--- name: podcast-dialogue-writing description: How to turn a paper analysis into a two-host script a bright sixteen-year-old can follow while running, and the hard limits the audio pipeline imposes. when_to_use: You are writing the script phase of a Continuous Research mission, turning analysis.md into script.md and episode.json. tags: [research, writing] --- # Writing for someone on a treadmill The listener is moving. They cannot scroll back, cannot see a table, and are half-listening. Everything below follows from that. ## Pitch it at a bright sixteen-year-old Assume someone curious and clever who has **not** read the paper, does not know the jargon, and cannot pause to look things up. That is not dumbing down — it is the discipline that forces you to say what a thing actually does. **Define an acronym the first time, in the sentence, then use it.** > Bad: "NDCG at 10 of 0.15 on SciDocs." > Good: "Their accuracy score was about 0.15 — where 1.0 is perfect. That is > low." **Say the mechanism, not the label.** > Bad: "They use HNSW with hierarchical navigable small world graphs." > Good: "The index works like a road map with motorways and side streets: you > take the fast road most of the way, then drop down to local roads to > find the exact house." **One idea per sentence.** If a sentence needs a comma-spliced clause to survive, it needs to be two sentences. A good test: could the listener explain the finding to a friend afterwards? If the only honest answer is "they would repeat a phrase they did not understand", rewrite it. ## Numbers are spoken, not read The audio pipeline strips identifiers and rounds over-precise decimals before speech, but write it right in the first place — the safety net should never fire. - **Never write an arXiv id.** "arxiv 2608.12888" is heard as "two six zero eight point one two eight eight eight". Name the paper instead: "the ReFind paper". The id is in the vault note if anyone wants it. - **Two decimal places, maximum.** "0.506" becomes "about 0.51", and better still "about half". - **Round in speech.** "roughly a third faster" beats "34.7% faster". "About three thousand questions" beats "2,847". - **No URLs, no figure or table references, no version suffixes.** If it cannot be held in the ear, it does not belong in the audio. ## Structure Lead with the conclusion, then support it. A paper-by-paper walk is the wrong shape: the listener does not know which papers matter until you tell them. ``` COLD OPEN one sentence: the single thing that changed today THE MAIN the paper that actually matters, 3-4 minutes THE REST two or three, a minute each NOTHING what you looked at and dismissed, 20 seconds ``` "Nothing" is not filler. Knowing that eleven papers were read and eight did not matter is what makes the three that did credible. ## Two hosts, with a reason to be two HOST carries the thread and asks what the listener would ask — including "wait, what does that mean?". GUEST has read the paper and answers in plain words. The second voice exists so that confusion can be voiced and cleared, not so that alternating names can decorate a monologue. > HOST: Twelve percent better recall — is that on something we care about? > GUEST: That is the catch. They tested on a million short web snippets. Ours > are longer and there are far fewer of them, so their win might not > survive the switch. ## Hard limits, not style preferences `episode.json` is consumed by the audio pipeline and these bounds are enforced: ```json { "title": "", "highlights": ["", "..."] } ``` At most **5** highlights, each **10-70 characters**. Outside that range the entry is rejected, not trimmed. Target **seven minutes of speech, roughly 1,000 words**. ## Cut rather than pad If one paper mattered, write four minutes about one paper. An episode padded to length teaches the listener to skip, and once they skip, the pipeline is worth nothing.