TIL Reddit Recap
A podcast created entirely by a computer program

About


This project spawned from a conversation I had with a friend about audio books and podcasts. He was not a big fan of them, and when I asked him what would get him to listen he replied;

"If there was a podcast that read the top TIL posts from Reddit I might find that worth listening to."

A daily TIL Recap Podcast? That sounded entertaining to me, but also sounded like a lot of time for an individual to dedicate to everything it takes to produce a podcast every single day. That is when it hit me, why couldn't a program be made to do all this?

From that, this automated podcast was born.

The Technology


The TIL Reddit Recap podcast is an application written using JavaScript and the NodeJS framework. The application completes the following tasks on a daily schedule to produce the automated audio podcast:

  • Queries Reddit for the top 25 voted TIL posts for the past 24 hours
  • Cleans the headline text to limit potential error during TTS conversion
  • Creates an intro, numerated headlines, and closing scripts for the day's podcast
  • Creates a back up of the daily script text in json format
  • Creates a show note text file of links to each post on Reddit
  • Uses a TTS (text-to-speech) API to create the shows audio files
  • Uploads the final podcast MP3 file to Archive.org
  • Creates an updated, itunes' supported, XML feed
  • Pushes the XML feed changes to the feed file hosted on GitHub
  • Conducts internal cleanup and logging for the days tasks
  • Backs up daily logs and script files to Google Drive

The application is scheduled to produce a new podcast every day at 1:30 PM PST and can be found on iTunes or by subscribing to the podcast feed directly at

Support


Help keep this project alive!

Donations are needed to help cover hosting and future improvements. If you enjoy the show and feel you get some value from listening, then maybe you will be willing to help support the show. A little goes a long way, anything can help. Thanks!