WEBVTT

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Thanks for making the time.

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Can you walk me through how the recordings
reach you?

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Mostly by email, which is the first
problem.

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A 40-minute interview at a decent bit rate
is 30 megabytes,

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so people compress it, and then I get the
compressed copy.

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And the compression is what hurts the
transcript?

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Not as much as you would think.

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What hurts is when two people talk over
each other,

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or when the microphone is on the table between
them and the room has a lot of echo.

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So what would you tell someone recording
their first interview?

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Put the recorder closer to the quieter
person.

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Say both names at the start.

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And do not stop the recording to check it,

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because you will forget to start it again.

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That last one sounds like experience.

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Twice.

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The second time was with a professor whose
flight left in an

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hour, so I had to reconstruct the middle
third from memory.

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That was the day I stopped trusting myself
and started trusting the red light.