Inner Ring here. And if you're not, well, you don't have to listen! Typed words will remain the primary interface around these parts.

Thank you, as always, for reading – and now perhaps listening.

Once you sign up for The Inner Ring, be on the look out for a welcome email which will show you how to get access to your podcast feed. But I've also published the guide on the About page, and I'll put it below for good measure...

Paid members will see the following new 'Podcasts' area on your account page, with a note to 'Access your private podcast feed'.

Clicking on 'View' will take you to a Spyglass landing page hosted on Transistor where the feed is housed.

Clicking on 'Spyglass Aloud' here will take you to a page where you can easily subscribe via your podcast player of choice, and also sign up for email alerts when new episodes are published if you want (if you subscribe via a podcast player, they'll automatically appear, of course). This all works on mobile and desktop.