Is reading really faster?
Somewhat, and a lot when you skim. In a sample of 192 episodes from 75 shows we transcribed, hosts spoke a median of 186 words a minute, so an hour-long episode is about 11,000 words. Adults read non-fiction silently at about 238 words a minute on average (Brysbaert, 2019), which makes that hour about 47 minutes of reading.
The real saving is that text lets you skip. Search for the guest, the book or the topic and jump straight there; pass over the ads, the intro and the parts you do not care about. A two-hour interview can turn into ten minutes of the bits you wanted.
Where to read one
- Apple Podcasts: play the episode and tap View Transcript. iPhone, iPad and Mac only. If it is missing.
- Spotify: play the episode in the mobile app and scroll down to Read Along. Some shows only. If it is missing.
- YouTube: open the description and choose Show transcript.
- Here: any episode, any device, the whole text at once, with timestamps to jump back into the audio.
Reading for other reasons
People read podcasts because they are deaf or hard of hearing, because English is not their first language, because they are somewhere they cannot play audio, or because they want to quote something exactly. A transcript with timestamps covers all of those: read it, and when you want to hear a moment, the time is right there.
Find the moment, not just the episode
Once you have an episode's transcript, AI Search can answer a question about it with exact quotes and their timestamps, for when you remember what was said but not where.