Episode 125: Not Enough Sharks

Off Topic 8This week, we present to you our eighth Off Topic episode!

That’s right folks! We haven’t had one of these in a while! In fact, our previous Off-Topic episode was in 2015!

If you are a newer listener, here’s what’s going on: Windy and I sometimes wander off topic. Or one of our husbands starts talking to us. Or a dog rampages into the room. Or we just can’t talk properly, because we’re drunk. That means that there is a lot of audio that gets clipped out of our regular episodes. Our Off Topic episodes are your chance to hear the best of our outtakes.

The bits you are about to hear were all recorded sometime between December 2015 and January 2017. The samples range wildly in subject matter, audio quality, and coherence.

In addition to Windy’s voice and my voice, you will also hear the voices of:

Alee Ellingsberg
David Tyler McKay
Duck Washington
Fes Works
Jerry Belich
Luke Mullen
Paul Comeau

More show notes behind the cut!

People mentioned:
Ryan Reynolds
Geoffrey Rush
Gerard Butler
Alex Proyas
Rufus Sewel
Nicolaj Coster-Waldau
Bryan Brown
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Zack Snyder
Daveed Diggs
Brian Keene
C. Robert Cargill
Tim Wick
Chris Bowlsby
James Stewart
Monica Bellucci
Daniel Craig
Lea Seydoux
Takashi Miike
Aishwarya Rai
Rajinikanth
Paul Walker

Movies mentioned:
Deadpool
Blade
Superman
X-Men
Spider-Man
2012
Sharknado
The Manitou
Gods of Egypt
Thor
Annie Get Your Gun (stage musical)
Broadway My Way (stage musical)
The Wiz (stage musical)
Purlie (stage musical)
Applause (stage musical)
Key and Peele (TV)
Interstellar
Four Weddings and a Funeral
SPECTRE
Pi
Requiem for a Dream
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Bad Lieutenant
Bringing Out the Dead
The Happiness of the Katakuris
Enthiran
Re-Animator
Once Upon a Time (TV)
Lost (TV)
Love Actually

3 comments

  1. Ah, that was fun!

    I’m curious: Is the clapping thing meant to give you a sharp spike to look for in the audio editing software, or does it serve as a peak for a normalizing pass?

    1. Both, really! Mostly it’s for syncing tracks. We record three audio files for each episode: the raw audio from the Skype call (which has both our voices, but sucks for quality), Windy’s microphone feed from her computer, and my microphone feed from my computer. I use the Skype track to sync the two raw microphone feeds together in a stereo track. The clapping provides a sharp, clear spike in the audio that I can use to accurately line up all three recordings.

      The Skype track eventually gets trashed during the editing process. It’s useful to realign the two single-voice tracks later in the episode if they go out of sync (which they sometimes do). It also serves as a Plan B in case something catastrophic happens to one of the single-voice tracks.

      1. Aha, I didn’t think about the Skype angle, that makes a whole ton of sense to me now. Thanks!

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