‘Storm Skiing Podcast’ Transcripts, Youtube, & More Cool Stuff
Things I’m already doing that you may not know about
One of my jobs as a low-level NBA drone in the late 2000s was to transcribe public interviews whenever then-commissioner David Stern gave a media interview. It was perhaps the most tedious work I’ve ever been assigned. Each 10-minute interview required hours of starting, stopping, reversing, correcting. And I’m a pretty fast typer (one dumb analogy I often think about is how everyone in a white-collar office setting is an expert typer, just like every professional hockey player is an expert skater, but no one’s ever like “man that dude can fucking type/skate!”)
But now I live in the future, where the robots transcribe a two-hour conversation in about two minutes. Or at least that’s about how long it takes on Substack, which is the platform that I publish The Storm on.
The auto-generated transcript option appeared on the dashboard where I publish Storm articles about four years ago. This sort of obviously-useful-but-unexpected addition is why I love Substack as a host platform. At first, I had to click “generate transcript,” and click again on “show on post” to make the transcript button visible to readers. Eventually, though, the transcripts started appearing automatically. Until they didn’t – and I realized after a reader comment on yesterday’s article that transcripts hadn’t been appearing on podcast articles for the past year or so.
So I went through and added them all. You should see a button to display the transcript just beneath the headline in the article accompanying the podcast at stormskiing.com. The exact location of the “Transcript” button may vary depending upon which browser (Chrome, Safari, etc.) you’re using, and on whether you’re on a computer or Pet Rectangle:
There are pluses and minuses to these transcripts. I do not proofread them. They are not 100 percent accurate. They miss ski-specific eccentricities such as “Ikon” (spelled “icon”). They do not differentiate between speakers. But the transcripts are downloadable and searchable. The coolest feature is that you can click on any part of the transcript and the audio or video player will automatically jump to that point in the podcast:
Transcripts should be in place for every podcast beginning with #92, Alterra CEO Rusty Gregory. If any are missing from 92 onward, let me know and I will update them. Episodes 1 through 91 were uploaded to an older version of Substack’s content management system, which as of July 2026 does not include the option to generate a transcript.
You can browse past Storm Skiing Podcast episodes here. We’re up to episode 227, and I’ll drop another half dozen or so before we shift momentum to the news-focused pod in September. I’ll continue to record long-form Storm Skiing Podcasts indefinitely, though the annual average will shrink from its onetime high of around 45 episodes to more like 10 to 20 to make way for the shorter, more frequent pods that I teased yesterday.
The pod has also been on Youtube since episode 198, with Mammoth head Eric Clark.
The Youtube channel doesn’t have a big following yet, and most of The Storm’s audience still listens to the pod on Apple, Spotify, or other audio channels. But the channel will be increasingly important as The Storm moves into a news-centric podcast format. Please give us a follow:
One common concern I’m hearing from The Storm’s audience in regards to the pod refresh is that it will diminish coverage of smaller ski areas that I often spotlight on the pod. My goal is exactly the opposite: with shorter, in-the-moment, more-frequent episodes, I can feature more small ski area stories more often. Take, for example, Nub’s Nob, Michigan, a huge favorite of Michiganders that is relatively unknown outside the state. I hosted longtime GM Ben Doornbos on the podcast about four years ago, and we continue to regularly talk, email, and text. Nub’s may be the best-run sub-450-vertical-foot ski area on the continent. But as much as I like and respect Ben and Nub’s Nob and the culture of Midwest skiing, I really can’t serve up an hour-plus Nub’s Nob podcast to a national audience with any sort of regularity. What I can do with this shorter news format, however, is quick check-ins on relevant news. For example, Nub’s announced this spring that the resort would replace its Orange chair, a 1979 Riblet triple, with a new Skytrac quad in time for the 2026-27 ski season. Ben and I messaged back and forth about that, but it would have been a great moment to bring him into a 10-minute Zoom call and talk about the upgrade: why now? Why Orange chair? What did you learn from the Green upgrade to a Skytrac in 2023 that will help you make this project better? Will the new Orange chair follow the same line? Which lift might Nub’s replace next? And so on. Meanwhile, on a separate segment of the same show, I can talk national trends happening with passes or consolidation or skier visits. Tucking Nub’s into a pod that also riffs about, for example, the Ikon Pass, would make it much more likely that my national audience – which may have never clicked on a Nub’s Nob-specific podcast at all – will learn and appreciate the story of a small but important ski area.