#podcast transcription services

[transcriptionservicephiladelphia]

How A Podcast Transcription Company Can Help Expand Your Reach

Podcasts have become a powerful medium for sharing knowledge, stories, and entertainment. However, to fully maximize the potential of your podcast and reach a broader audience, it is crucial to consider the benefits of transcription. Transcribing your podcast episodes not only enhances accessibility but also opens up new avenues for content repurposing and search engine optimization (SEO).

Benefits of Transcription for Your Podcast Channel

Accessibility for Diverse Audiences

Transcriptions are vital in making your podcast content accessible to many audiences. Only some people can consume audio content due to hearing impairments, language barriers, or personal preferences. By providing accurate transcriptions of your podcast episodes, you enable individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing to engage with your content. Moreover, non-native English speakers or those who prefer reading over listening can also benefit from transcriptions. By accommodating diverse audiences, you demonstrate inclusivity and expand the reach of your podcast to those who might have otherwise been excluded.

Improved Discoverability and SEO

Transcriptions contribute to improved discoverability and search engine optimization (SEO) for your podcast. Search engines cannot crawl audio content directly but can index text. By transcribing your podcast episodes, you create a searchable text version of your content, allowing search engines to understand and rank your episodes based on relevant keywords. This enhances the chances of your podcast appearing in search engine results when users search for related topics or keywords. Transcriptions also provide valuable content for repurposing, allowing you to create blog posts, social media snippets, or articles derived from the transcript, further boosting your online presence and visibility.

Content Repurposing and Multi-Channel Distribution

Podcast transcriptions are a valuable resource for repurposing your content across various channels. You can easily extract key points, quotes, or anecdotes with a transcript to create blog posts, articles, social media captions, or email newsletters. This allows you to reach audiences who may prefer different formats or platforms for consuming content. Repurposing also enables you to expand your content library and extend the life of your podcast episodes. By leveraging other mediums and channels, you can attract new listeners and engage with your existing audience on multiple fronts, increasing your reach and amplifying your message.

Enhanced Audience Engagement and Interaction

Podcast transcriptions foster enhanced audience engagement and interaction. A written version of your podcast episode enables listeners to follow along, take notes, or refer to specific points of interest. Transcriptions also make it easier for listeners to share quotes or snippets on social media, sparking discussions and driving conversations around your podcast. Additionally, transcriptions allow you to include hyperlinks to related resources, references, or guest information, providing a richer and more interactive experience for your audience. By facilitating engagement and interaction, transcriptions deepen the connection between you and your listeners, establishing a loyal and involved community around your podcast.

Accessibility for Content Creators and Collaboration 

Transcriptions benefit your audience and streamline your workflow as a content creator. Having a written record of your podcast conversations simplifies the process of editing, fact-checking, and creating show notes. It lets you quickly reference previous episodes or guest contributions, saving time and ensuring accuracy. Transcriptions also facilitate collaboration with other content creators or collaborators. Sharing a transcript with guests or team members enables them to review and provide input on the content, ensuring alignment and enhancing the quality of your podcast. By making your podcast content easily accessible to yourself and those involved in its production, transcriptions contribute to a seamless and efficient content creation process.

In the ever-expanding world of podcasting, a podcast transcription company can be a valuable partner in helping you expand your reach and amplify the impact of your content. Through accessibility, improved discoverability, content repurposing, enhanced audience engagement, and streamlined collaboration, transcriptions offer a myriad of benefits. By providing transcriptions of your podcast episodes, you can connect with a more diverse audience, improve your search engine visibility, repurpose content across multiple channels, foster more profound engagement, and streamline your content creation process. Embrace the power of podcast transcription and unlock the full potential of your podcast to reach new heights of success and influence.

[neturbizenterprises]

Revolutionize Your Podcast with Podcastle AI

Explore the transformative impact of generative AI in podcast creation with us! This video delves into how AI technologies are revolutionizing the industry by automating content creation, enhancing audio quality, and personalizing listener experiences. We’ll discuss tools like Podcastle's clip generator and revoice feature that streamline workflows for podcasters and content creators.

Discover advanced methods for improving production processes, from AI-driven transcription services to programmatic podcast advertising. These innovations not only enhance accessibility but also help monetize content effectively. Join us as we uncover these exciting developments in media production!

Podcastle AI:

Explore the transformative impact of generative AI in podcast creation with us! This video delves into how AI technologies are revolutionizing the industry by automating content creation, enhancing audio quality, and personalizing listener experiences. We’ll discuss tools like Podcastle's clip generator and revoice feature that streamline workflows for podcasters and content creators.

[techsynergy01]

Podcast Transcription

Podcast Transcription refers to the process of converting spoken content from a podcast into written text. This transcription can be used for a variety of purposes, such as improving accessibility for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, enhancing SEO by making the content searchable, and allowing audiences to quickly reference or share specific parts of the podcast.

[transcriptioncity]

Transcription services for the deaf and hard of hearing

Transcription Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Making Audio Accessible Did you know that approximately 15% of the world’s population lives with some degree of hearing loss? This significant portion of society often faces challenges in accessing audio and video content. Transcription services for the deaf and hard of hearing provide crucial solutions, making media more inclusive and…

[specialagentartemis]

Coming skidding in just under the wire for @boombox-fuckboy’s Fiction Podcast Zine September!

This was an idea I had since the zine event was announced, but it felt very personal and I didn’t quite know how to go about making it. But I did want to reflect on what fiction podcasts have Meant To Me. And my delicate emotional state during 2020, lol.

Plain text transcription:

Cover: The Podcasts That Got Me Through COVID Lockdown.

Spread 1: In 2020, I was part of the lockdown contingent. [Drawing of a house] I chose a Masters Degree project I could do from my parents' basement, 2000 miles away from my university. I attended my MA graduation ceremony on Zoom in my dining room.

The loneliness and disconnection in ars PARADOXICA spoke to me. I recognized myself in Sally Grissom: asexual, of course; lonely; throwing myself into my research; clinging to friends far away. [A drawing of a brown-haired woman in a blue sweater, hunched over, writing.]

(I cried over Sally Grissom in the park.)

Spread 2: I lived - and locked down - in Metro Boston: not Boston proper, but close enough. I would go for a walk every morning, and the familiar Boston skyline greeted me. [Drawing of the Boston skyline including iconic buildings like the Prudential Center and the John Hancock Building.]

During this time, when my whole world shrank to a few blocks around my house and the park down the road, Greater Boston made me feel connected to the city, to the diversity of it, to the places so familiar to me, to my home.

(I cried over Michael's letters in the park.)

Spread 3: The comedy and tragedy, the surrealism and all-too-real groundedness of Arden [drawing of a blood splatter and a magnifying glass] took me on an emotional journey through just about every feeling there is, some of them really intense. [Drawing of a house on fire.]

But even the normal parts - going to work, parties, air travel - felt distant and surreal, and the ridiculous parody subscription service ads felt way too real. [Drawing of a box with a pair of green socks in it, a reference to a classic Arden ad.]

(When Brenda mentioned going out to a bar with coworkers for drinks after work, I cried. In the park.)

Back: Thank you to podcasts

for making me feel seen and understood,

making me feel connected and grounded,

and giving me an outlet for my feelings

during that insane and hectic and scary year.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Vice surrenders

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in LA with Adam Conover at Vroman's, then on MONDAY in Seattle with Neal Stephenson, then Portland, Phoenix and more!

Vice died the way it lived: being suckered in by smarter predators, even as it trained its own predatory instincts on those more credulous than its own supremely gullible leadership. RIP, we hardly knew ye.

For those of you who don't know, Vice was a Canadian media success story. It was founded by a motley clique of hipsters, one of whom – founder of the Proud Boys – has since grown to be one of the world's great fascism influencers. Another perfected the art of getting young people to work "for exposure" even as he built a massive, highly lucrative media empire on their free labor:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/vice-oral-history/

Eventually, Vice transitioned to a string of progressively worsening corporate owners, each more dishonest, predatory – and gullible – than the last. The company was one of the most enthusiastic marks for Facebook's infamous "pivot to video" – in which Mark Zuckerberg destroyed half the media industry by tricking them into thinking that the public was clamoring for video content, based on fraudulent viewing numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video

Vice went all-in on video, spending hundreds of millions to finance Zuckerberg's doomed attempt to conquer Youtube. But unlike other the rubes who got zucked, Vice found greater fools to scam, convincing giant, slow-moving meidia companies that the best way to get in on the Next Big Thing was to shower them with vast sums of string-free money:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viceland_(Canadian_TV_channel)

And yet, at every turn, through a succession of increasingly incompetent owners who bought the stumbling, declining Vice at fire-sale prices and then proceeded to hack away at the wages and tools its journalists depended on while paying executives salaries so high that they beggared the imagination, Vice's reporters continued to turn out stellar material.

This went on literally until the last moment. The memorial posted by 404 Media rounds up a selection of major stories Vice's beleaguered, precarious writers produced even as Vice's vulture capitalist leadership were pulling the rug out from under them:

https://www.404media.co/behind-the-blog-vices-legacy-and-the-idea-that-the-internet-is-forever/

True to form, those private equity scumbags locked all those workers out of the company's CMS without notice – and then forgot to lock down the podcasting back-end. That allowed a group of Vice veterans – Matthew Gault, Emily Lipstein, Anna Merlan, Tim Marchman and Mack Lamoureux – to gather for a totally unauthorized, tell-all session that they pushed out on an official Vice channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKT4OtDEJRA

It's a hell of a listen. Not only do these Vice veterans have lots of fascinating history to recount, but they also describe the conditions under which those blockbuster stories of Vice's final days were produced. As the "visionary leaders" of the company paid themselves millions, they halted payments to key suppliers, from Lexisnexis to the interview transcription service the writers depended on. Writers paid out of pocket to search PACER court records.

Not only did Vice's reporters do incredible work under terrible and worsening circumstances, but the Vice writers who got out ahead of the total collapse are also doing incredible work. 404 Media is a writer-owned investigative news publisher founded by four Vice escapees – Samantha Cole, Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg and Joseph Cox, which is both producing incredible work and sustaining the writers who founded it:

https://www.404media.co/

All of which leads to an inescapable conclusion: whatever problems Vice had, they didn't include "writers don't do productive work" and also didn't include "that work isn't economically viable*. Whatever problems Vice had, they weren't problems with Vice's workers – it was a problem with Vice's bosses.

Which makes Vice's final, ignominious punishment at the hands of those bosses even more brutal, stupid and inexcusable. According to the leaked memos emanating from the company's investors and their millionaire C-suite toadies, the business's new strategy is abandoning their website in order to publish on social media.

This is…I mean, this,..

This is…

Wow.

I mean, wow.

The thing is, the social media business model is a giant rug-pull. They're not even bothering to hide their playbook anymore. For social media, the game is to encourage media companies to become reliant on third parties to reach their audiences. Once that reliance is established, the companies turn down – or even halt – the ability of those media companies to reach their audience altogether. Then, they charge the media companies to reach their audiences:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web

Now, this wasn't always quite so obvious. Back when Vice was falling for Facebook's "pivot to video," it wasn't completely obvious that the long con was to take your audience hostage and ransom them back to you. But deliberately organizing your business to be reliant on social media barons today? It's like trusting your money to Sam Bankman-Fried…in 2024.

If there was ever a moment when the obvious, catastrophic, imminent risk of trusting Big Tech intermediaries to sit between you and your customers or audience, it was now. This is not the moment to be "social first." This is the moment for POSSE (Post Own Site, Share Everywhere), a strategy that sees social media as a strategy for bringing readers to channels that you control:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/19/now-we-are-two/#two-much-posse

Predicting that a social media platform will rug the media companies that depend on it today doesn't take a Sun Tzu – as cunning strategies go, the hamfisted tactics of FB, Twitter and Tiktok make gambits like "Lucy and the football" look like von Clausewitz.

The most bonkers part of this strategy is that it's coming from private equity bosses, who laud themselves as the great strategists of the 21st century, whose claim on so much of our global capital and resources is derived from their brilliant insight, which allows them to buy "distressed assets" like Vice, "restructure" them to find "efficiencies" and sell them on.

The reality is that PE goons – like other financiers – are basically herding animals. Everyone's hit on the tactic of buying up beloved media companies – from the 150-year-old Popular Science to modern publications like CNet – and then filling them with spammy garbage in the hopes that Google will fail to notice and continue to award them pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

The fact that these billionaire brain-geniuses can't figure out how to "turn around" a site whose workers a) produce brilliant, popular, successful work; and b) depart to found successful firms that commercialize that work tells you everything about their ability to spot "a good business opportunity."

PE – like other mafiosi – only have one business-plan, the "bust out," where you invade a business that produces useful things, force them to pay your chosen suppliers sky-high fees for things they don't need, extract massive fees for your "management" and then walk away from the collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

[maureen-corpse]

All the news that's fit to print from r/fountainpens

So, I alluded yesterday to drama about fountain pen retailers and then I promised in the notes that I might write about the drama. And by golly, I'm going to do that!

First, caveats: I am not deeply involved in r/fountainpens (I only read and never post). I have seen some people talk about a related Discord server, which I am also not a part of. I am generally not deeply involved in the fountain pen community at large. I did join Fountain Pen Network at some point but I haven't posted in years. So, I was not involved in any of the interactions I'm going to talk about, and because some things have been deleted or only talked about, I'm going to be going off of my recollections. Remember, witness testimony is not always reliable! And witness testimony of witness testimony? Goodness gracious.

Also, this may get long, so buckle up.

Now, let's get started.

This is about the Goulet Pen Company. The Goulet Pen Company (GPC or Goulet) is a Virginia-based online seller of fountain pens and related paraphernalia: ink, paper, accessories, some glass dip pens, an occasional rollerball, etc. GPC also features a lot of useful educational tools, such as videos about pens and their various types and the handy Nib Nook, where you can compare the writing of different nibs with most variables removed. Goulet isn't really unusual for this; JetPens, for example, has guides as well. English does love alliteration, though, it has to be said. Go read Beowulf.

Goulet has also been producing a podcast, or as it is more commonly known, the Goulet Pencast, for some time. The main face of the Pencast is Drew Brown (along with Brian Goulet). Now, here's the big thing: Drew is no longer with GPC. The Pencast took a brief hiatus, and people who follow it were concerned, and the most recent episode confirmed that Drew would no longer be a part of the Goulet Pen Company or the Pencast. Drew is a much beloved figure. I personally never got into the Pencast (listen, the episodes are long!), but I saw him in product videos and never saw a reason to dislike him, so I'm sure that the Pencast was a way people really got to know and love him.

Now, Brian and Rachel Goulet, in the most recent episode, did not go into detail about why Drew was no longer with GPC; they confirmed his departure and expressed their sadness. Many r/fountainpen users would like to know more, and so they began speculating. Some came up with benign or not actually that fun for subreddit drama reasons: maybe Drew just moved on. Maybe there was a dispute over pay. Maybe Drew or a family member had a health issue he needed to leave to focus on. Other things were proposed: maybe it was actually a difference of political opinion--Drew seems to lean more liberal whereas the Goulets seem to lean more conservative.

At some point, someone pointed out this portion of a Goulet newsletter that had been sent out (apparently in August):

(transcription in alt text)

I admit: To me, this reads like a pretty typical "Hi we are a small business in the southern United States so here are three vague paragraphs about our life so that this marketing material we're sending has that personal family touch" thing.

However, some redditors latched on to the bit about them being on the startup team for a new church, and that fueled some of the speculation that Drew left Goulet because of political differences.

Now, here's where the Lockening began: someone figured out what the startup church was, probably using known facts about the Goulets (their location in Virginia and the date of the first service noted by Rachel above), and they found the startup church's parent church. And they found a podcast put out by that parent church and they hurried to r/fountainpens to post screenshots of a transcript from that podcast where the speaker compares homosexuality to murder. In the sense of "glorifying sins" or whatever, not saying "killing a man is the same as fucking him." This is the kind of rhetoric I see a lot, so I don't really get surprised and appalled by it the way some folks do. Anyway, the issue then became: do the Goulets espouse these beliefs?

Well, not to worry: someone else found a statement of belief from one of the churches and posted that! (No, I don't recall if it was the parent or the startup, and sadly, I don't have a screenshot.) Anyway, yes, they weren't big on homosexuality, and they were fans of male headship of the family. So fun. There was, interestingly, a line about how complete agreement wasn't necessary for membership in the church.

We don't actually know, still, if the Goulets espouse these beliefs. They're part of the launch team for this church, but I've seen people go to pretty big extremes for churches they don't share beliefs with simply because they like a style of worship better. People put blinders on all the time for things. (Am I making excuses for the Goulets here? I don't know. Maybe I'm trying to be a North Carolinian saying something nice about Virginians for once. I still don't like how they drive.)

Someone also pointed out that fairly recently GPC did advertise products in Pride Month. I don't think it's something they do consistently and the instance someone referenced was in 2022 or something, but that's not a long time ago.

Anyway, that thread was quickly locked, and as far as I can tell, has been deleted. This has not stopped other redditors from making new threads to try and discuss the Goulet Problem further, or to decry the actions of the mods, or to recommend queer-friendly fountain pen stores. These threads are also being locked.

An added bonus is that now without that thread for easy reference--even if it's just locked that means it can't stay at the top for discussion--some people now think Brian was on a podcast saying homosexuality was identical to murder. So! It's a mess! The fountain pen users are pretty cranky. I think that's where we are now, and I think that sums it up, for the most part. I welcome corrections and additional screenshots if people have them. 🫡

And I have not even gotten into the Noodler's thing here. And you know what? I don't think I will.

[transcriptionservicephiladelphia]

Why You Should Transcribe Your Podcast

You’ve launched your new podcast – congratulations! You’re likely on the lookout for more listeners. Or perhaps you’ve been running your podcast for a while now and want to know how to make it more engaging. Either way, the answer is simple: transcribe your podcast.

Creating a podcast transcription will:

Make Your Podcast Searchable

Make Your Podcast Shareable

Make Your Podcast Quotable

Make Your Podcast Accessible

Make Your Podcast Flexible

5 Reasons Why You Should Transcribe Your Podcast

Here are five great reasons why you should transcribe your podcast:

1. Make Your Podcast Searchable

This is the top reason. Whether your podcast is new or established, you’re always looking for more listeners. Transcribing your podcast will boost your search engine optimization (SEO) – that magic formula that helps you get found by Google. Audio files cannot be indexed, but the text can be indexed very easily! Providing a full podcast transcription will increase your search hits – and your number of listeners.

Bonus: the actual content in your podcast is more searchable when you transcribe your podcast. If you (or your listeners) want to go back to a particular spot in an interview from three months or two years ago, you don’t have to loop through hours of audio to find the spot. Just search on a few keywords, and you’ll instantly see the info you’re looking for. You don’t even have to remember what episode it was!

2. Make Your Podcast Shareable

You have some great content – and people want to share it. But your listeners, including other content creators, want to send their audiences to places with substance. So your podcast, as great as it is, might look a little barebone as just a link on your website. Encourage sharing by creating an “Episode Page” complete with a podcast transcription, excerpt, or synopsis.

3. Make Your Podcast Quotable

Podcasts that are easier to quote will attract more listeners, too. Often, it is a phrase or a prompt that hooks people into wanting to share your podcast link with others in their circle. However, not all will go through the trouble of typing out that quote. When you transcribe your podcast, you provide those people with ready-made quotes they can copy and paste into their own social media feeds, emails, websites, or wherever. Pro tip: create your own “pull-out quotes” and sprinkle them through the transcript to highlight quotes you think are particularly important.

4. Make Your Podcast Accessible

Millions of people are either deaf or hard of hearing. Why not make sure they can enjoy your content too? Transcribing your podcast opens it up to those who cannot listen. Not only that, many people out there would prefer to read than listen anyway, so you can also capture that audience.

5. Make Your Podcast Flexible

Remember that recording a “podcast” isn’t necessarily the end goal. Your end goal, ultimately, is to share information and (perhaps) entertain. Podcasting is the vehicle you’ve chosen to reach that goal – but it’s not the only way to convey your message. And, best of all, nothing stops you from using more than one. When you transcribe your podcast, you build yourself a new vehicle for a new audience. That flexibility will bring new listeners, allow you to cast a wider net, and ultimately be more things to more people.

How to Use Your Podcast Transcription

Transcribing your podcast is easy. Just contact Preferred Transcription, and we’ll get you set up. Then, you simply upload your audio or video files to our secure servers, and then we send back your podcast transcription in a Word doc or your preferred format – usually within 24 hours. From there, you can copy and paste to your website, create excerpts and synopses, and use pull-out quotes as you wish. It’s flexible, easy, and will bring you new listeners.

Call Preferred Transcription right now at 610-539-9208 or use our email form. You’ll find that when you transcribe your podcast, you’ll open up new worlds for your current listeners while attracting many new ones, too.

Blog is originally published at: https://www.preferredtranscriptions.com/why-you-should-transcribe-your-podcast/

It is republished with the permission from the author.

[neturbizenterprises]

Revolutionize Your Podcast with Podcastle AI

Explore the transformative impact of generative AI in podcast creation with us! This video delves into how AI technologies are revolutionizing the industry by automating content creation, enhancing audio quality, and personalizing listener experiences. We’ll discuss tools like Podcastle's clip generator and revoice feature that streamline workflows for podcasters and content creators.

Discover advanced methods for improving production processes, from AI-driven transcription services to programmatic podcast advertising. These innovations not only enhance accessibility but also help monetize content effectively. Join us as we uncover these exciting developments in media production!

#GenerativeAI #PodcastCreation

[transcriptioncity]

Transcription Services for Podcasts and Translation Services for Podcasts

Transcription Services and Translation Services for Podcasts The Rise of Podcasting Podcasting has experienced tremendous growth since its early days in the 2000s. Today, millions of podcasts cover countless topics, catering to diverse audiences worldwide. This boom has created a competitive landscape. Podcasters now strive to stand out and reach more listeners. Recent statistics show over 2…

[spectrascribe4u]

Use SpectraScribe's Transcription Services to Increase Productivity

SpectraScribe, a leading provider of transcription solutions, is thrilled to announce the launch of its innovative transcription services aimed at revolutionizing productivity across various industries. With a focus on delivering precision, reliability, and efficiency, SpectraScribe empowers businesses to streamline their operations and focus on core tasks while ensuring accurate documentation.

In today's fast-paced world, the demand for accurate and timely transcription services is more significant than ever. SpectraScribe rises to the challenge, offering a comprehensive suite of transcription solutions tailored to meet the diverse needs of businesses, professionals, and organizations.

Our mission at SpectraScribe is to enhance productivity and efficiency by providing best-in-class transcription services that exceed our clients' expectations. We understand the critical role that accurate documentation plays in various industries, from healthcare to legal and beyond. That's why we've developed advanced transcription technologies and assembled a team of skilled professionals to deliver unparalleled results.

With SpectraScribe's medical transcription services, healthcare providers can trust that patient records, medical reports, and other crucial documents are transcribed with the utmost accuracy and confidentiality. Leveraging industry-specific expertise and compliance with regulatory standards, SpectraScribe ensures that healthcare professionals can focus on patient care without worrying about documentation.

For legal professionals, SpectraScribe offers specialized legal transcription services, enabling law firms, courts, and legal departments to efficiently transcribe depositions, court proceedings, and legal documents with precision and attention to detail. By outsourcing transcription needs to SpectraScribe, legal professionals can save time and resources while maintaining the highest standards of accuracy and confidentiality.

In addition to medical and legal transcription, SpectraScribe provides typing services designed to support businesses across various sectors. From academic institutions and research organizations to corporate entities and media companies, SpectraScribe's typing services help streamline document creation and data entry tasks, enabling clients to focus on strategic objectives.

SpectraScribe's commitment to excellence, accuracy, and confidentiality makes it the preferred choice for businesses and professionals seeking to enhance productivity through transcription services. With customizable solutions, and a dedication to customer satisfaction, SpectraScribe is poised to transform the way organizations manage their documentation needs.

SpectraScribe is a leading provider of transcription services, offering accurate, reliable, and efficient solutions for businesses, professionals, and organizations across various industries. With a focus on excellence, confidentiality, and customer satisfaction, SpectraScribe is committed to helping clients unlock productivity and streamline their operations through expert support. For more information about SpectraScribe and its transcription services, visit spectrascribe.com or contact info@spectrascribe.com.

[theholmwoodfoundation]

Jeremy’s phone call to the Office doesnt go very well.

Enjoyed this? You can listen to the full pilot of The Holmwood Foundation now - wherever you get your podcasts!

CONTENT WARNING: SWEARING

Transcript under cut, or you can find the full transcript for episode one here: https://www.theholmwoodfoundation.com/services-2

Episode One is available now here: https://www.theholmwoodfoundation.com/listen-to-the-podcast/episode/1ca60685/the-holmwood-foundation-episode-one

Please consider donating to our season one Kickstarter!

PHONE VOICE: This call may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes. Please press one to continue. [BUTTON PRESS] JEREMY: Come on, come on. Please work. Please fucking work– PHONE VOICE: Hello, you are through to the Holmwood Foundation– JEREMY: Thank fuck– PHONE VOICE: –home of the world’s leading experts in classic haematology. Please select from one of the following options: Press one for Research. Press two for Charity Resources. Press three for Acquisitions. Press four to speak to an Operator. [ANGRY BUTTON PRESS] PHONE VOICE: Thank you. You have selected option Four. You are currently in a queue. Please hold. [HOLD MUSIC: SOFT CLASSICAL. WE HEAR THE WHISTLE OF WIND OUTSIDE ON THE MOORS] JEREMY: God, this fucking hotline. If I had my phone I could just– PHONE VOICE: Thank you for waiting. At The Holmwood Foundation, we have spent over a century working to improve our understanding of benign haematology and rare blood disorders, using generous donations from donors, patients and the public to save and improve lives. JEREMY: [EXASPERATED BREATH] PHONE VOICE: You are still in a queue. We will get to you as soon as we can. Your call is important to us. [HOLD MUSIC] JEREMY: Yes it must be really important, mustn't it? [HOLD MUSIC CUTS ABRUPTLY.] PHONE VOICE: I am sorry. We cannot take your call at the moment. Please leave your name and number and one of our team will get back to you. JEREMY: Get back to me? [VOICEMAIL BEEP.] JEREMY: Look, could someone please get my father, Mr Harker, to call me? I don’t care who he’s having drinks with in Amsterdam, I don’t care if he’s not talking to me right now. I can’t get hold of him or my PA or anyone. I am having a fucking mental breakdown, I’m stuck travelling with a woman claiming to be possessed by a ghost. Oh, and in case you haven’t fucking noticed, the Whitby building has been destroyed and all the thralls have escaped! Please just answer this message! [PHONE CUTS OUT] JEREMY: I didn’t say where I was…Fuck! [CALL ENDS]

[patchworkfairytales]

I am taking this podcast off Spotify

Because of Spotify's new terms of service, I have decided to no longer have Patchwork Fairy Tales on their platform. If I did they would have the right to transcribe or translate my stories, without even giving me the option to object if they get it wrong. It means they could change my stories without my input. That's absolutely unacceptable for a distribution platform. I can't accept these new terms, so I have to take the podcast off Spotify entirely.

I know a lot of you use Spotify, and I'm sorry to have to do this, but I don't see another solution. You will still be able to listen to my podcast on other podcast apps and you can always find every transcript and a streaming button on laurasimons.com. I'm currently working on editing some longer fantasy stories to upload and I have a wonderful fairy tale about a chivalrous knight in the works, so I really hope you'll stick around for those.

The new terms go into effect on the 15th of March 2024. So I will be taking my podcast off Spotify in about a week: between the 9th and 11th of March. If you have any questions, you can always email me at laurasimons.author@gmail.com or send me an ask or message here or @laurasimonsdaughter <3

[girl4music]

In celebration of XENA DAY I’m going to leave the link to this podcast episode that the She Nerds Out hosts did with Steven L. Sears right here and transcribe some of it for you that I find the most fascinating and validating in regards to how the TV show and TV ship inform and influence each other in that the story arc/plot/narrative always wraps around the characters of Xena and Gabrielle instead of the other way around.  

The way Steven (yes, a straight white middle aged man) talks about Xena and Gabrielle is remarkable to me. He has such respect and reverence and just absolute sincerity when he talks about them both as individual characters and as a relationship dynamic that is primarily and predominantly romantic in his eyes. He confirms exactly why I will always highly praise the creators/cast/crew for what they did with this TV show and this TV ship and the timelessly magical experience it has on me and I know always will have on me. I can't believe that I actually had a personal conversation with this man for over an hour because I feel like he is a kindred spirit of sorts to me. At least as far as my interest and passion for TV art/entertainment goes. The way I know and understand the characters on a much deeper level than the show itself could ever really represent them to and for me.

You’ve just got to love how Steven automatically and intentionally wrote Gabrielle as a comphet lesbian. And I resonate so strongly with his words about her story arc and her journey in terms of how it applies to Gabrielle’s love for and initial fear of loving Xena the way she thinks - at the time - she’s only supposed to love men. Of course she’s constantly “running home to mama” because that’s where she knows herself best even if she’s always felt too queer to be mama’s little girl. And there is that very quietly played theme with her where she’s constantly struggling with that internally which is so brilliantly communicated in both Steven’s writing and Renee’s nuanced portrayal of Gabrielle’s character. And that is exactly what a “comphet lesbian” is. It’s someone that habitually runs home even when they know they don’t belong there because it’s safer or more familiar for them than stepping into the dangerous unknown even when it feels so much more welcoming than home ever did.

‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ is a queer story from the get go. Episode 1 is very queer storytelling actually in the way that these 2 protagonist female characters meet each other and become family to one another. It’s “I feel like a stranger in my own home but I just met you and you seem to feel the same way as me - let’s just stop being strangers and be a home to each other.”

I would really recommend listening to the whole podcast episode because the whole thing is just amazingly in-depth and insightful but if you can’t do that please enjoy these transcriptions of what I think are the best parts of it that explain so much about where the creators/cast/crew’s minds were at VS where the network/studio/executive’s mind’s were at because it’s important to be aware that they were not queerbaiting or pandering or exploiting LGBTQ fans which many show’s creative teams and their network/streaming service platforms still do with their lead same-sex characters instead of take them seriously.

As I said - most of the creators/cast/crew agreed with the fans and even viewed the TV show as a love story between the 2 lead characters themselves. Especially the big names. Steven is a great example of that fact. And if they were just “fan-servicing”, then they were serving themselves just as much because they wanted canon Xena and Gabrielle just as much as the fans did. They may never have initially saw them that way but they clearly knew that it was the natural progression for them so they didn’t dispute it. They embraced it.

STEVEN: “One of the things we discussed at the beginning was a flaw that you find in a lot of TV shows that have 2 leads. Generally, 1 is the lead who has the name on the banner and the other one is the ‘sidekick’. And I remember saying - not as an ultimatum, I just casually mentioned it in the meeting - I said ‘I don’t believe in sidekicks. Sidekicks are the props that you kill off at the end of the first season so that people will tune in the next season. They’re kind of useless and they just exist.’ And everybody agreed with that and we did not want to get to the point where Gabrielle was just standing in the background going ‘Get him Xena! Get him Xena! Get him Xena!’ And I remember we angst during the baby tossing episode ‘cause that’s all she did. She participated by grabbing the baby but she literally was acting ‘Get him Xena! Get him Xena!’ And so we decided that Gabrielle had to have a solid progression that was not just a convenience for us. In other words we didn’t want to do this just because ‘well, we don’t want her to be a sidekick so we’re going to pretend like she’s important.’ We felt she had to be. And so obviously the relationship between the 2 characters folded in with that perfectly. So this was one of the episodes (‘The Greater Good’) where I said - I kind of posed the question in my mind - I thought ‘what if Gabrielle was the Xena of this episode?’ Which, obviously, is what came out of it.”

HOST: “Speaking of that episode though,… that’s one of the most iconic episodes of the show. Definitely of that first season if not of the show generally. So when you say that building up [Gabrielle’s] character and making her more important to the story and finding that through the relationship - was their relationship sort of just natural or was that something that you guys were like ‘yeah, no, this has to be a huge part of what the show is now.’”

STEVEN: “There’s no yes and no for any of that so… the thing is that every TV show - unless it’s adapted from a novel or unless you actually chart out 5 seasons right at the beginning - which a lot of TV series now are doing because of the way that we stream. They’re basically novels - at a certain point as you begin to develop it, it takes on its own life. With everybody’s contributions the characters become real and just as all of you are real, I could write stories that you could do, but you will live those stories differently. Even if you do them together, you’re going to live them individually. So when we started out the series we were looking for having a successful series. We wanted to have fun - everybody in this business wants to have fun - and we wanted to get another season. But, in the way that I write - and fortunately in this particular group we all had the same mindset - we don’t believe in doing action for the sake of action. We don’t believe in doing comedy for the sake of comedy. We don’t believe in doing anything that’s not rooted in character first. So when we started the series I had made a comment about their relationship. I actually said ‘we’re going to have a very large gay/lesbian following’ and some of the people in the office were like ‘why would you think that?’ and I said ‘well,… my first show was 3 guys on a boat.’ And back then you didn’t have the internet for fanfiction but there were news magazines that went out that fans would put together. Fanzines. And - of course - I subscribed to 1 4 Riptide and almost all the fanzines dealt with their relationships with how they regarded each other. On every level. Romantic levels and just on brotherly levels or anything like that… but their relationships were a lot closer. So what I realized with all the subsequent series that I was doing - every time there were 2 leads of the same gender, this type of fanfiction was out there. Now as a backstory, I come out of theatre. I’ve been doing theatre since I was 12 years old. So being around the LGBTQ community was just… Tuesday, you know? So, for me, as I kind of explained this, I said ‘any time a dispossessed group of our society finds validation in any of our media - they grab it. Because they’re not given it, they have to grab it.’ And I said ‘so, you know, it’s going to happen.’ And thank god nobody went ‘oh, we have to avoid that’ or ‘we have to stay away from that’. Okay? Nobody in the room … So what we just figured was like we’re just going to let these characters evolve the way they evolve. And anybody looking at these characters and the way they came together and the adventures they were going on - I mean in retrospect,… was it really a surprise that they would have this incredibly close bond as they went forward? I mean however you ship it, it doesn’t matter. That bond had to happen or Gabrielle would have been totally unnecessary. We would have gotten rid of her. She would have been an annoyance. As opposed to us embracing the annoying aspect at the beginning and then allowing the audience to watch this incredible growth that she never would have had without meeting Xena and the incredible growth that Xena had that she would never have had if she hadn’t met Gabrielle. I’ve always said ‘Sins Of The Past’ was a suicide episode. Xena was trying to kill herself. She had nothing left. When she buried her weapons she was saying ‘I’m leaving myself open to the next warlord to kill me’ and then she hears the noise in the distance and she goes over there and she sees this young girl standing up against warlords and there’s a part of her that says ‘I was like that. That was me. What happened?’”

STEVEN: “I will say though that as the show became more popular the studio backed off on a lot of things with us because we were doing well and they trusted us. I want to look at it that way anyway. The President of Universal Television during that time was a guy named Dan Philly and I knew Dan since I started. He was actually one of the studio executives from NBC for Riptide. So I knew him from back then. Really cool guy. Awesome guy. And he was like ‘look, you know if this is working, people are happy, you seem to be walking that line…’ - which I always snickered at - it’s ‘cause ‘yeah, cause we’re NOT walking that line’ - he said ‘just go for it.’ And he was also one of the old style studio executives where if they wanted something they would trust you. They would turn to you and they would say ‘can you have a little more titillation? ‘Cause we like that. That helps. Give us more titillation.’ But they wouldn’t tell us to do it. They wouldn’t say ‘this is how you do it.’ They wouldn’t say ‘redesign their costumes so that their boobs pop out.’ They would just leave it to us. And so we would say ‘oh, this scene where they’re in the tavern talking about these really intense things that are going on in their life - we’ll put it in a hot tub!’ And that actually is how the hot tub tradition began because we thought ‘well, that makes it titillating’ and yet… we used it for the story and… it actually is kind of a bonding thing… ‘so put it in there.’ They’re watching the dailies and you hear [Lucy] say ‘where’s the soap?’ and we go ‘do we leave that in?’ ‘Yeah, we’ll leave that one in.’”

HOST: “As far as from the fan side of it, I don’t remember when the term ‘subtext’ started to become a word that the fans threw around and it obviously has become it’s own thing: the subtext of the show. But it sounds to me like it was just very organic for you guys. But when did you start to hear of the fans - LGBTQ+ specifically - latching on to what we would call ‘the subtext of the show.’ Was there like any kind of feedback you were getting? Were you then more inclined to kind of give us a little more like ‘wink wink, nudge nudge’ moments like the hot tub? Were you receptive to what the fans were asking for?”

STEVEN: “Yes and no. With the internet obviously we had direct access to the fans and we always made it a rule that we were not going to follow where the fans wanted us to go. We hoped that they would follow with us. But at the same time we kind of adapted things. I remember - because of my geeky nature - I was the one who was online first. I was really into that. I was the one who found the first AOL chatroom that Laura, a little 14 year old girl had set up for Xena. So I was listening in. And for those of you who remember back then, I never hid who I was. I wasn’t a lurker. I would go in and I would say ‘this is who I am’ not because I wanted everybody to go ‘ooo’ but I would say ‘talk freely.’ I said ‘I will leave the room if 1 of 2 things happen: if 1. you start talking about episodes you want to see because I can’t ethically listen to that or 2. if I become the centre of conversation ‘cause that’s not the point.’ I said ‘if I do that, don’t take offence, that’s just my own little ethics.’ But I was able to listen in. And so I do remember that at the beginning of this I told Rob this was going on and he said something to the effect of ‘yeah, well, it’s good they’re talking about the show but, you know, we don’t really care what they’re saying there, we’ve got to keep focused.’ I’m like ‘okay.’ And like an episode would come back and he would come out and come into my office and he’d say ‘so umm,… what do the fans think?’ And again, I was kind of looking for this because of my background so I was a little more aware of what was happening. The early discussions among the fans of where this was going was extremely interesting to me and I tried my best not to get involved in it because I wanted everybody to interpret it the way that they wanted to. I’m always amazed by the Xena fandom. I’ve been on other shows that have fandom and certainly a lot of my friends have huge fanbases on their shows, and I’ve said this when I’ve been on podcasts for other shows: the Xena fandom is the most incredible fandom that I’ve ever been involved with for a number of reasons. And one of them is that at the beginning - keeping in mind this was obviously in the middle 90’s - there was still some contentiousness as if people were trying to protect the girls from being lesbian. It’s like ‘we have to protect them, don’t say that!’ ‘Oh, okay, good, you’re going to protect me from what? Being a straight white male. Oh, thank you very much.’ So it was a little bit of that going on and there was some fire that went back and forth. I remember a few of the transcripts that were just so amazing. I kind of kept track of them. And what I started to see though with the Xena fans - which I loved - is that the people who wanted to maintain their shipper stance became friends. They began talking about it with respect to each other as opposed to ‘no, you’re that camp, I’m this camp’ and then the major contention was ‘do we ship Xena with Ares?’ And I’m like ‘okay, so what you’ve done is you’ve defaulted to the idea that she’s already with Gabrielle and now you’re just talking about a jealousy thing.’ And I’m like ‘that’s totally cool. I love that!’”

So the characters evolved. Now had they evolved in a different direction, well, we’d be having a different conversation here. Going back to the studio, one of the things that did come up was the studio did say ‘can you somehow remind people that, you know, Xena still likes guys and Gabrielle still likes guys.’ But they never said that they can’t like each other. And I’m thinking to myself ‘okay, what you’ve described to me is either the ultimate bisexual or what you’ve described to me is’ - and I don’t have a word for this ‘cause, you know, straight white male, how would I know this? - ‘is many of my friends who are a lesbian but denied that identification and fought themselves, and then finally came out - liberated themselves.’ So I said ‘you’re kind of describing that.’ And I remember thinking to myself ‘and that’s going to be Gabrielle.’ That she’s going to fight a lot of this internally. And so, you know, when we got to the Perdicus episode - with the marriage … you know we all get together and we would talk about how we’re going to put it together and some of us would come up with little things that go into somebody else’s script and it’s always the original writer that really is the owner of the script, but we always contribute things. And I remember we got to that thing and I’m like ‘okay, I know where I’m leaning on this’ and I’m going to lean into the curve on this one because what’s happening with Gabrielle is that she’s gone this far with Xena and suddenly this reminder of what her hidden past was - what her past was when she - well… you could say ‘denied’ -  there’s a time where - this is difficult for me because I’m not a gay woman so I can’t speak with authority from this. I can only say I’ve had friends that have gone through this - where their coming out process is so scary that sometimes they - what I call - ‘run home to mama.’ And mama is where they were - at least they could deal with it - it was familiar enough. So when Perdicus comes in,… she’s questioning a lot of things and she thinks ‘okay, and now I’m questioning where I am and why I’m here,… so I’m running home to mama because Perdicus represents my childhood, my past, my village.’ And that scene where Gabrielle and Xena have that discussion before Gabrielle goes off to marry Perdicus - again, I always remind myself I’m NOT that orientation, I’m NOT that gender, I’m NOT that - but that scene still sticks in my mind because it broke my heart because she’s looking right at the woman who is her destiny and she’s saying ‘I’m so scared of you because of what you’re going to reveal about me and so I’m going to run away to something I should never have been apart of.’ And I’ve seen people go through that so that scene still sticks in my mind. It’s literally in my mind. I see the entire image of that scene.”

HOST: “When you say that - obviously you’re not a gay woman but you know humans and you know people and at the end of the day those characters were very human and - I hate to say it, love is love - it’s very cliché, but it is, right? Of course, why wouldn’t you understand what those 2 character’s are feeling … Because you’re a human being who understands the concept of love. But I love what you said. It’s like, yeah, of course, Gabrielle knew what being married to Perdicus living in her old village would be like. Like you said - she could endure that. She’d been there. She understood it. If she stayed with Xena, it’s scary, it’s the unknown and it’s that great inner conflict in her. I hadn’t really thought about it but that scene is very heartbreaking and it’s got to be one of my favourites.”

STEVEN: “When she left the village that little girl was looking at adventure because she was bored. She had no idea what she was getting into on every level. Not just the action level, the adventure level, the danger level - but the emotional level. She had no idea. So then she got to a point where that all scared her. She was more scared of that than she was about the adventure and the danger. Warlords did not scare her the way that this scared her. And, you know, it was a huge turning point. Now whether you ship one way or the other way on this, it still works because she had to find her destiny. And I also make a little distinction in my mind that Gabrielle’s destiny was not to be with Xena. Gabrielle’s destiny was to be with herself and to love who she chose to love. It was to find her happiness and BOOM… it walks into her life. And that is the scariest thing that can happen to a person and it’s hard to admit it. So I’ve often described the relationship at the beginning as: because Xena was much more experienced Xena was much more focused on what she had won and lost in her life and she had a lot of repair work to do in her life. Gabrielle had a lot of growing to do. So when Xena and Gabrielle came together, I made this distinction: I said that Gabrielle loved Xena ‘cause ‘AWESOME! XENA! The legends, the things I’ve heard about you!’

So Gabrielle loved Xena… but Xena was IN LOVE with Gabrielle… from the moment they met.”

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 18 April 1945 workers in Turin, Italy, walked out on strike in protest at Nazi Germany occupation. Workers and resistance fighters distributed leaflets the previous night calling for a walkout. On the morning of April 18, factories, workshops, shops, markets, schools, transport and postal and telephone services were all shut down. Some workers, like at Fiat Mirafiori, occupied their plants, while thousands of others took to the streets. A huge march went through Piazza Sabotino, headed by women carrying Italian flags and placards, calling on the fascists to surrender, and singing the "Red Flag". One eyewitness, Giorgio Amendola, reported: "What impressed me was the confidence of the crowd, the firm and serene courage and an air of celebration and joy, everyone was happy and seemed to be saying: you see how strong we are. The fascists did not show up. In fact, the whole neighborhood was in our hands". Just over a week later, on April 27, partisans entered the city and by the following day the last remaining fascist troops had fled. We are currently producing a podcast miniseries about the partisan resistance in Italy, in conversation with surviving participants. You can get first listen, and help support our work like this by joining us on patreon. This helps us fund our work like producing the podcast, funding translation and transcription, purchasing research materials and so on. Learn more, sign up and get access to exclusive content at https://patreon.com/workingclasshistory Pictured: partisans in Turin around this time https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=611190447720841&set=a.602588028581083&type=3