Editing a Guest Who Stumbles and Then Restarts

It’s common to ask hosts and guests to back up and restate part of their statement if they flub something. This makes it possible later to edit out the flub cleanly so no one ever knows that it even happened.

But something specific usually happens to people when they flub something – they laugh.

And then, to the horror of the podcast editor, they restate some of their previous statement WHILE THEY ARE STILL LAUGHING! And then continue talking while still laughing a bit.

This makes it almost impossible to edit because the result will sound really awkward; for instance after cutting out the flub, half of a sentence will be spoken clearly and calmly, and then the second half will be said while laughing. The listener will be confused because they have no idea what happened, and will say to themselves, “That’s weird. Why did that person start laughing mid-sentence?” Usually in those cases I don’t make the edit; I will leave the flub because that’s better than an awkward edit.

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