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I sit down with Kevin Ben Smith, founder of Snipd, for a wide-ranging conversation on why every podcast app you’ve ever used is secretly a music player - and what happens when AI finally gets to listen with you.
We get into: the bicycle commute in Zurich (and the Sam Altman podcast) that started Snipd, the Amazon-reviews neural net that convinced him to bet on AI five years before ChatGPT, why Snipd has data Apple, Spotify and YouTube don’t have, why his three-person team specifically refuses to build an ad-skipping feature, why today’s podcast advertising is a “huge hack” and the YouTube-style model that should replace it, the Snipd DJ stringing 5-to-10-minute moderated supercuts across every show you’d never get to, why audiobook publishers are too paranoid to license cleanly, Kevin’s blunt verdict on ElevenLabs voices (“5 minutes and you wanna blow your brains out”), and the open API Snipd is opening for Claude, Codex, and OpenClaw - so your AI agent can finally tap into everything you’ve ever listened to.
Whether you make podcasts, build with AI, or just want a smarter way to listen, this one’s for you.
Chapter Markers
0:00 Introduction
0:47 The bike commute that became Snipd
5:43 The Amazon reviews moment that hinted at ChatGPT
11:30 Why every podcast app is secretly a music player
12:38 The first version of Snipd (and what they got wrong)
15:22 Meet the Snipd DJ
20:53 Why audiobooks are stuck on Audible
24:09 Why Snipd refuses to build ad-skipping
25:22 Podcast ads are a “huge hack.” YouTube is the future.
28:03 The data Apple, Spotify and YouTube don’t have
31:36 The AI model stack behind Snipd
36:55 Why Langchain is too complicated
41:43 Can ElevenLabs replace a real podcaster?
47:53 “5 minutes and you wanna blow your brains out”
53:00 Snipd is opening an API for Claude and Codex
56:09 Where to find Kevin
Follow Kevin Ben Smith: https://x.com/kevinbensmith
Follow Kevin Rose: https://x.com/kevinrose
