Animalz

"With programming, you can just see if it works yourself by running the code. Whereas to test stuff that AI wrote, it's kind of like, 'well, how do I feel about this? How would someone else feel about this?'“ Tomorrow on the Animalz podcast, we're joined by Nathan Baschez, founder of AI writing tool Lex, for a fascinating conversation about AI's role in the writing process. As both a seasoned programmer and accomplished writer, Nathan brings a rare dual perspective to the AI conversation. In the clip below, he breaks down the fundamental differences between these disciplines — revealing why AI adoption has been so different in each field. This episode goes far beyond typical AI debates to explore: How Nathan's experiences at Gimlet Media, Substack, and Every Inc. shaped his approach to building AI writing tools. Why writers are adopting AI more cautiously than programmers (and whether that's a good thing). The spectrum of AI usage — from having it do the work for you to using it as a personal trainer. How Lex approaches AI as a thoughtful editor rather than a replacement for human creativity. Why Nathan believes great writing will remain essential even as AI advances. Nathan brings technical expertise and a deep love for writing, offering a refreshingly nuanced take on how AI can enhance rather than replace the writing process. Full episode drops TOMORROW — search "The Animalz Content Marketing Podcast" wherever you listen to podcasts.

We debated dozens of topics for a new Animalz podcast season. But we kept returning to AI, because we had so many unanswered questions ourselves. Today, hosts Ty Magnin and Tim Metz share their hopes (and fears) for the season. Then, every Tuesday and Thursday in March, we'll bring you guests venturing beyond the hype to answer one burning question about AI & content: "Hello... is there any value out there?" (Link to the first season intro episode in the newsletter below. ???)

??? The Animalz Podcast returns today with a burning question: "Hello... is there any value out there?" Join us with guests like Nathan Baschez (Lex) and Kyle Coleman (Copy.ai) as we search for value in the AI noise. In today's season intro, hosts Ty Magnin and Tim Metz kick off our search for answers. They share their own AI experiences and what they hope to learn from our guests. Full season overview: Season intro with Ty and Tim - LIVE NOW Nathan Baschez (Lex) - March 4 Kyle Coleman (Copy.ai) - March 6 Thenuka Karunaratne ?? (daydream) - March 11 Stewart Hillhouse (storyarb, former Mutiny) - March 13 Parthi Loganathan (Letterdrop) - March 18 Ines Lee (Ali Abdaal) - March 20 Alex Halliday (AirOps) - March 25 Season wrap-up with Ty and Tim - March 27 Ready to join our search for real value in AI and content? Listen to the season intro now — available at the link below or search "The Animalz Content Marketing Podcast" wherever you listen to podcasts.

How much AI went into creating our podcast season about AI? Quite a lot! ?? Human-driven parts: ? Guest selection and outreach (100% human judgment) ? The actual interviews (pure human-to-human conversation) ? Editorial decisions and final review of all content ?? AI-assisted parts: ? Guest research ? Question generation and refinement ? Interview processing and analysis ? Audio and video production ? Social clip selection and promotion ? Show notes and marketing copy We used a whole stack of AI tools to power these workflows. Each served a specific purpose in our production chain. Perplexity (and later OpenAI's ChatGPT Deep Research) for comprehensive guest background. Anthropic's Claude 3.5 & ChatGPT's o1 pro for preparing interview questions. Jordi Bruin's MacWhisper for transcribing voice memo instructions and guests' previous interviews. Samson Q9U mic for recording AI voice memo instructions (and the interviews!). Riverside.fm for recording and basic transcription. Castmagic for generating content from the episodes (show notes, timestamped overviews). Adobe Audition with AI tools for speech enhancement. Claude 3.7 with reasoning enabled to identify the best social clips from episode transcripts. (Previous models always failed at this but the latest 3.7 did a standout job.) Lex (by Nathan Baschez for crafting marketing copy (like this very post ??). Superhuman (email AI) for streamlining guest logistics communications. Zooming out, AI currently seems to have the biggest impact in pre-production (research, preparation, logistics) and post-production (processing, distributing). It saved us probably 3x - 4x the amount of time it would have otherwise taken us to prepare, run, and launch this season. The interview itself remains largely untouched by AI, at least for now. But this may change as live AI models become more accessible and affordable. With one guest, we imagined a future with interview HUDs (Head-Up Displays) suggesting follow-up questions mid-conversation. And maybe synthetic hosts aren’t that far off either? For now though, you'll still hear from very real human hosts Ty Magnin and Tim Metz. Our season intro drops tomorrow (Thu), followed by new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday throughout March. Follow along here and wherever you get your podcasts (search for "The Animalz Content Marketing Podcast").

We almost didn't make a podcast about AI and content. Here's why we changed our minds... We debated dozens of topics for the Animalz podcast relaunch: founder-led content, enterprise content marketing, distribution strategy, and, of course, AI. AI seemed too obvious and too saturated. Did the world need another podcast on this topic? Yes, we concluded. As Tim Metz explains in the video, "We had a lot of questions ourselves that we didn't see answered anywhere." WHO is creating real value with AI in content? WHAT is working for them (and what isn't)? HOW are they doing it? Finding such signals in all the noise is nearly impossible. So we took this podcast season as an opportunity to track down AI pioneers who are building things, sometimes breaking things, but most of all, going beyond the clickbait hacks flying around our feeds. We found them — and learned a lot from our guests. We covered everything from philosophical views on the world we're entering to practical insights on SEO strategies and workflow building. We can't wait to share all the insights with you. The season intro drops Thursday with hosts Ty Magnin and Tim, followed by new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday throughout March. Follow along here and wherever you get your podcasts (search for "The Animalz Content Marketing Podcast").

The Animalz podcast returns this Thursday! Seven pioneers in AI and content join us to answer one burning question: "Hello, is there any value out there?" The AI conversation in content marketing has become deafening — skeptics shouting from one side, shallow tips from fanboys on the other. But somewhere in this noise, there must be pioneers who've actually figured something out, right? We've gone on a search for real innovators who've ventured beyond the hype to succeed (or fail) spectacularly. Through their hard-won insights, we'll discover if there's value hiding in the noise, or if we're all just shouting into the void. ?? Can you guess who our seven trailblazing guests are? The season intro with your hosts Ty Magnin and Tim Metz drops this Thursday. Then, a new episode every Tuesday and Thursday throughout March. Follow along here and wherever you get your podcasts (search for "The Animalz Content Marketing Podcast").

Tim Metz, our Director of Marketing and Innovation, transformed a basic SEO forecasting spreadsheet into a sophisticated app — without writing a single line of code himself. His journey reveals both the promise and reality of "vibe coding" with AI. If you're curious about building tools yourself, this one's for you.

A spreadsheet model to answer a customer's SEO question has evolved into something bigger: a free tool that turns three simple inputs into organic traffic projections. We built it because we needed it ourselves, and now you can use it too — find out more in our latest newsletter.

We started working with a Series C software platform back in October... Their organic traffic and conversions had decreased by over 50% over 4 months. They weren't sure if it was from AI Overviews, increased competition, pagespeed slowdowns, or a thousand other SEO papercuts. - We spend 21 days auditing on page and technical SEO. - We put together a 16 page "Restore & Overtake" strategy summarizing all of our findings - We then started refreshing existing content, creating net new, pruning, and optimizing pagespeed November was up from October. December from November. And in January we've 2x'd conversions from organic search and regained what was lost. Proud of Ajdin Perco, Mariana Fernandes, and our SEO team! And pleased to great partners like this to work with. Plenty more growth to come! #seo

Today, our quality-obsessed-editor-turned-AI pioneer Nathan Wahl shares the Animalz AI journey to date — including the experiments that flopped, the lessons we learned, and how we finally found an approach that works.