THIS IS AN UNDEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S VERY SPECIAL EPISODE OF THE INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK

Tom Scocca (00:00.802)
The countdown.

JOE MACLEOD (00:01.672)
So now we're recording. Wait, let me do this. Let me do this.

Tom Scocca (00:13.784)
Good morning. It is October 11th. It is another crisp fall morning in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning podcast. I'm your host, Tom Skoka. I'll be taking a look at the day and the news, but also today we have with us Joe McCloud.

JOE MACLEOD (00:35.774)
Hey everybody.

Tom Scocca (00:38.22)
doing a very special episode of the podcast to talk about some of the meta technical considerations that go into our production and things we've been experimenting with this week. So.

JOE MACLEOD (00:53.286)
We're pulling back the curtain.

Tom Scocca (00:56.174)
Exactly.

Tom Scocca (01:00.706)
giving you a window into the process. So.

JOE MACLEOD (01:08.254)
I don't even know how long we're going to go today,

We are the staff of indignity. You see it here. I'm saying you see it because Tom and I are doing a video call and we're gonna spare you that. You're just gonna hear us. The end of the mic. So I'm a neophyte audio producer.

Tom Scocca (01:32.364)
Yeah, you see it, you see it in your mind.

JOE MACLEOD (01:46.35)
And I shouldn't even call myself that. Tom has had various health issues that have compromised his voice. And he is rebuilding that in therapy. And I've been editing and trying to make it sound a certain way. And a long time ago, we

we got some really wonderful input from somebody on our Blue Sky account who said, yeah, you should do the normalization to this and the other thing to that. And I do that, or I did that. But now under the auspices of the Brickhouse and Flaming Hydra, we have access to this high tech.

Riverside.fm studio and they have a feature that is apparently AI based for what they call magic audio. so I now for the past two episodes of the indignity morning podcast have run it through that. And we got some immediate feedback again on Blue Sky saying, wow, Tom, I'm so glad that your voice sounds so much better. know, therapy is worth.

Tom Scocca (02:41.071)
Riverside.fm studio and they have a feature that is apparently AI based for what they call anti-button.

Tom Scocca (03:08.086)
Right, so right because the yeah, we've been sort of working through this this raggedness Ever since last year because actually just you know a year ago this week I was in the hospital for a while And when I got out my voice was

not there. And it's sort of like ever since has been fluctuating in and out. I finally went over to the people at the Sean Parker Institute for the Voice at Wow Cornell. I don't know if that's because Sean Parker had a voice problem that he is grateful that they fixed for him, or if it's like reparations to the entertainment industry for Napster. But either way, went there.

and had the actually sort of pleasant experience relative to some of the other health inquiries that I've been through of like sitting down and having the doctors like run a scope down my throat and had me telling me to say stuff. And the doctors immediately just sitting there and going, yep, uh-huh, yep, exactly. No sort of furrowed brows, no head scratching, they're like, uh-huh, yeah, right.

which is basically while I was, what they told me is that while I was losing weight in the hospital, the sort of last 10 pounds I knocked off, included the meaty middle portion of my vocal cords. And so like, instead of meeting neatly to cut off the airflow, they went concave and there sort of a leaky valve, which I use other muscles to cheat around. And some days those muscles retired and on those days the voice goes out really.

So I have all these exciting vocal exercises that I'm supposed to be doing. So there's like a, first you start humming, you're like, and then you, you keep up, pull it out into words to try to keep the sound moving. it's like, me on Monday, meet me on Tuesday morning. And you're supposed to sort of try to push it forward and work on it.

JOE MACLEOD (05:05.394)
But please, share one. Please.

Tom Scocca (05:27.284)
in the sort of way that you kind of like grudgingly half-ass any kind of PT that you're assigned to do. So I think I'm progressing and I'm learning to push my voice forward, but everybody tuned in and heard my voice sounding suddenly clean. And they were like, wow, you're really on a tremendously positive healing track. And I'm like, no, no, it's the machine.

But yeah, so we've turned this thing on and the thing that it sounds like most to me is it's like when they turn on the motion smoothing on the TV and everything gets clear and shiny.

JOE MACLEOD (06:12.776)
Sounds like motion smoothing.

Tom Scocca (06:15.128)
Exactly. So that's why you've been hearing the audio quality change as opposed to the sort day-to-day audio quality fluctuations caused by whatever my voice does coming and going, plus the incredibly erratic and unprofessional audio setup that I use and whether people upstairs are doing renovation and all the things that come together to create the audio environment of your indignity morning podcast.

JOE MACLEOD (06:45.488)
And I don't know. mean, some people might miss the Burt's chirping and the jackhammering and whatever else is going on. But it is good to get clean audio out of you because you refuse to build a podcasting studio inside of your apartment. So I mean, I've made some suggestions about these.

Tom Scocca (07:07.885)
It's true.

JOE MACLEOD (07:13.906)
basically boxes made out of foam and stuff like that. Tom lives in the big city and space is at a premium. can't have stuff like that around the house unless you're... And we don't... I'm not gonna complain about resources and money, but if we could, we'd have a real studio.

Tom Scocca (07:36.824)
Yeah, there was that sort of in the whole pandemic podcast era, people were like, wow, I have such limited space and resources. I had to go into my bedroom closet to record my podcast. And I'm like, you have a bedroom closet that you can fit into? Fascinating. Not the physical point we're dealing with here. Yeah.

JOE MACLEOD (07:55.006)
And a lot of space. Yeah, right.

And our friend, colleague, and benefactor, Maria Bustillos of Popula, The Brickhouse, and of late Flaming Hydra, her pro tip is a blanket over her head to cover the microphone in the head. that is a...

for you folks who are getting ready to start a podcast, because everybody's supposed to have one by now, you can do that. You can just drape a blanket over your head and talk into a microphone, and you're going to sound good.

Tom Scocca (08:40.394)
and you're going to work fast because you're in a race against the sweat, which is sort of like how went in the summertime when the air conditioner had to get turned off for the podcast to come out. Yeah. But.

JOE MACLEOD (08:50.824)
Right. That'll be the acid test. That'll be the acid test of the new Riverside Magic Audio is air conditioning season. We'll see what that sounds like. Yeah, so it sounds different and we think it's a net positive, but it's AI, so it's not real.

Tom Scocca (09:00.142)
Yeah.

Tom Scocca (09:14.764)
Yes, it's my uncanny self. I don't know, maybe there's a slider on it. Maybe there's like a half magic audio. Okay.

JOE MACLEOD (09:23.69)
Man, it's just a button, you know? It's tailor-made for me and my complete lack of technical ability. And I gotta say, I don't know what they're doing with your voice. I don't know where it's going. I'm sure they're accumulating your voice in their AI bank. I don't know. No offense, Riverside. No offense, Riverside. I don't know what you're doing with it. I don't know what's going on.

Tom Scocca (09:46.04)
Someday, right.

Right. Someday my own voice is going to be like trying to sell me a car.

JOE MACLEOD (09:53.934)
or tell you how to drive your car.

Tom Scocca (09:55.31)
We're telling me how to drive, right.

JOE MACLEOD (09:57.256)
That would be wild, you get your own voice in your nav. That would be really annoying.

Tom Scocca (09:59.501)
Yeah.

second self. I can see the branding. Lord. Yeah. Well.

JOE MACLEOD (10:08.256)
yeah, at some point I was gonna cut in examples and so that'll happen right now. yeah.

Tom Scocca (10:13.87)
Yeah, OK. Do we want to do a before and after of like, you want to pull from the archive my healthy voice and then my messed up voice and then do the filters show and tell?

JOE MACLEOD (10:27.038)
Well, I have the clip and I'll make it as short as possible in the interest of brevity for the listeners. Because, wow, we're already at 10 minutes, which we're approaching record. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Scocca (10:39.576)
Yeah, we're going to cut a bunch out of this stream line. Yeah. I'm also hoping that with Faith in the Magic Audio, I can potentially start doing the podcast a little more quickly. Because the thing about my primitive audio setup is that it's pretty unforgiving about whistles and plosives and.

just the weird sounds that actually come out of your mouth all the time when you're talking that you don't pay attention to until it's a waveform and you're listening to yourself. Like.

JOE MACLEOD (11:14.556)
I think that may be what this is made for.

Tom Scocca (11:17.602)
the letter F. I had to train myself to speak a whole different kind of F when I'm doing this thing, like F on the lip, because otherwise the F just has a little whistle to it that doesn't matter to me in daily life. when you see it on the waveform, you're like, ugh, what have I done? So.

JOE MACLEOD (11:19.304)
Yeah, and puh-puh.

JOE MACLEOD (11:36.816)
Yeah, it's bad enough hearing your own voice.

Tom Scocca (11:39.885)
Yeah.

Tom Scocca (11:43.352)
So anyway.

JOE MACLEOD (11:46.706)
Do want to do one headline?

Tom Scocca (11:49.202)
One headline. Sure. hurricane cuts a path of death. Hurricane cuts a path of death and devastation is like, I mean, it's the lead news story, but who cares? I mean, that is, not going to, you can care very much about the fate of the people of Florida without feeling like the New York Times, as it went to the printing press last night, had anything new to offer you. Yeah.

JOE MACLEOD (11:49.822)
from the paper.

JOE MACLEOD (12:15.558)
Yeah, you already know more about that if you're paying attention to it.

Tom Scocca (12:18.686)
At least 22 die as Israelis hit central Beirut. Inside there's like a map looking at how they've been just leveling stuff, including like controlled demolition of a mosque, which the people that talked to them for this story think falls outside the limits of where international law gives you permission to destroy structures.

What else we got? They're puffing their own poll. New poll shows GOP with edge to seize Senate. This is their own poll.

JOE MACLEOD (13:02.472)
Janky polls.

Tom Scocca (13:02.574)
So, yes, our janky polls. Well, also it's a big lead in Montana, it says, but that was.

Tom Scocca (13:17.294)
think Montana has been looking not great in the polling anywhere. And then they have to sort of like circle around very late to talk about the possibility of an independent knocking out a Republican in Nebraska to even the map. But yeah, once again, they're just sort of trying to frighten people with their polls, even though their poll is like a random number generator.

Tom Scocca (13:43.246)
And then they're trying to say something about Trump. Well, the headline is Trump's lamenting appeal to non-white voters. And the word lamenting is sort of like twisted out beyond its normal usage parameters to.

try to express the idea that he's...

expanded from telling white people that immigrants are taking things away from them to trying to target messages to black and Hispanic people that immigrants are taking things away from them too.

Tom Scocca (14:19.468)
You

Tom Scocca (14:22.924)
I guess that's what's happening. Ripped from today's headlines. That's what the paper is telling us. Also Ethel Kennedy is dead.

JOE MACLEOD (14:25.416)
ripped from today's headlines, ladies and gentlemen.

JOE MACLEOD (14:33.95)
Thank you for your service.

JOE MACLEOD (14:38.888)
Big fan of the Kennedys. Ethel Kennedy was a big fan of the Kennedys.

Tom Scocca (14:43.348)
Well, mean, she was integral to the production of more Kennedys.

Yeah.

Tom Scocca (14:53.806)
I can't, I don't know where it is in the O bit, but there were like the numbers of survivors.

Tom Scocca (15:03.47)
And it was like.

I think it was from the Kennedy family's own statement. It's like a little pocket history of American Catholicism.

JOE MACLEOD (15:18.184)
Am I crazy or did Ethel Kennedy end up looking like a Kennedy?

Tom Scocca (15:23.352)
She did. She did.

JOE MACLEOD (15:25.074)
It's like you get a dog and the dog starts to look like you because it apes your facial expressions. That's my theory anyway, but it's like Ethel Kennedy.

Tom Scocca (15:29.996)
Yeah, yeah, you spend your life surrounded by Kennedys you start looking at. Yeah, right, okay, so the Kennedy Statement was like, her nine children, 34 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren. So I think you can see where the birth control pill arrived.

Tom Scocca (15:55.074)
Right, because otherwise it's like gonna be nine children, 81 grandchildren. Yeah, geometric expansion of the Kennedy family.

JOE MACLEOD (15:59.292)
Right, proper, yeah. Everybody's having nine.

JOE MACLEOD (16:10.066)
That might be our headline, ladies and gentlemen.

Tom Scocca (16:13.052)
Declining birth rates come for all of us, even in hyena sport.

Tom Scocca (16:20.446)
And I guess that is the news.

JOE MACLEOD (16:25.454)
That's, I'm gonna do a...

I'm gonna chime this out.

JOE MACLEOD (16:39.051)
Best $9 I ever spent on the Amazon.

Tom Scocca (16:44.974)
All right.

JOE MACLEOD (16:47.43)
Okay, now I'm good.

Tom Scocca (16:50.252)
I should do the standard. Thank you for listening. All right. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is.

JOE MACLEOD (16:53.226)
yeah, yeah, right, right, right.

Tom Scocca (17:03.04)
Edited by total efficient. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe McCloud. The theme song is composed and performed by Max Cocaho. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. The more subscription money we get, the more audio options we have at our disposal. And if all goes well, we will talk again on Monday. Thanks for joining us today, Joe.

in front of the scenes. You're always there behind the scenes.

JOE MACLEOD (17:31.014)
Thank you. Thank you, host. I'm behind the scenes. Today I'm in front of the scenes. Thank you.

Tom Scocca (17:37.91)
All right, and have a great weekend, everyone.

JOE MACLEOD (17:43.675)
I'm stopping the recording.

Tom Scocca (17:45.514)
Alright.