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ymeskhout  9mo ago (text post)   793 thread views

The Bailey Podcast E033: Jad Slays Journalism

Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, and RSS.

In this episode, we discuss Jad Sleiman's story and the current state of journalism.

Participants: Yassine, Jad.

Links:

The Crass-Examination Of Jad Sleiman (Blocked & Reported)

A WHYY journalist was fired for his stand-up comedy videos (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Jad Slay (Instagram)

Recorded 2023-07-24 | Uploaded 2023-07-28

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Jad is funny and winning, the two of you had good chemistry, and I appreciated how he responded to your gentle pushback (about the emptiness of the term "extremism", about legal tactics, etc.). He tells funny stories, communicates how broken the news is in a way that's very accessible, and makes interesting observations (for example, about why Substack can't solve the weaknesses of the legacy media).

I generally prefer reading, like many others here, and Jad's sound could have been better, but I really loved this episode. It's the first Bailey episode I'm sharing with normal friends, which I can do in part because he's insulated from some predictable attack angles by virtue of being Arab-American. On top of that, his humor plays better than the (understandably) strident confrontational attitude of many other people in similar positions (like, say, Ayaan Hirsi Ali). Anyway, great job, from a non-podcast type.

Thanks man, I'm glad you liked it! His takes on journalism were not at all what I intended to cover but I found his perspective very interesting and so just kept digging further into that topic. The Motte and similar corners of the internet are understandably very into text for obvious benefits, but I've been working on a post about the enduring utility of having real-time conversations about topics because it provides benefits that can't be as easily replicated via text exchanges. Either way though, once I figure out a good workflow for Whisper, I fully intend to offer transcripts for all episodes.

Is there a free "put podcast in, get transcript out" site the way there are hundreds of "put video-site URL in, get mp3 out" sites?

It looks like the online price of audio transcription still pretty high - AWS and azure have prices around 1-1.5 (on demand) / 0.5 (pre-commitment) dollars per hour of audio, and otter.ai's pro plan seems to cost $0.2/hour transcribed (but they might be pricing in usage under the limit). That's a bit expensive for a free service one uploads podcasts to, if you're trying to make money via ads.

Maybe you can run one of OpenAI's whisper models (or maybe there's a better open transcription model) locally? I think it takes a while though.

Plenty of the paid services (otter descript etc) have free tiers where you get a few hours per month.

AI-assisted transcripts have gotten way better recently so I'll see about including one by default in the future

Make sure to try out Whisper from OpenAI. It's both free and the SOTA, you'll be impressed.

Seconded.

I don’t like podcast formats, but to get this story, it’s that or pay the Philly Inquirer.

It lets me in. Probably something to do with JavaScript or cookies (I have both off by default and only turn them on if something won't work).

I also don't really go in for podcasts.

But Archive.IS is your friend, assuming this is the story you're referring to.

Thanks.

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