Every episode is transcribed, and every transcript is printed once before publication.
People assume this is a nostalgia thing. It is not. It is the cheapest quality control we have found, and we arrived at it by accident after an episode went out with the same anecdote told twice, eleven minutes apart, by the same person.
What paper catches that a screen does not
On screen you read what you expect to hear. On paper you read what is actually there.
- Repetitions — the story told twice, the phrase used four times in a row.
- The question that was asked and never answered.
- Three minutes where nobody says anything worth keeping.
- Names spelled two different ways, which matters more than it sounds.
What it costs
An afternoon a month and a ream of paper. It has saved more episodes than any piece of equipment we own, and it is the only part of the process that has never been argued about.
The transcript is not a byproduct of the episode. Quite often it is the first honest draft of it.
