Content Editing for Podcasts: Dialogue Cleanup, Time Cuts, and Better Guest Answers

This week, we're discussing audio content editing! This isn't the typical audio editing of noise reduction or EQ settings, but how to edit the dialogue and story so your interviews feel tighter, clearer, and way more listenable. 

We talk about how to “get good tape” (even when a guest gives you a non-answer), what to cut that annoys listeners, and how to remove preambles, filler words, repetition, and random environmental detours without making your show feel robotic.

Then we dig into frankenbiting: what it is, why it works, and where the ethical line is, because there’s a big difference between creating clarity and making a fake narrative.

If you want your episodes to move faster, land better, and keep the thread from hook to conclusion, this one’s for you!

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Transcript

Cold Open: Spewing Misinformation

Alban 0:00

Kevin's not even here to back me up on it, but you just gotta ride with it. I've got an Apple Podcast review to read you. Oh, okay. It says Kevin is spreading misinformation. Jordan and Alban, amazing job on the When Not to Publish an Interview episode. You guys are killing it. Unfortunately, Kevin continues to spew misinformation.

Jordan 0:23

Wow.

Alban 0:23

According to the Apple Podcaster User Agreement, all non-published podcasts require approval by Will Arnett. It's a simple form that should be witnessed and notarized before submission. You'd think someone who'd been in the industry this long would be aware of the fine print. Jordan and Alban, keep up the great work. The podcasting space is better thanks to your efforts.

Jordan 0:47

What a bait and switch. That is masterful.

Defining Content Editing vs Sound Quality

Alban 0:52

I'm pretty sure this is one of our pickleball partners. Here we go. And one of the things that we've edited is our co-host has been edited out of this episode entirely.

Jordan 1:28

Kevin's here, but you won't hear him throughout the entire episode.

Alban 1:31

Kevin's on PTO.

Jordan 1:33

Yeah.

Alban 1:33

Enjoying some well-deserved time off. And so it's just Jordan and I today. And I'm excited about this. Uh, this is going to be good. It sounds like one of those episodes where we're promising something that, ooh, content editing. I don't know how excited I am, but we went through the outline that you put together. I'm reading it, and I think there's a lot of good stuff in here.

Jordan 1:52

Yeah.

Alban 1:53

I think this would be valuable to start with, though. We've done this in the past where we talked about workflows. And I feel like when we talked about editing workflows, we talked a lot about audio editing as like cleanup and levels and all of the stuff that's correct me if I'm wrong, is also like related to mastering and how you're capturing the audio. It's what I would call like sound quality.

Jordan 2:16

And that's something that I actually really struggled with putting this outline together and doing the research for this episode, is a lot of times when you look up content editing or editing a podcast, and what you mean is editing the dialogue so that the narrative makes more sense. It's more clean, it's more concise, it follows like a sequential order. Really, what comes up, especially in like Google or LLMs, is going to be editing tips. Like it's gonna say mic technique and all this stuff, but we've we've already covered that. We've covered all the things to get good, clean audio. And so this is going to be more about cleaning up the flow of dialogue so that your guest sounds more intelligent, so that your audience isn't distracted by other things. So it's it's more about that kind of stuff.

Alban 3:04

Yeah. So I'm thinking of this as we're talking more about storytelling, and we're talking zero about audio cleanup.

Jordan 3:12

Yeah.

Alban 3:13

And so sound quality, there are things that have really bad sound quality you want to listen to because the story is so compelling. And so we're going to try to talk through how do we make the story more compelling? How do we make the interview more interesting? How do we hook attention better rather than getting into, hey, I recorded this really well in a professional environment and no one's listening. Yeah, maybe because the story wasn't there to begin with.

Preparation And Getting “Good Tape”

Jordan 3:37

Yeah. And really where that stars is going to be in the preparation, regardless of if you're a solo podcaster or an interviewer, or you're doing like a documentary style. You definitely need to go into every single interview or every single recording session with one primary goal in mind.

Alban 3:54

So I struggled with this when I read it in the outline. Um I've read things from different podcasters. Some who like to go into the interviews kind of cold. They're like, no, I'm really going to figure out what the story is after the interview. I'll create the story based on what happened during that interview. And I remember listening to a journalist who said, I know that I'm doing all these interviews, and each interview I have one thing I need to get, and I know that it's there. So I need this person to say the thing that's true, but like that moves the story along. And the way I kind of aligned those two in my mind was at a minimum, you know why this person is on the podcast.

Jordan 4:37

Yes.

Alban 4:37

Why are you interested in booking them in the first place? And you don't have to have the whole story of like, I'm bringing on Elon Musk and I want to tell the story about SpaceX. I think you just need to know I find this person interesting because XYZ, and that's why they're on the show. And then go after those things. There are times where I've listened to podcasts and almost sounds like people are like showing up to the interview for the first time. And like they weren't the one who booked the guest. So, like, oh, people on Twitter were recommending I talk to you. I'm like, Well, that's not you're supposed to be vouching for this guest for being somewhat interesting. You can't just say, like, oh, people told me I should talk to them. Like, I'm the listener. You're recommending them to me.

Jordan 5:18

Yeah, this is called getting good tape. You'll hear this a lot in journalism and where it originates from, because obviously, like, we don't have tape right now. Everything's digital, it's just recorded directly into your computer. But back in the day, they used to record these interviews and then they would like physically cut the recording tape to piece together the audio. And so even if you are one of those interviewers who's like, I'm gonna figure out the story as it goes, maybe your goal is just to get one interesting story out of them. And so you have to come at it from different angles. I know with one of our podcasts, we had someone on who was talking about uh like marketing and campaigns. And one of the things that I really wanted our listeners to take from it was actionable steps to do their own campaign. And so we had the guest on and we asked them, what are some of the metrics that you can use to know that your ROI is good on this campaign? Like, how do you know if this was successful? And the response that we got was, well, your marketing strategist will know all this stuff. They they have all that statistical knowledge, they'll be able to analyze the data and they can tell if it's successful. Well, for our listeners, that's kind of a non-answer. We're not actually getting actionable steps on how to understand if something was successful. And so what I had to do was I had to stop and reframe the question without interrupting the line of thought. And I said, Oh, that's really interesting. So for someone who is in a smaller business and maybe they don't have a marketing strategist in-house, what are some of the mile markers that you can recommend they look at to understand if this campaign was successful? And they go, Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, if you have a trackable link, you can see click-through rates. If you get signups, make sure that you have a memo in the signup where they can say where they heard about you. And those are ways, and so we were able to get precise, direct answers from this guest.

Alban 7:22

One of the things you wrote in the outline was avoid asking questions that will get the same answer as other questions.

Jordan 7:29

Yeah.

Alban 7:30

And I think what you're talking about now is like the opposite. It's the ask different questions to get different answers. And it's not that you didn't like the answer and so you're trying to trick them. It's just a realization, yeah, I know my listeners and I just heard that and that wasn't very helpful. Let me ask a question where the interviewee will feel empowered to give a really great answer that actually will be useful for the audience. So that's actually a really good example, Jordan.

Jordan 7:56

This is kind of the hard thing about being a podcast host, is you have to be in the moment with your guest to give them like that human interaction so that they feel comfortable in the interview. But the same time in the back of your mind, you need to be listening to it from an editor's perspective, from a producer's perspective of is this actually getting the response that I want?

Alban 8:18

But before we got on here, unrelated to podcasting, you told me that when you were taking acting classes, the whole idea was you need to just be in a state of play where you're not overanalyzing. The worst thing you can be doing on stage is to be thinking about how your face looks. So, how are you doing this too? Are any of the lessons that you have from acting where you're trying to be in the moment, do those translate to editor Jordan or are these just totally different recommendations for different roles?

Jordan 8:47

I think that there is a little bit of a difference between editor Jordan and in recording Jordan. I think it's definitely a lot harder when you are in a recording and you're a podcast host and you're like face to face with somebody to block out how many people are gonna be listening to the conversation, to block out what the guest is gonna think about you if you pause and kind of like gather your thoughts for a second. Like you have to just block all of that out in order to be at ease and to be able to think clearly when you're recording and just making sure that your focus is entirely on the interview instead of like, oh, do I look okay? Is my hair crazy right now? Like, you know?

Alban 9:30

I think for me, it's not a blocking something out. It's like being in the moment so much that I've kind of forgotten that this is being recorded. You know, the like if you try to say, don't think of a white polar bear, like all you do is think about a white polar bear. Yeah. And if I think, don't think about the 1500 people who listen to this episode, then I think about it and that starts being an intimidating number. But when I'm just thinking about what I'm interested in and what I would want to ask you, then I think I do quite a bit better because I'm not running this second thing in my mind on top, going, like, oh, that's kind of a weird way to say that. Oh, maybe say that again so that it sounds a little bit cleaner. So I'm having a hard time of like pulling these two together because the lesson I've had to learn is don't stress it, be in the moment. And you're saying there's a bit of being a host that is kind of being an editor in the moment so that you can make sure you get good take.

Jordan 10:27

You know, this actually reminds me, I think that what might resonate more with you, I was watching The Kardashians and Yes, that resonates with me. No, you're gonna be surprised.

Alban 10:37

Okay.

Jordan 10:38

There's this scene where Chloe Kardashian, who hates public speaking, like it is like one of her greatest fears, she has to go accept an award. And so she goes to this thing and she realizes she has to get on stage, she has to do a speech, and she asks them how many people are in the audience. And the assistant says, There's about 300 people. And she pauses and she goes, Okay, I'm about to go out in front of 300 of my best friends and they're gonna be so happy for me. And I thought to myself, wow, I wish I had that insight when I was like getting on stage at like podcast movement, because there's just something about being like, oh, 1500 of my best friends listen to this podcast and they're gonna be so excited to hear what I have to say. And I hope they find it like really fun this week.

Alban 11:23

Yeah, there's quite a bit of imagining goodwill uh does help you get out of your own brain quite a bit. If you're imagining why you're gonna get in trouble for something or why you're gonna get pushback or why you're gonna, you know, mess up, then like you've got one hand tied behind your back. It's much more difficult. Yeah.

Removing Audio Distractions

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Jordan 11:38

All right. And so after you get your good tape where you have all the points of the interview that you need to complete the narrative, to get all the answers for your listeners, to put together this episode. It's really important to remove distractions. And I know that when we were doing the audio editing episode, we talked a lot about removing like background noise and coughing and dog barks and things like that. And that's not necessarily what I'm talking about.

Alban 12:29

Yes. Okay. So the one you have to do, and you edit it because I know I do it and I know that you do it. Oh, yeah. Kevin does not do this, is overaffirming. When one of us is talking, there's just something in polite, you're gonna drive me nuts. There's something you do like in a polite conversation where you nod and you're like, well, you let people know I'm with you, keep going. These are good points. But on a podcast, it is not good audio to have one person going, oh yeah, good job. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes. Over and over and constantly, yeah, uh-huh, right, underneath. It sends the opposite signal than what you're trying to send. It actually says, like, okay, wrap it up rather than, oh, I'm here with you. This is so good, I want to keep listening.

Jordan 13:14

This is probably the number one thing that I have to edit in my own tracks when we do buzzcast recordings, because you're totally right. Throughout the entire thing, whenever Kevin is going off on like some rant, I'm like, mm-hmm, yep. Uh-huh. Oh, mm-hmm. Yep. The entire time. Which if I left that in, that would be so distracting. And people would be like, shut Jordan up. Make her stop. And what I realized, um, especially guesting on other podcasts, is that is like a really bad habit because other people are not as good at cutting that out as I am. And a lot of them are not as like cognizant of how annoying the overaffirming can actually be to a listener. And so something that I've learned to do, um, I don't do it here. I still overaffirm all over the place. But when I go on other podcasts, for the most part, I just do the silent nod and then wait to speak.

Alban 14:11

On video, you even have to watch the silent nod because I'm doing more of these short form videos. I'm seeing a lot of clips that are podcasts where they film the wide shot with both guest and host, then they go to guest, then they go to host, and the guest is now answering something, and this is the clip. And there's some where they keep switching back because they know they want to have some visual interest. So they switch back to the host who isn't saying anything in the clip, but they're aggressively nodding away. It feels very strange and it feels distracting. But I also know I don't know what the answer is. Cause like if I sit here and I don't nod and try to show you that I'm paying attention, I look at my own camera angle for a second, I just look like bored. And so it's a tough balance, something that we really don't have to worry about because we're not on video, but I do appreciate like how it feels like it's affirming. And at some point it ends up kind of undermining what the person's saying.

Jordan 15:12

You know, there's actually a psychology to those kind of uh visual cues. If you want someone to wrap up what they're saying, you will nod quickly. And it kind of gives them this subconscious cue that they need to wrap up what they're saying. But if you do like a slow nod, it actually is like a coaxing to get them to give more information and put them at ease that they have the time available to them to complete what their thought is. So it's really interesting you say that.

Alban 15:39

So we're editing out these over-affirmations. What level are you editing out filler words? Because you don't want to edit them all out. Sometimes that can end up with very choppy sentences. Uh, sometimes that can just mean you sound a little bit robotic, like you ran your entire podcast through an 11-lapped voice. So, how do you balance that?

Jordan 16:00

I actually wrote this sentence out as an example for when to cut filler words. So, some filler words are totally fine, but if like um, you know it gets in like the way of, you know, kind of like completing um a single sentence, then it's best to cut some of those out.

Alban 16:17

Yeah, okay. I'd cut most of those out. Yes.

Jordan 16:20

So I'm gonna leave it in just for the example. But the thing is, is it took me so long just to say one sentence because there's so many. And I think a lot of people use these filler words a little too much. And so if it takes a little too long to get to the point of your sentence, maybe you can cut a few of those out and still leave one or two to keep it natural.

Alban 16:41

So in editing my own audio, what I see are a lot of preambles that don't do anything. It's a way of trying to grab the conversation and say, I'm talking now, but I haven't thought of what I want to say, but I'm afraid that if I stop, you or Kevin will jump in. Some of these phrases are like, one thing I've noticed, I was thinking about this the other day. And it's like none of that was really useful to the point that can one be edited out. I could come across as more confident, and the audio could be improved by removing some of that preamble. And when I'm editing myself, I'm noticing a lot of opportunities to edit out preamble.

Jordan 17:28

I think that to even do a subcategory of preambles might be like pre-context. A lot of times people will provide context for a story that doesn't actually need to be there in order to get the moral of the story out of it. For example, you know, this actually reminds me of the time that I had this dog, you know, my parents got me this dog back in fourth grade because I had such good grades and they were really excited. Like it was a great time in my life. But I had a dog where he would come out to the bus stop and it just made me feel so great. The point of that story is I had a dog who would come to the bus stop every single day and it made me feel good. The point of the story is not I got good grades in fourth grade, and so my parents got me a dog, and it was a great thing. That doesn't matter. The audience doesn't care about that.

Alban 18:14

All right, this is not in our outline, but it is related to what we're talking about. The concept of having a good hook in your edit. And this is just brutal on video, uh, especially YouTube, short form, it's even more intense, but it's like you've got two seconds to hook people. Uh podcasts were saying things like in the first 30 seconds, get to the point so people know what you're talking about. But a good hook, one is opening some interest in the person's mind. It's creating a bit of interest, and then it lets you know what's at stake. And you don't have to be so explicit, like in this episode, one, two, three will happen. You just need to create like there's something here for you so people know what they're listening for. And I had an example today from Reddit. Uh somebody said they're a student and they're working on a political podcast, and the podcast, it's about the Scrapal case. Do you know what this is? Apparently, Russia tried to assassinate somebody in the UK and got two people really sick and they almost died. And it caused this kind of huge political turmoil. And in this spread, they said, I have no idea how to make something eye-catching or in this case ear-catching. I had some quotes. I really want to get a good grade. What could I do? And so I sat down a few hours ago and I was like, all right, how would I do this? And so I wrote, Okay, the idea that I want to set up is like there's a human element. There's two people who something bad happens to them. I want to create some intrigue so you don't know exactly what's happening in this case. And then I want to show you where we're going. And so here's what I wrote A man and his daughter collapse in a small UK city. Within days, it turns into a global fight. Accusations, denials, and media frenzy, and international sanctions. In this episode, we track the fallout of the blah, blah, blah case.

Jordan 20:04

Yeah.

Alban 20:04

As soon as you hear the collapse, you don't know why. We're kind of opening the intrigue. And then what's at stake? It goes all the way to international sanctions and a global fight. There's something at stake here. And I think this is like we could improve this probably even with this podcast in our cold opens. You really want to think like, how do you hook the listener a little bit so that they know why they've showed up for this episode?

Jordan 20:28

This is actually a great use of uh a topic that we're gonna touch on in just a little bit, which is frank embedding, which is like rearranging the dialogue to kind of structure the narrative in a different way. And I think that creating a hook is a great use of frank and biding, especially if you have someone say, um, I think of Hamilton, the opening song, Aaron Burr says he's the fool that shot him. We don't know why he shot him, unless you're a historian, but I didn't know the story yet. Thank you, Hamilton. But the opening song is talking about his death, and then they're gonna like walk us through the life story. And so it creates that hook. And I think it's very similar to like when you restructure the story, be thinking about that. What kind of thing is going to give a little bit more intrigue or a little suspense for the listener?

Alban 21:16

The cheap way to do this that I I'm seeing become more prevalent is maybe they're using like opus clip or something to find like what are the clippable moments? And they do like five to seven seconds of a clip at the very front, and then it goes, and then they do five seconds from a different segment in the podcast, five seconds from another, and then they do the intro. And it's so disorienting for me.

Jordan 21:37

Yeah.

Alban 21:38

I'm hearing it and I'm like, that's kind of interesting. I don't really understand the point yet. And then there's a sound effect, which I know on video probably worked a little bit better. But to me, it just feels like he kind of didn't come up with a hook. You kind of went, Oh, there's like three good parts, and you threw all of them in there. What's at stake in this episode? Why is this person on the podcast? Why are we doing this episode about this particular political event and set the stage for the next 30 minutes? Why should I commit the next 30 minutes, the next hour, next three hours to listening? And the process of writing a good hook to accomplish that is also the same process as crafting the episode. Because you have to come up with why they should listen to this episode, and that is the same. As creating the hook that tells them why they should listen to the episode. Does that make sense?

Jordan 22:26

Yes. I think that's a really good point. And actually, part of what you said segues nicely into my last point about environmental distractions. So you're talking about like audio distractions of like a whoosh kind of breaking up the information that you're wanting to have. But there's other things that can be distracting to your listeners. This example comes directly from my experience listening to a very, very popular podcast. And in the first five minutes, the podcast host stopped and started talking to their dog that had just walked in while they were recording. And it completely took me out of it. And I thought to myself, why would you leave that in? And so there's certain like environmental distractions where if you are stopping the recording to talk to something, to interact with something outside of your interview of your podcast, then that's probably a good indicator that that's something that you should cut so that it's not distracting to the listeners. You don't want to take them out of the whole thing.

Alban 23:24

Casey Neistat, one of the OG YouTubers, often had distractions in his videos. You know, he's filming on the streets of New York and someone would yell out to him, or like you'd see that someone picking up the trash and make a big noise. And he'd leave some of it in because it added to the ambiance of New York. Yeah. And it made it feel more real because the stories are really often about New York. That makes sense. Yep. If the story is about your dog and the dog walks in and you go, Oh, hey, Kona, that's cool. That's totally fine. But if the dog is unrelated, now you've just kind of broken the illusion that you're talking to your audience. You've now created a very clear no. I recorded this while I sat in my house and I was half recording, but also half like playing with the dog or whatever else was happening. So definitely an opportunity to remove environmental distractions.

Jordan 24:20

Absolutely. And I do think there's times where the environmental distractions can actually add to the flavor or to the comedy of the podcast, like you were saying.

Alban 24:30

Do you remember the CNN interview? Yes. Uh during COVID. Yeah, for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a guy who's talking about like US-China relations. And then you know a young child walks in the room and starts talking, and he's just like trying to ignore the kid, but he's like in frame and he's talking to his dad. Well, then the mom comes in and realizes he's being recorded and sort of trying to grab the one kid out, and then then the baby comes in as a bouncer.

Jordan 25:02

Yeah.

Cutting For Time Without Losing Value

Alban 25:02

Which turned out to be very cute. Um mostly that would be a distraction. It'd be less funny. It would more be, I mean, it did take you out at the moment. Oh, yeah. Maybe what it accomplished was all of us being like, yep, been there, just not on CNN, but I've been there when I was doing a work meeting and you know, a kid walked in because during COVID, we were all at home.

Jordan 25:24

I don't even remember what he was talking about. All I remember is the children, and I don't think that was his goal. Another form of content editing is going to be cutting for time. We always say that a podcast should be exactly as long as it needs to be. And so this goes a little bit against that, but there's some situations where you want things to be a little bit more tight. For example, podcasting QA, the podcast that Kara hosts, she likes to keep those really short. And so sometimes, for example, I was in an interview with her and our recording went 30 minutes, but podcasting QA episodes are not 30 minutes. And so she had to cut that down to 12 minutes. And so this can be a really difficult aspect of content editing for a lot of people because they can kind of get stuck on what do I leave? What things are okay to cut? Will the guests be upset if I cut things for time? Will they feel like I've slided them? Um, and so I definitely want to go over some tips that we have about how to shorten the length of dialogue and stuff like that. And Alban, I know that you have an excessive amount of experience with this recently, especially doing all these shorts.

Alban 26:37

With the shorts, I'm constantly surprising myself with how much I can cut and keep the main point. Part of it is just I have a bad habit of repeating myself or over-explaining or adding the, I got the dog because I was a really good boy in fourth grade and my parents gave me the dog. You know, I'm like, I add too much extra stuff. But if you listen to each sentence and ask, why is this sentence here? How is this moving the story forward? How's this moving his answer forward? You'll often realize this sentence didn't do anything. I can cut that. I don't think you have to be like aggressive, like, oh, they're always 45 minutes, so this one's 53, and I thought it was all good. I have to go cut eight. I don't think you have to be so rigid because we're not making network TV. But if you ask every word, why are you here in every sentence? This is definitely what I do with writing. Every sentence, every word, every clause, why are you here and how do you move the conversation forward? There are way more opportunities to cut than you would imagine.

Jordan 27:39

I have a lot of experience with cutting for time with BuzzCast specifically, especially because there's some episodes where, gosh, we have a lot to say, or we get off on a side tangent and maybe we want to talk about something else. There's there's so many situations that I've encountered in my years editing Buzzcast where I have to take a two-hour recording and cut it down to one hour. And it's not because we are so strict on this one hour restriction, but what it is is it's more us being courteous to our listeners that they're not gonna get all of the fluff, just every single unedited aspect of it. Like we're not doing like Lord of the Rings director's cut, we're trying to do like the tight version of that, right? And so some of the things that I have to cut all the time are if we rabbit trail, so we'll be talking about a subject. And especially if we have an extra long recording, if one of us gets off on a tangent where we go, oh, you know what? I actually have an experience with this. I had a boss, you know, back in 2001. And if it doesn't add a whole lot of value other than just some context for our life experience, then I will cut it.

Alban 28:50

So this is the corollary to being in the moment. If you're in the moment and you feel like, oh, this is an interesting story, I think it relates. You might say it. We do this sometimes in the recording where Kevin will say something and he goes, honestly, I don't know if that fits. He could get that feedback for something I say or something he says. It's useful to give the story a try. And if it works out, you keep it. And if it doesn't, it can get cut for time.

Jordan 29:15

Yep.

Alban 29:15

But you get good stories when you get out of your head and you're not watching the clock the whole time, but you pay for it on the edit where you're going, I I am going to pay attention. Like, did this actually accomplish what I wanted? Was the story good? If not, I'm gonna cut it so we have a better final episode.

Jordan 29:31

Yeah. One of the other things that I encounter a lot with BuzzCasts, especially if I am like just being ruthless in cutting for time, is going to be a necessary like repetition. So this happens a lot when we kind of get on our anecdote or metaphor trains where we're just like piling them on. It's like scoops of ice cream on a Sunday. There's so many times where, like, Alban, you will give a really good analogy explaining something in a different way. And then Kevin will piggyback and he'll be like, Yeah, it's kind of like this analogy. And he's basically saying the exact same thing as you did originally. And then I'll come in and I'll be like, oh, or it's like this, and I'll give another analogy. And sometimes when I go back and listen to it, I'm like, you know what? Alban explained that perfectly the first time. And we don't actually need Kevin and Jordan to be piling on additional analogies because I think the listeners got the point. I think they understand what we were trying to say. And so sometimes I will just completely cut out what Kevin and I say because Alban already got the point across. Or maybe one of us had a better analogy. Like if I have an analogy that almost gets the point across, but it's not quite there. And then Kevin or Alban come in and they're like, well, actually, I think it's more like this. And then they provide another analogy. I'll go, you know what? That's actually way better. And I'll just cut mine out completely.

Alban 30:50

Yeah. So we're cleaning up unnecessary repetition.

Jordan 30:52

Yeah.

Alban 30:53

Jordan, you used the phrase piggyback.

Jordan 30:55

Uh-huh.

Alban 30:56

Can I give a hot take?

Jordan 30:57

Yeah.

Alban 30:57

Tell me if this sounds right. Let's give this one a try. Whenever you use the phrase, let me piggyback on that. Just cut everything that comes after.

Jordan 31:07

You know what? That's actually a really good tip.

Ethical Frankenbiting: When And How

Alban 31:09

Because when I say it, I'm basically thinking, oh man, I wish I said that. I'm gonna say it. And I go, let me piggyback on that. And immediately just say the same thing. Maybe I say it slightly differently. Yeah. Maybe it's possible the second person was a little bit more clear. But if the phrase piggyback on that is in there, you get to cut one of the two, but probably both of them don't need to be there.

Jordan 31:33

I think that's really good. So I alluded to this a little bit earlier. I actually want to move on to Frankenbiting because Okay, Frankenbiting is Frankenstein.

Alban 31:47

So it's some sort of like combination, but what's the biting part?

Jordan 31:50

It's sound bites. So basically Isn't this just called editing?

Alban 31:54

I don't understand what it's no, it's not.

Jordan 31:55

This is called Frankenbiting. This is when you purposefully chop up dialogue and then rearrange the structure or rearrange some of the words for content clarity. And it is my favorite tool in my tool belt. I honestly use it almost every single Buzzcast episode. I mean, our last episode with Botter Milligan. I had actually like done sort of like a macro version of Frankenbiting where he's so personable and he's got so many great stories. I didn't want to like interrupt what he was talking about. But sometimes we had to like circle back, you know, after 20 or 30 minutes in our recording and be like, okay, well, we actually need to get an answer for this thing too. And so we ask the question and then we talk about it, but it's well after where we should have been. So we take that segment and we move it to the front of the episode where it should have been. And so that's kind of like a big version of it. But a frankenbiting is just taking like two or three sentences and chopping it up, taking out the excess and then rearranging it so it makes a little bit more sense. And there's different reasons why you would do frankenbiting, and there's a good way to do frankenbiting and a bad way.

Alban 33:05

What's the line between just good editing and like hit piece journalism or something? Like so, extreme case. At some point, this is just lying. Like you're creating something that's not true. One of the law firms I worked at as a paralegal, we had a case where a guy who had a bunch of debt, but also had a big life insurance policy, was down in like Central America and died. And we, I believe, were retained by the life insurance company. It was like, we don't know if this guy's dead. It just seems a little bit like little convenient that he died with this giant policy when everything was about to crumble. And so there was like a report about his death in We Went Down to Get It and it had been entered into the court case saying, Hey, after all this stuff, and it's in Spanish, after all this investigation, we presumed he has died. And when we sent someone down there to go retrieve the document, it had been edited one word, and the one word was that they removed not because it said, We believe he is not dead.

Jordan 34:07

Oh my gosh.

Alban 34:09

And so at some point, editing is just lying. I don't know. Long way of telling a, I thought, a funny story. It was just like so shocking that it was like that it actually happened that somebody was willing to be that bold in their lie. Yeah. At what level do you start passing over from like, oh, I cleaned it up and I took out a couple ums and ahs and I got into something totally unethical?

Jordan 34:30

When you start crossing into the audio splicing, changing what a speaker is intending to say or creating like a false narrative around what happened, then it becomes bad. Like you don't, you don't want to change what a person's actual thought is on a matter. You don't want to change that. That is where you've crossed the line. But frankenbiting can be really good for like arranging things into a more comprehensive sequence of events. So some things that indicate to me I need to frank invite like a segment or a monologue or some dialogue is when I hear false starts. So this is when someone is starting to give a response and then they pause and they backtrack to like provide some context and then they jump to the original answer.

Alban 35:15

So false starts let you know there's some frank inviting to be done here. Make the first thing first and the second thing second.

Jordan 35:22

Yeah.

Alban 35:22

And it actually clarifies the answer, it improves the answer.

Jordan 35:26

Exactly. Yes, because there are some stories that need to have context in order for them to like really land or for them to have the impact that the guest or the speaker wants them to have. Second one is same answer but different delivery. Sometimes people will have a really strong start in the initial response, but a much stronger middle and finish on the second response. And so you'll cut out the stuff in the middle and just frankenbite it together. So it sounds like it's just one cohesive response. I've done that a whole bunch, or maybe they use a word that sounded a lot better in the first version of it than the second version and rearrange sort of things.

Alban 36:05

Yeah, I get this with editing myself. I'll often say the same thing two or three times. And I don't mean to, but the first I just said it, the second I gave an example, the third one I tried to come up with an analogy, and then I said in conclusion and said it a fourth time. And the in conclusion, everything before that could have just been cut because now I've got it once and it was concise and clear.

Jordan 36:26

Exactly. Part of that too is with talking in circles. This is another example of a time that I have to frankinbite things together. Sometimes people have to talk out loud to piece together what exactly they're trying to say. I get this a lot when an interviewer is asking a question and they're trying to piece together how they want to approach the question. And then so they'll say things like, okay, so earlier talked about this thing. So I guess what I'm trying to say is when you started that job, well, okay, so you said this thing. What did you mean by that? What I can frankenbite out of that segment is all of the hesitancy or the kind of like circling around a thought before kind of like landing the plane. And that is going to be, okay, so back when you started this job, what was the reason for this? And it's just kind of cutting out all the circling around.

Alban 37:21

You know, Jordan, you're using the phrase land the plane, circling around.

Jordan 37:25

Yeah.

Alban 37:25

The story of how you traveled somewhere, you don't need to tell them, hey, we flew the plane around the airport for a bit and finally landed. Let me tell you the whole bit of flying around the airplane. They just need to know you've you got here.

Jordan 37:37

Yeah, exactly.

Alban 37:39

It's actually, those are the perfect phrases for it.

Jordan 37:41

Yeah. When you're giving a response or when your guest is giving a response, they're going to sound so much more concise and clear and intelligent if you are able to put the response together where the plane takes off, they're up in the air and they're giving the point, and then they land it, and then you move on to the next part. That is just going to make everything sound so much better. Your audience is going to be happy about it. Your guess is going to be happy about it because trust me, a guess is not going to be angry if you make them sound smarter. So I put together some examples for this using AI because I have examples from internal Buzzsprout podcasts, but I didn't feel comfortable frankenbiting our responses to mean something bad or something wrong. So I used AI to generate a response to would you recommend the latest season of Severance? So this is the original soundbite that we're going to edit.

Example Speaker 38:41

Uh, yes. Well, sorry, I didn't mean to hesitate. It's a fantastic show, and you should absolutely watch it. I'm a huge fan of the show's tone. This eerie, fluorescent corporate nightmare vibe. And I think the cast is ridiculous in the best way. But I went into the season with really high expectations, and that matters. Here's the honest version. I love the ideas this season. I love the ambition. I loved what it was reaching for. And at the same time, it kind of gave me the ick. But I think that speaks to the artistry of severance to evoke such emotion. It's incredible.

Alban 39:29

I hate this guy. Jordan, that that was terrible. I'm losing You're losing me.

Jordan 39:35

This is why content editing is so important. It felt like it dragged. He was like circling around the response a little bit.

Alban 39:42

The audio was AI generated.

Jordan 39:44

The audio was AI generated. I used 11 labs for it. I wanted it to drag a little bit. So this is an example of having a guest on that you ask a question. There's pregnant pauses between some of the sentences because they're thinking about what they want to say. There's like hesitancy. And so it makes the guest sound like they're not as confident as they should be when really they're just thinking about their answer out loud. And really, like you can hear this guest is confident that yes, this is actually an important piece of work. And so I'm going to show you what it sounds like after I frankenbite it so that the response is more clear, it's more concise, it's getting to the point.

Example Speaker 40:30

I love the ideas this season. I love the ambition. I loved what it was reaching for. And at the same time, it kind of gave me the ick. But I think that speaks to the artistry of severance to evoke such emotion. It's incredible. You should absolutely watch it.

Jordan 40:51

Sometimes you want to kind of tighten up what the response is because the guy said in like so many different ways that it's a cool concept, it's interesting, it's atmospheric. But what I did was condense it down into the most important parts where he's just saying, I like the idea, I like the execution, it was ambitious, it was creepy, but it was so cool, and you should watch it. So I gave you the original audio, and I also provided the good version of Frankenbiting to really tighten it up. Let me show you what a bad use of Frankenbiting is.

Alban 41:25

This is Jordan's unethical Frankenbiting.

Jordan 41:27

This is my unethical Frankenbiting. Does this person recommend severance?

Example Speaker 41:34

Well, here's the honest version. I went into the season with really high expectations. And this eerie, fluorescent corporate nightmare vibe. It kind of gave me the ick.

Jordan 41:47

That doesn't sound like they recommend it at all.

Alban 41:49

No, not a fan.

Jordan 41:50

Yeah, not a fan. They didn't like it. It gave them the ick. It was a nightmare vibe.

Alban 41:54

Delivery of gave me the ick.

Jordan 41:58

You know what? I'm using AI. I did my best.

Alban 42:00

Oh man. You uh you just reassured like 80% of our audience that uh the uh some of that notebook LM stuff sounded pretty good. This this isn't scaring me.

Jordan 42:09

Yep, yeah. So if that's the one thing you take away from this episode, don't be scared of AI.

Alban 42:14

Don't be scared of the voice that Jordan just used.

Jordan 42:17

All right, so our big takeaways content editing relies heavily on preparation. So making sure that you go into it knowing what your goal is for the episode helps immensely. Removing distractions that take away from what you're trying to portray in your episode, cutting for time, anything that is excess that can be cut, how to identify it and get rid of it for your episode. And then also frankenbiding appropriately, ethically.

Fan Mail

Alban 42:45

Yeah, the main takeaway I have is you're telling a story. Whether or not it's fiction, you're telling a story. And the story could be I have this interesting guest, but like what is interesting about them, you're crafting a story with this edit. And it's going to happen whether it's intentional or unintentional. And so from hook to conclusion, try to draw a line through that. Some of that will be taking out the over-affirmations, which kind of distract clean up these stories where people tell the same thing two or three times. You don't need to have the segment where they started talking to their dog because that wasn't part of the overall story. And how much can you move around what they say? Well, only in an ethical way. But we're telling a story, and so let's try to be intentional about it. There's a point where podcasts get so open-ended and rambling that they've lost the thread. You know, they've lost the thread of the story. And the edit is where you can save that and you can really do a wonderful job of writing a story, and often that means just cutting a lot of the extra stuff.

Jordan 43:50

Totally agree. Let's get into fan mail, Alban. Our first one we have is from South Carolina saying, I've not released a podcast yet, but I'm hoping to very soon. With that, I am 55, not the most tech savvy. We'll have a roadcaster duo next week. I have a camera and have signed up for Riverside. The question What are your thoughts on Riverside? And if you don't recommend them, which service do you recommend?

Alban 44:19

Totally depends on what you're trying to do. So, if you're trying to do remote interview recordings with video and you have this kind of restriction where you need to be in a web browser, then Riverside is at the top of the list, if not the top. So very good for that. I think one of the themes of this podcast is at the beginning, video is tough. I mean, video is tough for me now, years and years in. So the idea that you have to start with video, I might challenge that assumption. If you're not doing interviews, then the main piece of what a riverside or descript rooms or stream yard is doing for you, it's not as important. You might be looking at maybe recording with like OBS, which would just be on your computer. You're getting a capture of your video, a capture of your audio, and then you're gonna sync those up yourself. So there's lots of options. I think I might just want a little bit more context for what the goals are for this podcast.

Jordan 45:15

Yeah.

Alban 45:16

I do have to say, starting a podcast at 55, that is so good. Yeah. I can't tell you how much creating stuff, how healthy it is, and it's so much fun, whether it's for you or it's for millions of people, it's really valuable. And I love that uh this person in South Carolina is getting into it. Down in Boca Raton, Florida. Apologies if this issue has been beaten to death already, but I'm lamenting the lack of private podcasting feature on BuzzProwl. I've wanted to use your platform for my family history private podcast, but I can't. Is it in the feature development pipeline at all? Um, I might take this one, Jordan, because I am working on some podcast that would only be distributed for family. When people talk about private podcasting, they can mean different levels of privacy. Some people are doing a podcast for internal medical company and there's like DHI in here. And if it gets out, I've got legal issues. Yeah. BuzzBrow doesn't have some sort of single sign-on solution for you that could solve that. Then you've got people who are like, I really, really, really don't want this to get out, but like legally, it's not gonna blow my life up. Depending on where you are around that area, is whether or not what BuzzBrout has will be good for you. With what I'm working on, it's stories from family members about all of us going in this house, was my great-grandfather's house, and it was my grandfather's, and everyone has memories there. And so it's just like family members telling that story. So there's, you know, there's kids, there's adults, there's people who've passed away, there's names in there. I'm not gonna put that out to the world, but I'm comfortable putting it on BuzzRoute because I know you're gonna get a podcast ID that is if you say, I don't want this to be in Google, it's not going to be in Google. And it's unlikely people will find it. And so uh YouTube has a version of this, it's just called unlisted. Like if someone knew the URL, they could get to it, but there's not a good way for them to find it unless someone in, you know, the intended audience leaked it and sent it out.

Jordan 47:18

Yeah.

Alban 47:18

So if you're comfortable with that level of people could find it or someone in your family could share it outside the family, then you're good to go. If you need like everyone's got their own username and password, then we don't have a great solution for that. And I think that some of our competitors do. I want to say Transistor was trying to get into it, but it might be more expensive because this is kind of billed as like a corporate feature. Totally depends on, you know, how private of a private family history podcast are we talking?

Jordan 47:48

Yeah. That's what I was thinking, Alban, is just making sure that you check off that you do not want to be listed in Google and then just don't submit your podcast to the directories. And that's really totally fine for a private family podcast.

Alban 48:02

Dave from the How to Podcast series wrote in Kevin and Alban. I was able to have your amazing co-host drop by and guest on my how to podcast series show. We talked about podcasting, socks, Buzzcast, Dreamful, and how amazing the Buzzprout team is. Thanks for allowing me to borrow your amazingly talented co-host from Buzzcast. Jordan is the best. All right. Save the best for last because I wasn't sure. I was like, okay, so this is about Jordan, right?

Jordan 48:28

Yeah.

Alban 48:29

Yes, Dave, I agree. Jordan is a wonderful co-host, a wonderful host of this show. I'm glad you were able to be on there. Jordan, tell me about being on Dave's podcast.

Jordan 48:38

Oh man, Dave is just the best. We have like, I don't know what we're so lucky. We have the nicest listeners. It's nuts. But yeah, so I was on, they had a podcast series, and I had actually looked at his podcast a bit before I went on. I was doing some research, and I noticed that this year he is doing a 365 episodes in 365 days. He has a job, by the way, and he has like a bunch of other podcasts. And then I told him, I was like, How on earth are you doing that? Like that's just nuts. And he said, Oh, that's nothing. For Valentine's Day, he did a 24-hour podcaston where he recorded like 24 episodes in 24 hours. And so Dave is a passionate podcaster. It shows that he has the reps in. He is so good at it. And so, yeah, I think uh I think Dave's pretty awesome.

Alban 49:28

I've talked about it before. One of my favorite blog posts, uh, speed matters. If there's things that you want to be able to do in your life, you've got to start fast and you've got to be able to do them fast because you're gonna get better. And if you think, oh, I'd love to do an episode on that, but your mind instantly goes to, well, I've got five ideas, and every one of these takes two weeks, then you just kind of tap out because you don't, you know you don't have the space to do a two-week episode on whatever this topic is when you've got so many other ideas. But if you're like Dave and you've got in your mind, I'm going to do a podcast every day, I'm gonna do multiple podcasts in a day, I might do a 24-hour marathon. Then that voice in your mind that says, Oh, I can't do it because it takes two weeks, it's gone. Yeah. And eventually you're going to be good enough that you will be doing more in a day than I will do in two weeks when I'm actually taking all that extra time.

Jordan 50:22

I love that. Even if you just do like a smaller version of it, like a week of a podcast every day, would make a huge difference in your practice. All right. So for our next episode, Alban, we could talk about how to craft a good call to action, call to action placement, how to analyze if it's doing well, putting call to actions in dynamic content, things like that.

Post Show: Why Did You Almost Cry This Week?

Alban 50:42

Yeah, I think that's something we could definitely touch on. There's lots of different pieces to this. Yeah. How do you figure out what they should be? Uh, how do you structure them? When do you put them in? Yep. What tools are available? I think that's really good. All right. So if you have experience, if you have thoughts, if you have questions, we would like it all. So send us anything related to calls to action. What has worked for you, what has not, what questions do you have? I want to hear it all. Click the text the show button in the description and send it in to us. We'd really love to hear it. And we'd love to feature you and your show and your call to action on our podcast.

Jordan 51:19

Love it. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.

Alban 51:28

Jordan, how much of the Olympics have you been watching?

Jordan 51:31

I did turn on the figure skating for about a day and then got tired of it. And I haven't watched anything since. But I have been keeping up on some of the posts and stuff, and people seem very excited about the US teams, both in figure skating and in hockey. And oh, we had an Idaho skier that won a gold.

Alban 51:51

So well, the hockey story has been kind of awesome.

Jordan 51:55

Yeah.

Alban 51:56

Um, the women's hockey team won gold.

Jordan 51:58

Amazing.

Alban 51:59

I think the men's team was not supposed to win. They have not won gold in my lifetime. They won in like 1980, and it's the miracle on ice, where the US beats the I think Soviet Union.

Jordan 52:11

Really?

Alban 52:12

And they won on Sunday and it was at 8 a.m. So we go, okay, well, we're gonna go to like later church service. I want to watch this. And it's like something about hockey. I'm not all that interested in a sport. Uh, you know, grew up in Florida, so I've never seen ice. And then as soon as it's coming down to the end of any big hockey thing, you go to any hockey event, it's so energizing.

Jordan 52:35

Yeah.

Alban 52:36

And there's just some of the most incredible stories that are made during the Olympic season. And this guy gets hit in the mouth, like breaks his teeth. Oh no, like bleeding mouth. And there's like these critical saves by the goalie. Goalie uh for his NHL team had a history of being like a top goalie who always crumbles under pressure.

Jordan 53:00

Oh.

Alban 53:01

And so people were like, he's playing well now, but just wait, because like we all know he crumbles under pressure. And he played like the greatest game that I've ever seen from a goalie. And I, I mean, I don't watch much hockey, but it looked like incredible. And then we go to overtime, and the guy who gets hit in the mouth and his teeth cracked scores this game-winning goal and gives, in my mind, one of the most emotional and like cool speeches. And he's just living his best life in the moment, and he's so happy. It is enough to get you excited about hockey. The sweetest moment, which like almost would bring tears to your eyes if you hear the story. Um, one of the people who'd pushed really hard for the US apparently passed away a few years ago in like a bike accident. And he would have been on the team, and he passed away while his wife was pregnant. Oh. He at least had two kids, if not more. So it's just a really sad story. And guys on the team are like holding his jersey, remembering him, and they get together for like the big moment on ice where they're all gonna take this celebratory photo. And two of the guys skate off and they skate back with his kids. And these are like children, like, you know, less than two. And they went off and they got the kids from the mom, and they're out there like in their dad's spot getting the team photos. And it was just the like improbable victory, this incredible moment of, you know, guy getting hit in the mouth that he's still in it, the goalie who is supposed to crumble under pressure, but he doesn't, and he plays the best game of his life. And then for these, I mean, they're all pretty much kids, you know, they're in their 20s to go. You know who I really want to remember right now is this guy who passed away, and we want to honor his family. It was incredible. I mean, I went from knowing nothing about hockey to knowing almost nothing about hockey, but it was a really cool moment. And really, some of the most beautiful sports photography I've seen in years came out of that game. So definitely worth looking up.

Jordan 55:05

Oh, that sounds amazing. I don't know if my heart can take it. There's just been so many stories in like the last like week or two, especially with the Olympics, where it's just like heartbreaking yet triumphant. I mean, this is so stupid. Did you hear about Punch the Monkey?

Alban 55:22

There's ads from like 1995.

Jordan 55:25

No, there's this little monkey. Oh, Japan. There's this little monkey in Japan named Punch. And he was abandoned by his mother, and he had like this little IKEA orangutan plushie that he used as like a comfort, yeah, sort of thing. And he was getting pushed away by the other macaques and they were bullying him and being mean to him. And he went like super viral because he would just be sad and cuddle this cute little monkey and like, I can't take any of these stories anymore. I can't do it. No more, no more.

Alban 55:58

The only reason I know that story is because it was sent around in like my you know extended family group chat. Yeah. Because the monkey is the same monkey that my niece carries around.

Jordan 56:10

The IKEA one.

Alban 56:11

Like, so if it if you're saying it's an IKEA monkey, that's where she got it. Yeah. So her uh is Nay Maurice. And like they send the photo, and everyone in the family knows because my niece carries this monkey everywhere and travels with it. And we're like, I can't believe it's the exact same stuffed animal.

Jordan 56:28

All right. Well, I think uh this could be like a new mini series we have of like tear jerking moments this week.

Alban 56:35

Why did you almost cry this week?

Jordan 56:36

Why did you almost cry this week?