I didn’t expect much when I first tried Google Illuminate. It felt like just another experimental Google project I’d mess around with for five minutes and then forget. But after I fed it my first academic paper and heard the AI-generated podcast version, something clicked. Those dense PDFs I’d been avoiding for months suddenly stopped feeling like homework. Illuminate helped summarize research and translate it into something I could absorb on a busy day. And before I realized it, it had become a part of my learning routine. Related What exactly is Google Illuminate? Google Illuminate makes academic and technical papers less intimidating by converting them into podcast-style audio conversations. After you feed it a research paper, Illuminate produces a conversation between two synthetic voices that explains the paper’s ideas in plain language. The experience feels a bit like listening to two experts break things down on a commute-friendly podcast.…