How to Listen to YouTube Lectures as Podcasts

Update: I have a massively revised version of this set of tips here.

I am all the time seeing YouTube lectures I want to listen to—that’s right, listen to, not watch. I just can’t watch a YouTube lecture. I’m distracted by all the other things I need to do on my computer. But if I can listen to the lecture on my bluetooth headset or my shower-room speaker (where has it been all my life?!), then I can get through it while doing other things. Getty ready, doing dishes, commuting. I get through a lot of great stuff that I never could get through before I had these tools. And though the goal here is not to feed as much information through my mind as I can, I find that if I listen during suitable times I really do profit from what I hear.

Here’s my workflow, and it all happens super fast:

1. Find YouTube video I want to hear; copy link to it.
2. Paste link into onlinevideoconverter.com.
3. Choose appropriate settings so my file isn’t too big (see gif below; this step is very important):
4. Download file into my personal podcast folder in Dropbox, powered by JustCast, which automatically sends the file to my personal podcast feed.
5. Open up Overcast app on my phone, which has already downloaded the lecture in the background.
6. Listen and gain wisdom, hopefully.
7. Possibly share the podcast with friends through Overcast. (Shared page looks like this.)

One big advantage of this system is that when I’m done with the lecture, it goes away forever. I don’t have to fiddle with it. But I can find it again if I need to by going to my Dropbox folder.