How a question becomes a documentary

Six steps, a few minutes to the first chapter. Here is what happens at each one, shown with the screens you'll actually use.

  1. Tell it what you're curious about

    A question works best, but a topic, a person, an event or a place is enough. Add a note if you want a particular angle, or something left out.

    • Length: 5, 10, 20 or 40 minutes
    • Format: documentary, true story, perspective or explainer
    • Language: English or Swedish
    • Narrator: four voices to choose from

    Create

    How close did Apollo 11 come to aborting the landing?
    Length
    5 min10 min20 min40 min
    Format
    DocumentaryTrue storyPerspectiveExplainer
    Narrator
    CharonSulafatGacruxIapetus
    Planning is free. You review the plan before any minutes are used. Plan my documentary

  2. Shape the plan before anything is produced

    In a minute or two you get a proposal: a title, a one-line logline, the angle, a chapter outline with the mood of each chapter, and a musical theme.

    Rewrite any chapter title or summary directly. Or describe what you want changed in plain words, and a new proposal comes back. Revisions are free.

    Proposal, ready for review

    True story, 20 min, Charon

    Sixty Seconds of Fuel

    The last minutes of Apollo 11's descent, heard from the cockpit and from Mission Control, where a computer alarm had to be judged in seconds.

    1. 1Two spacecraftCollins stays in Columbia; Armstrong and Aldrin take Eagle down. Hushed
    2. 2Program alarm 1202A computer warning, and a 26-year-old guidance officer who has to call it. Tense
    3. 3Landing longThe planned site is a boulder field. Armstrong flies on, looking for a clear spot. Building
    4. 4Sixty secondsThe fuel callouts from Houston, and a room holding its breath. Taut
    5. 5Tranquility BaseContact, and what the team learned about the alarms afterwards. Release

    “Spend more time in Mission Control and less on the moonwalk.”

    Ask for changes Approve and produce

  3. Research, then a script written for the ear

    Before writing, it reads real sources and keeps what it can attribute: the facts, the names, the numbers, the points where sources disagree, and short verbatim quotes.

    The script is written in scenes, with a direction note for every line: how fast, how close, where to pause. Each factual line is tagged with the sources it rests on.

    Sources, 9 collected

    • PrimaryApollo 11 Lunar Surface JournalNASA
    • PrimaryApollo 11 air-to-ground transcriptNASA History Office
    • ReferenceApollo 11 mission overviewNASA
    • SecondaryLunar module EagleSmithsonian Air and Space Museum

    Script, chapter 2

    Narratorclose, unhurried, then a beat of silencePartway down, with the surface still kilometres below, a warning appeared on the computer display.1
    Quote: Neil Armstrong, commanderclipped, even“Program alarm.”2
    Narratorfaster now, the room is filling upIn Houston, the call fell to the guidance officer, Steve Bales. He was 26.3

  4. Produced chapter by chapter, like a real session

    Each chapter is voiced, scored and mixed on its own. The narrator reads with the direction notes, and every quote gets its own distinct voice. An original theme is composed for the episode, with a cue for each chapter, and ambience is laid under the scenes.

    The mix lowers the music under speech automatically and levels everything for headphones. While one chapter is being mixed, the next is already being written.

    Producing, 2 of 5 chapters ready

    1. Two spacecraft Ready, 3:52
    2. Program alarm 1202 Ready, 4:10
    3. Landing long Recording voices
    4. Sixty seconds Writing
    5. Tranquility Base Queued
    1. Voices
    2. Score
    3. Ambience

  5. Press play while the rest is still being made

    You don't wait for the whole episode. The first chapter is usually playable within a few minutes of approving, and the player moves on to each new chapter as soon as it's mixed.

    If you ever catch up with production, the player says so and carries on by itself when the next chapter is ready.

    • Read-along transcript, word by word
    • Chapters, sources and people in tabs
    • Keeps your place when you come back

    Sixty Seconds of Fuel

    Chapter 1 of 5

    2:41about 20 min
    1. 1Two spacecraft3:52
    2. 2Program alarm 12024:10
    3. 3Landing longRecording
    4. 4Sixty secondsWriting
    5. 5Tranquility BaseQueued

    Producing Chapter 1 is playing while chapter 4 is being written.

  6. Keep exploring

    Tap a person, place or event in the transcript for a short card with context. Ask a question at any moment: the answer comes from the episode's sources in about ten seconds, and says so when it has to go beyond them.

    When the episode ends, follow it up: what happened next, go deeper, another perspective, or a Part II that carries on with the same narrator.

    Person Steve Bales

    Guidance officer in Mission Control during the Apollo 11 landing. He gave the go to continue through the computer alarms.

    Make a documentary about this

    What did a 1202 alarm actually mean?Asked at 7:18

    The guidance computer was being asked to do more work than it had time for, so it dropped lower-priority tasks and kept the essential ones running.1

    What happened next Go deeper Another perspective Part II

Built on sources

Research comes first, and the script can only use what the research found. You can check all of it.

Citations on every factual line

Numbers in the transcript open the source behind that sentence, with the publisher, the year and a link.

Quotes are verbatim

Quotes come word for word from a source and are read by a different voice from the narrator. Dialogue is never invented, even in the true-story format.

Disagreement is reported

Where sources disagree, the narration says so plainly instead of picking the more dramatic version.

How we handle sources, accuracy and AI

Produced, not generated

Text-to-speech reads a page. A documentary is directed: scenes that open in a place, quotes in other voices, music that comes in at the turn and steps back for the facts.

Every episode goes through the stages a radio producer would recognise: research, an outline, a script, direction, recording, scoring, sound and a final mix. It takes minutes instead of weeks, and it's made for one listener.

The result is something to put on for a long walk, not a summary to skim.

Play an Original on the home page and judge for yourself.

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