The Colin and Samir Show He Built an AI Podcast and It Became the #1 Show.
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Mar 18, 2026 Adam Levy, entrepreneur who builds autonomous AI-native podcasts and creator of The Epstein Files and War Desk. He explains how he turned documents into a #1 automated true-crime series. They cover how a daily AI-driven cadence hooks listeners. He breaks down the tech and costs behind fully autonomous shows and what this shift means for creators and media economics.
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Built Distill To Turn Data Into Daily Audio
- Adam built a private app called Distill to ingest URLs, extract transcripts, fact-check, and create audio takeaways for learning.
- He used Distill to process the 3.5 million Epstein files and seed a daily AI podcast that auto-publishes episodes.
Podcast Runs Autonomous With Programmatic QA
- The Epstein Files ran autonomously with Adam estimating he does about 5% of the work and QA triggers him only for flagged episodes.
- Automated checks require a mathematical score to pass before publishing to Spotify/Apple.
Synthetic Shows Can Outperform Industry Benchmarks
- The AI podcast reached over two million downloads total and each episode gets at least 10,000 downloads within hours, with retention at or above industry benchmarks.
- Reviews (1,000+) split between people liking factual, non-spin AI narration and those who dislike AI.