Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Maaky asks, “I’ve recently started listening to the first tranche of episodes you released, and they are seemingly much shorter but nonetheless still very enjoyable and informative. What would you say is the biggest improvement you’ve made over the years to the podcast content or production that we may not have noticed?”

Well, you’ve noticed the biggest change. The length of an average episode has increased significantly since I first launched the show. The average length of a script is 2000 words, and that is the metric I use when writing scripts.

How long that translates to time depends on how fast I talk and other factors.

I think there was an early episode that was only 1200 words long, which I look back on in horror today. The longest episode, I think, was about 2700 words long.

The sound quality on the early episodes wasn’t very good either. That was because I was recording in a horrible location with hardwood floors and a refrigerator running 10 feet away from where I was recording.

The biggest thing is that, having done hundreds and hundreds of episodes, I’m just much better at the process of researching and writing episodes. The time it takes to get an episode out on average is much less than it took when I first started.