The Missing 20 Minutes (Patreon)

In the Speedrunning episode, I mentioned the total recording time (a little over 38 minutes) of the total material, while the final episode is 20 minutes. Someone asked me about releasing the 38 minute version to show folks behind the scenes how it all works.

I actually considered this a while ago, but decided against it. Folks should just enjoy the final work and not have to wade through the raw version - it's not as interesting as you think.

But for information, here's the general stuff that gets cut out of an average recording session:

Coughing. Probably a sign of age, but as I speak for a long time in (what for me) is a lower and quieter register, I end up drying out my throat and I have to stop and cough a few times.

Silent Contemplation. When I finish a set of concepts/sentences in an episode, I sometimes hold up for anywhere between 10-30 seconds while thinking through if I missed anything or there was a detail that escaped me that I wanted to get through.

Alternate Detail Takes. Occasionally, I start to give a detail or fact and realize I'm not 100% it's what I remember. Years, amounts, and names are particularly good examples of realizing later that I was off. So instead of stopping the recording and doing research on my phone or something, I end up just recording 2-3 versions of the same sentence, including one with no direct information. "There are 20 known copies..... There are 15 known copies.... There are very few known copies..." and then I'll do the final fact check during editing and use the one that was closest.

Entirely Off-Track. In some cases, I'll go a few sentences in a direction, realize this is way off the subject matter, and stop. Those get thrown to the side in editing, just because I even knew during recording it was no good.

Bloopers, Flubs, Etc. And the rest is just where I make the usual weird mistakes someone makes when going on for minutes at a time - I'll either get super hung up on a word (In the most recent one, I had 4 takes trying to say "Specificity" and ended up punting and saying something else) or I keep using swapped phrases (Saying "seconds" instead of "minutes" and starting over.)

That's it! That's what's buried in these extra minutes. I try to make this podcast be information dense and have a flow and meaning, and I enjoy polishing the podcast in editing so they stand on their own and are as timeless as I can manage. Thank you for continuing to support me!