Michael Jolley shares his journey of learning Python by building a self-described "useless" but educational podcast search engine utilizing Flask for the back-end and Jinja2 for templating. Inspired by Simone Giertz's TED Talk on the value of creating non-functional projects, Jolley explores Python's capabilities in handling HTTP requests, file access, and audio processing. He utilizes Deepgram's Python SDK to transcribe podcast episodes and Flask to respond to search queries, creating a basic search engine that finds and displays phrases within a podcast transcript. Despite the intentionally simplistic and unattractive user interface, the project effectively demonstrates key programming concepts such as text normalization and API interaction, culminating in an audio player feature that allows users to play specific segments of the podcast around their search terms.