Vanessa Van Edwards shows how to use AI for research while keeping your voice human. She analyzed Howard Stern interviews with AI, discovered he uses celebratory phrases she calls "conversational confetti," then framed the finding in her own words. The metaphor and insight came from her.
Our job as writers today, you know, in 2026, is to come up with new and different ways that we can explain something to someone. And I think metaphor is a beautiful way to do that. So in my book, I might have AI do my researching on certain concepts, but then I would think like, what is the metaphor that someone will understand for this? I'll give you an example. As I did an analysis of Howard Stern interviews, he gets people to say some wild things, and he's had a lot of conversation. So I was analyzing a bunch of his interviews and his conversational style to see what we could learn, and I had AI do some analyzing transcripts for me. And the thing that got me most excited that it couldn't do was I was like, you know what Howard Stern does? He uses conversational confetti. He is very good at sprinkling in little pieces of goodness. He'll say things like, oh, that's so good, or it just drives me crazy, or, you know, the most memorable thing happened to me yesterday. He has these little tiny phrases he just like sprinkles onto conversation, which makes you feel like it's a party. Like it makes you feel like it's really a celebration. And so I was able to get that from the research that AI was able to help with, but The metaphor was mine, and I think that that's the most exciting thing that we can do now.
