Formats and Speakers
When you ask us to write an episode, the brief is what decides whether it sounds like two people who know each other or two strangers reading facts. This is what each setting does.
The topic
Be specific. The topic is the single biggest lever on quality.
- Weak: "remote work"
- Strong: "whether remote work actually made engineering teams more productive, or just moved the meetings into Slack"
Name the question, not the field. A question gives the speakers something to disagree about; a field gives them a list to recite.
Formats
| Format | Who's in it | What it sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Debate | Two opposed speakers | Neither concedes. They challenge each other directly and end still disagreeing. |
| Interview | A curious host, one expert | The host asks and follows up; the guest carries every piece of substance. |
| Co-hosts | Two people who both know it | They build on each other — one raises a point, the other extends it. |
| Panel | A moderator and up to three guests | Each guest has a distinct angle. The moderator directs and keeps time. |
| Solo | One voice | A monologue to the listener. No interviewer. |
| Custom | Whatever you describe | No format rules. Your instructions are the whole brief. |
Co-hosts is the safe default if you are not sure.
Speakers
Each speaker has a name, a role, an optional background and personality, and — in Debate and Panel — a position they argue.
Name — becomes the cast name and the label in the script. Keep names distinct and easy to say.
Role — host, co-host, expert, skeptic, moderator or guest. This decides who explains and who asks.
Background — "aeronautical engineer, twenty years on airframes". This is where an episode gets its specifics: a speaker with a background cites things from it.
Argues that… — the position this speaker defends. Debate and Panel only. Give the two sides genuinely opposed positions or the debate collapses into agreement.
Personality — up to four adjectives. Give your speakers different ones. Two "warm, enthusiastic" hosts are indistinguishable; one warm and one blunt sound like two people.
Pick for me
Pick for me fills in names, roles and contrasting personalities in one click.
It deliberately leaves Background and Stance empty. Those are the two fields only you can answer, and a plausible-sounding invention there would quietly steer the whole episode somewhere you did not ask for.
Heat
Five steps, from Civil to Combative. It controls how hard the speakers push back.
- Civil / Relaxed — disagreements are raised gently and moved past.
- Engaged — real disagreement, argued in good faith. Most episodes want this.
- Heated — speakers interrupt and call each other's reasoning wrong.
- Combative — they cut each other off mid-sentence, get exasperated, and accuse each other of dodging the question.
Heat does not apply to Solo.
Length
Five to sixty minutes. It is a target, not a promise — we aim for it, then you trim or extend in the editor.
Longer episodes are split into sections, each written in turn with a note of what has already been covered. That is what stops an hour-long episode repeating itself.
Advanced
- Audience — beginner, general or expert. Decides how much gets explained and whether jargon is defined.
- Register — informative, funny, dramatic or journalistic. How it sounds, not what it covers.
- Show name — used in the intro and outro if you include them.
- Structure — cold open, intro, outro, ad break, listener question. All optional.
- Laughs and reactions — allows
[laugh],[sigh]and short reactions like "Mm-hm." - Anything else — free text, and the escape hatch when the options above do not cover it. "They should keep interrupting each other. Set it in 1974."
One limit worth knowing
The speakers are fictional characters. We will write an episode about a real public figure and their published positions, but we will not write a script presented as that person's own words, or as a real recording or interview.