I was initially hired just as a writer who had to listen to the episode and find quotes and create marketing material for emails and such but quickly ended up accruing more responsibilities. I was asked to make cuts to the episode and now I’m in charge of making the whole thing from start to finish.
More than just displaying another job I’m proud of, I wanted to share the incredible software that we used to complete the episodes.
It’s called Descript.
This is what my day starts like. I import the audio files and begin to chip away at the conversation for imperfections in speech or audio quality. What’s really neat is that it’ll follow along the transcribed conversation (a feature that I literally used to get paid to do, thanks AI) with the audio and all I have to do is take out the word directly on the transcript. You can see that some sections are crossed off and there’s words like “um” or “uh” that are crossed out too, that all happened automatically I didn’t have to go in and individually take out every little “um,” which is fantastic.
The crazy thing is, you can essentially edit everything on this software and not even touch an audio engineering software if you really want.
I’ve only really touched the surface of this software as we’re only doing audio currently. I can’t imagine how useful it is for content creators that make tutorial videos or companies that need training videos made, it’s a pretty versatile software. It even has this thing called “Studio Sound” that came out like a month ago in a new update that equalizes everything and elimates all background noise. Dude, it’s crazy. Like we don’t have some huge budget with a studio and professional mics, these people are using their computers to record over Zoom, so this feature has been a godsend. It turns basic audio into something that sounds like you spent time and money creating a studio for it, really lives up to the name.
The job itself is pretty great, I get to hear experts talk about how they got to where they are, the challenges they’ve faced along the way, and some tidbits and tips on how to be your best self and continue thriving in a professional and personal way.
Weirdly, it makes me sorta want to be a doctor. Of course, the education is intimidating and pri$ey so we’ll have to do a few more episodes to afford that but the prospect of the job is very noble. I love that a common thing every one of these “Medicine Mentors” mentions is treating patients like people rather than a disease or a timeslot. A sentiment even my favorite American poet, William Carlos Williams, shares when he wrote, “My business, aside from the mere physical diagnosis, is to make a different sort of diagnosis concerning–patients–as individuals.”
Give it a listen!