Scribe

says the guy who has a pencil podcast.

Hello!

Is it the Guinness harp?

Nice, very cool.

Narwhal.

Yeah. I, the thing I'm gonna talk about is, is not super stationary related, although it's about this podcast. But one thing, one thing that I realized coming up on it was that we missed our 12th anniversary recording. So what, like a month ago at this point, uh, we turned 12, which is just crazy to think about. Uh, we've been doing this for, More than a decade. So, um, I have a little mustache. I know Gillette's gonna send us a razor in the mail. Um, did you guys get that when you were, when you were kids? I don't remember what age, but there was some point at which just like Gillette had my like personal demographics information and at some birthday, I don't remember which one they sent me like a razor in the mail, which was what? Which was brilliant on their part, because guess what refills I bought for years after that was Gillette.

You were coming out and be like, ah, hey mom. And I was like, ow.

I think your hair was different. Your hair was already really gray.

Yeah.

I think you lean into it. That's, yeah. Yeah. Um, so, uh, we didn't record, but there was, I wanted to do something. And so I was, at that point I was, I was interviewing for a job with a company that makes like Vibe coding software. So like AI-powered code software. So I know some people listening are probably gonna roll their eyes at this, but I was like, I'm going to vibe code a thing for Erasable. And something that I've wanted for years and years and years is transcripts of our episodes. Cuz I know that in the Erasable group we had at least one person who, um, was, uh, deaf or hard of hearing. And so like, it used to be like trans— like automatic transcripts were too expensive and also like really crappy quality that I just was never able to like figure out how to make them. But like nowadays they're cheap and they're really good quality. So I was like, how can I like just like get every single episode run through this transcription service and transcribed? And then what do I do with it? So I put together like this little workflow and I made a new little sub-website, scribe.erasable.us, if you want to go look at it, and it should have Every single podcast episode, 230, well, by the time you listen to this, 236 of them with just some information about it, like who's on the show, the duration. Uh, I even have like a word count of how many words were spoken on the show. And the trouble is, is it's not super good at knowing which of us is which. So probably several episodes in here are like, like it says Tim when they mean Johnny, or it says Andy when they mean Tim, you know, something like that.

It's pretty good at tracking voices, uh, and knowing the difference between voices, but it's not as good at the, they call it diarization, like the, like attaching the name to the, to the voice. If anybody is, is reading this and listening to the episode and you're like, hey, that's not correct. Like, please let me know. Cause it's not too hard to fix. This was, it was a really fun project. It was like just so satisfying to do. So I am From that, like, because basically Claude Code went through all of these episodes, I was like, hey, give me some insights about the podcast that I may not otherwise know. And I would like to read you a short report. I already posted this to our Patreon, just like as a little report, just in case anybody is interested. But I think people here might be interested. So I did a deep analysis. It's 234 episodes. We have spoken, we have published 2.58 million words.

Yeah, so we've— that's the equivalent of about 25 novels or roughly 86 hours of continuous reading aloud. Yeah, which is just an entire day, everybody. Yeah. So here's the thing, who talks the most? So what's your guesses? Which one of us talks the most, do you think?

Just do it.

Oh, do you think so?

according to Claude, it's me by a wide margin. Wow, I was right! I talked 42.7% of the, of the word share. Johnny is 23% of the share and Tim is 34% of the share.

That's true. That's a good point.

Wow. Yeah.

And I can ask it. So, but here's the thing, Tim, you were right in one aspect of this in that it's a little bit more nuanced. Tim speaks the longest per turn. Oh, at 34.4 words per contribution, per volley, compared to Andy's 28.7 and Johnny's 23.5.

Yeah, Tim tends to hold the floor.

Yeah. Uh, you tend to hold the floor longer when you speak, while I contribute more frequently with shorter interjections. Um, Johnny is the most economical speaker, but that also means when he goes deep on something, it stands out. So Claude, Claude thinks you're really—

Yeah, that's what it says. Can't argue with, with AI. Um, so a couple interesting things over time, the show has gotten tighter. So the early episodes, 2014, 2015 episodes averaged about 15,000 words and peak verbosity was 2017. Um, it was 16,200 words and then 20. 2021 onward, uh, episodes were trimmed down to about 11,000 to 12,000 words. So about a quarter shorter than it used to be. So yeah. So a few, a few ling— they call it linguistic fingerprints. So each of you has a genuinely distinctive vocabulary that bleeds through across hundreds of hours of conversation. So Andy talks mostly about design, like illustration, designers, domain apparently shows up at disproportionate rates. Daiso also gets a notable signal. Andy is the host most likely to say the word interesting. 906 times, more than Johnny and Tim combined. Exactly 269 times and 4,800 times. That's, uh, Johnny brings the culture. Nietzsche, bookbinding, BritBox, Amtrak, and Cambridge are all heavily Johnny skewed. That tracks.

Yeah, he's the host most likely to say I mean and sort of and the least likely to say just or basically his speech patterns are the most distinct of the three. Oh, so there you go.

Tim, Tim is the music guy, so songs— you have jazz, songwriter, and petty, as in Tom, are disproportionately Tim.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, Asheville is a Tim signature, naturally. He says love it more than Andy and Johnny combined. 241 times versus 124 total and has the highest rate of actually and I mean among the hosts.

So, uh, all 3 of you lean on like, but the rates differ. And here's the thing is I often cut out the likes when I'm editing. So this is all the ones that just made it in. Andy says it 328 times per 10,000 words. Tim is at 297, and Johnny is the most restrained at 237. Kind of is Mashley Vandy's thing versus Tim and Johnny. Johnny's highest rate filler, as you know. Yeah, it says most— it says it's his most distinctive verbal tic relative to the others.

So some stuff about the content. The most discussed brand across the entire run, what do you guys think it is?

It's Field Notes.

Uh, with, with 1,706 mentions to Blackwing's 602. For a pencil, for a pencil podcast, the fact that a notebook brand edges out the most famous pencil is a fun detail. So the top 5 is Field Notes, Blackwing, CW Pencils, Enterprise, Musgrave, and Moleskine, which I think tracks, right? Um, so some brand trends over time. Uh, Palomino went from 121 mentions in 2014. To essentially zero by 2025. Blackwing stays remarkably consistent, 125 to 211 a year. Musgrave had a resurgence in 2018.

Possibly tied to their production changes. And then Field Notes peaked in 2019 with 238 mentions. Guest culture, 42% of episodes feature guests. The most prolific of course is Caroline Weaver. Uh, she's in 11 episodes. Ana Reinert and Caitlin were also recurring presences. And then the guest who left the single biggest mark in one sitting is Aaron Draplin, as you might imagine, 12,830 words, just him.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that is, let's see here. Andy opens the show 30% of the time, Johnny 23, and Tim 22. And a couple, couple other things that you might not have known, it says.

2020, 2017 was our most, we produced the most words at 325,625. Um, Andy and Johnny is the show's most common duo. There are 28 episodes without Tim. Uh, Tim took a hiatus for a little while.

Um, there were 3 solo episodes in the entire run. Apparently I hosted 2 shows alone, which I actually don't remember. Uh, Johnny did one and Tim hosted one. Alone, and the term, the term rabbit hole appears 61 times in our episodes. Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. Fitting for a show that's been a decade going deep on graphite, it says, is the about that. So yeah, it's a, it's really fun. Like, you know, AI apps are not great at like qualitative things, like writing or giving you like true facts and stuff, but it's really good at like quantitative things. So I just was like, I know that I'm gonna get something really interesting out of this. So, so yeah, if, if ever anybody here wants to just like read our episodes instead of listening to them, or they wanna read along, go to scribe.erasable.us and then slash kind of whatever, scribe.erasable.us/episode/whatever the episode number is. Um, and that should appear pretty soon after we, we publish. So yeah, that was a, that was a weekend for me, just like putting all that stuff together. It's fun. Cool.

oh, that'd be fun. Yeah, you write that down.

Yeah.

You know, like, yeah. They're content. Do you wanna get a Field Notes tattoo? Apparently.

Or another thing I put together when I was kind of learning how to vibe code was something I shared with both of these guys. Uh, if anybody wants to play with it, uh, go to quizard.cool, Q-U-I-Z-A-R-D dot C-O-O-L. I made for, um, my nephews. They're really into like One Piece and Star Wars and like Transformers and stuff. And whenever I visit them, they always are like, hey, quiz me. I'm just like, I don't know anything about One Piece. So I would just, I'd just pull up ChatGPT to do it. So I've, I've taken ChatGPT off my phone because of reasons. And, uh, I was like, I'm gonna make a little quiz website that does similar things. So put that together. It is, uh, it is pretty accurate on broad topics like Star Wars or One Piece or Transformers and Star Trek or whatever. It's very bad at, uh, more obscure topics. Like I just put in a quiz for, like for, uh, Erasable, The Erasable Podcast. I put it in like the other category and it says like, what's the name of the podcast that's hosted by Andy Welfle and Myke Hurley?

Yeah. But yeah, if you, if you have like kids in your life who just really are into some sort of like a franchise, go in here. It's, it's fun. It pulls it from Claude and you can pick 5 different topics or choose a random one or just type in your own. You can do 5, 10, or 20 questions and you can do easy, medium, and, and hard. And if you do like hard Star Wars, it's very hard.

Yeah.

We experienced that.

Like, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it has a name.

So I have been having fun with, I'm, I'm sure I've been burning down many trees and vaporizing gallons of water by vibe, vibe coding this stuff, but it's been fun. Yeah, that is, uh, that is it for me. So yeah, next time I'll, I'll put together a quiz and we can, we can all try to answer it. That sounds fun.

Yeah, cool. Johnny, how about you?

I don't hike that much, so I don't. I don't know what would be a good like backpack pencil.

Yeah, yeah. Why are you writing on rocks, Johnny? I was just defacing nature.

Oh cool.

That sounds like a, like a Harry Potter title, like Johnny Gamber and the Death Tree.

Like, yeah, so random.

As you do.

She's a beaut.

I saw it, but I—

Which is kind of cool. I'm like, I really hope we don't lose listeners for me saying this, but I find it, I find it to be really hard to muster up enthusiasm for celebrating the USA's birthday right now, especially with pencils. So I just saw it and I was just like, oh guys, I'm sure people will be really into it, but the timing seems really, really off. Like the design is amazing. Like you said, like really bright and like, I love like the box, just sort of that round and like the script where it says, right, red, white, and blue is really great.

Yeah. Yeah. If we're still around.

Yeah. So, yeah.

I don't think so.

I haven't watched that movie in forever, but I completely missed it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. Which I thought was just a hilarious stat that I, I'm, I'm reading this, the screenshot you have and like, not only is it like original Eberhard Faber Blackwings, but there's also like Blackwing era sets.

That's like somebody, somebody went deep. Somebody is a pencil fan who's decorating that set.

Yeah. But, um, if, if you, I just thought that was super interesting.

If you're a prop master or set decorator in Hollywood, especially on TAR, and you're listening to this show, reveal yourselves. We would love to talk to you more about this. Come on the show and talk to us about— totally about this. Yeah.

So cool.

Yeah.

Do you mean to, do you mean to just jump in and talk about one of these? Talk about the— yeah, let's start with the Field Notes one.

Yeah. So yeah, the, the Field Notes set that just came out maybe like 2 weeks ago. So cool. I, this is one of my favorite, just themes that they've done for a while. Field Notes consistently killing it, but. I have the sort of patina one here, but it's called Lucky. And, uh, as a pressed penny fan, uh, I really enjoyed this one because it's a, it pays tribute to the penny, which seems like it's disappearing, might be going away. So it is, um, has this really gorgeous sort of like ledger lining in here that I saw people complaining about on the internet. Uh, they say that they think that Field Notes is doing too many lined editions, but it has this really great sort of like ledger in here. So it's hard to see if you're watching the video. Oh, there it is. Okay. You can see kind of like the little spreadsheet lines right there at the end and just a really just gorgeous copper foil stamp on the front. Uh, it comes in 3 colors. There's like a bright penny and a tarnished penny and then like a patinaed penny. So the different stages of like copper oxidization. Cool. So yeah, I'm a huge fan of this. Like this color is just so good. The other ones are too, but yeah, that was, uh, just so excited when I, when I saw this come out. So I do, I do wish, Johnny, we talked a little bit about this. The Field Notes subscriber gifts were just like two paper rolls that you like put your pennies in. I was, uh, really, really hoping that they were going to do like a Field Notes press penny because how good would that be to put in the collection? But, uh, alas, they did not. Legal issues?

Oh no, apparently that is not, that's not a problem with this. Like, cause you're not destroying it, you're just sort of transforming it, right? You're not like, if you were like setting it on fire and throwing it away, maybe, but this is transforming it into something else. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I, I actually emailed Field Notes and, 'cause I'm a, I'm a, a press penny collector and I'm, I'm in this group that's much like the American Pencil Collector Society. It's called TEC. It's the elongated collector. Some people call press pennies elongated pennies. And so there's all these resources you can, if you have like $5,000, $6,000, you can buy your own press penny machine. And then for another like few hundred dollars, you can have your own die made. To press a penny and I, I emailed Blackwing or not Blackwing, Field Notes. And I was like, hey, I have the perfect thing to put in front of your office.

And they were just like, that, that's a really cool idea. We'll think about that. I, I can't remember who was responding to that, but it, I'm sure they won't, but that would be really, that would be awesome.

Yeah. Put a, put like a pen presser out there and we, we could, you could do one of your face. We could do one of The Erasable Podcast. Like that'd be fun.

Everybody come visit Tim and at his house.

Yeah.

Yeah. What do you guys think of this? Have you, yeah. Of this Field Notes book, did you, are you a fan?

But yeah, it was so awesome.

Yeah, that's true, that would have been a good They, uh, they could have made the belly bands look like the penny roll containers. Ooh, that would've been cool. Yeah. That would've been cool.

Yeah.

Oh, nice.

Yeah. That paper looks very Ambition-y. Um, it's that, like that really nice kind of like ivory cream and I really, yeah, I just, I just really like that binding. Like it's so vers— not binding, ruling. It's so versatile. Like you can ignore those like little ledger lines there, or you can use it, whatever. So yeah, big fan of those. Yeah. What else do we have?

You're right, they didn't mention that.

Give Johnny the crappy one.

They, they had some quality control. Like, I definitely noticed that, um, I don't know if you can see this, the ferrule is not sort of like lined up. So the broad face is with the imprint, which, you know, like there's, there's been some, there's been some higher prices and quality issues lately, which, you know, don't go hand in hand too well. So I, I try not to like complain about that stuff, but also like, you know, these are $30 a dozen, right? Like you want that. But I like the, I like the idea of the theme, but in execution, I just don't know if it like turned out really well. Like it, it's definitely not as like, and you can't make it as bright as it would be like a test pattern on a TV screen because, you know, it's, it's not, it's not a bunch of like lights lighting up to make this color, but it, it doesn't feel like looking at this, I don't register test pattern on a screen. Like it just feels like muted for that.

what's the story? Yeah, what, what was your— what would your radio Blackwing look like, Johnny?

That'd be fun.

Yeah, guys, do a grease pencil.

They are, they are doing something that I really like starting with this one. And I don't know, it seems like they're going to continue doing this, but, uh, they basically made a little zine that went with it and like it came in the box. Yeah, it has, um, it's, it says it's issue 001. So I'm assuming it's going to like keep going, but it's called Blackwing Quarterly. And it has, um, just like listing of some of the past releases. It has a, um, that's very cool. Grant Christensen, the president of Blackwing, wrote a little thing. There's, yeah, just interesting little things about Blackwings and a, there's an interview with John Dickerson in here. So, which is pretty cool. So yeah, I hope that they do more of this just because I love a zine. Just another thing to collect and get more of.

Yeah, no, you're right. This is— this— it's very well polished, it's very well put together.

But how was it that, um, oh, what's his name on the zine episode? Um, my brain is not working this morning. Yeah, do you remember how he described Plumbago magazine? He was like, you know, some zines are like You know, pizzas, they just, you know, it's pepperoni and cheese and it's just kind of slapped together and it's delicious. And he's like, yours is like one of those like California broccoli pizzas. Thanks, Ed. So this is definitely like a, I don't know, like a bruschetta or something like that.

I was like, oh, I see. Yeah, interesting.

I used to plan my evenings like, "Okay, first I'm going to watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and then SeaQuest is on and then I'm going to watch this." Oh, I remember that show. I have to tape Voyager because Deep Space Nine is on at the same time on a different channel. So yeah, that's a fun theme really like the zine, but like the pencil sort of design itself was kind of underwhelming.

I did.

I think so. I think it's specifically not Disney Winnie the Pooh, but like, you know, original, what's his name? E.L. Milne. Um, that— I think that that's in the public domain.

Do you guys— do you guys have one of these hex squares?

I don't use it very often, and that's because like The, those sides are just so freaking sharp.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, um, I mean, I like a sharp corner.

Yeah, yeah, the—

I forgot about that.

They just released a new, a new color of the just regular Squire pen that's, that's green. So they're trying to recapture the Experiment magic, I think. I don't think it has green ink in it, but it's, uh, it's just one of the new just color lineups. It's a— they say emerald, so it's really like a blue-green. Um, but I think they just announced that one like earlier this week or something. I remember seeing that pretty recently.

I, I actually don't know, have we, have we talked on the show about the new just sort of like confidant designs that they have?

So they have—

Yeah. And, um, So I'm sorry, this isn't a Confidant. So they have the Confidant, but they also have one they're calling a Legend now, and it's more of a traditional, like, Moleskine-style notebook, Leuchtturm or something. It kind of has like a leatherette cover and it has a strap and it has a pocket in the back, which is like just really great. And the thing that like, just like, oh guys, let's put it together. Like, I want, I want exactly that, but with the clothbound cover instead of the leather.

Because I love that clothbound cover, but I also want those other things too, which I usually kind of mod and add on to it.

Yeah. Remember this, Johnny? Yeah. I'm holding up to the screen the little— I can't remember the name of the— Gore-Tex? Is that the name of the paper?

Kraftex. Sorry, Gore-Tex is our raincoat material. Yeah. He made me this really great cover that just incorporates the pocket and the elastic strap and everything on my current confidence. So yeah, it's great. I love it. But yeah, I, I have a Legend. I haven't actually like cracked it open and tried it out yet. I have been on my Hobonichi kick lately. Um, but I, yeah, just, just merge, just get that clothbound notebook with, with everything in it. They, some of their, their guided journals have that, right? Like they, they have a couple that are like clothbound and also have the elastic strap, but Not yet. They're just keeping us like in suspense. So yeah. Did you guys see, um, the video from Maker's Cabinet a couple days ago?

No. Um, so, um, what's his name? Noah from Maker's Cabinet was talking about how they want to make, they wanna make a notebook, like a covered notebook.

So I, I can't imagine what a Maker's Cabinet notebook it's gonna be. It's like solid brass. It's gonna be like $300, like 25 pounds.

But it's gonna be really nice, really pretty.

Yeah, yeah.

Is it just like a Sharpie? Like, I don't know what the line looks like on that.

I see.

That color is great.

Yeah, I'm so sorry I didn't send you a message on that. Yeah, I didn't think you could get a metallic, like an italic nib on a Lamy, but if you had a nib grinder do it, and he did a really good job.

Yeah, reach out to Tim. How much are you asking for it, Tim?

jump on it.

Johnny's pen budget is higher than some countries' GDPs.

Yeah. Any other new releases that we dig into?

Yeah.

Do we want to tease what we are planning to do for the next episode, Tim?

Yeah. So do you, sorry, do you wanna do it? Do you mean to say we have a delay going on?

I mean, Spanish, so that too. Yeah.

My favorite thing is when people then ask me questions that they don't expect a serious answer to. They're like, like, what's the best pencil for like, I don't know, like taking standardized tests or something?

And they're like, you have an actual answer to this question. Yeah.

So we had a, um, somebody on Reddit. I can't remember. I posted a link to one of our episodes in the Pencil subreddit and somebody piped in. They're like, oh, this is really great. Like, I would love to catch up on this. You have so many episodes. Like, what's a good episode with like the fundamentals in it? And I was thinking about just like, well, there's some like early ones where we kind of spread that out. Like if you listen to episodes 1 through 3, maybe you can get a lot of that, but how good would it be if we do something that's just like modern, but like if you're just now getting into Pencils, start here and then we can just kind of—

That is like a, yeah, we can use that as sort of like a, like a tentpole.

It's been a while since we've done top 5.

oh yeah.

yeah, we can—

Yeah, what's the best pencil for taking notes about pencils on a podcast?

Yeah, yeah.

Beautiful faces.

that's for the $100 a month patrons, John.

Back to school! Do you like our podcast? Most people like our podcast, but if you don't like our podcast, maybe we'll turn it off.