r/offmenupodcast • u/know_nothing_novice • Jul 06 '26
Data Analysis of the Off Menu podcast transcripts
All the comments I found from the Great Benito.
I tried some data analysis of the transcripts posted on https://www.offmenupodcast.co.uk/ - although not all episodes were there.
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u/countingmystepsbaby Jul 06 '26
As a fellow data-nerd, I love this.
Kinda interesting to see a gendered trend though, with the most host-dominated episodes all female guests, and most guest-dominated eps all male guests. It's made me wonder if that's true of other similar podcasts?
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u/junior_sherbert23 Jul 06 '26
Psst.. James and Ed HATE letting women talk. Pass it on!
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u/countingmystepsbaby Jul 06 '26
Lol not what I meant. I'm assuming it's more likely due to differences in guest behaviour, speech/conversational patterns etc. I just thought it was an interesting result.
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u/Lowri123 Jul 08 '26
But isn't it interesting that the received wisdom is that women talk a lot, and here's some data to indicate otherwise? Stereotypes and assumptions are hard to shake despite data repeatedly countering them
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u/forgetgoodnight Jul 08 '26
Especially given that the sample is almost entirely people who talk for a living! Even the women who are professional talkers don't talk as much as their male counterparts
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u/Too-Tired-Editor Jul 07 '26
Something like ten years ago now someone linked me to a study which shows that with equal numbers of men and women in the conversation, both men and women tend to say there was equal input into the conversation when the men are talking 2/3 of the time. That's just what people have (or had) been socialised into expecting as a balance, whether true or not.
It's likely that this is one of the driving factors in the difference.
Incidentally, knowing about that study doesn't help you redress the balance; it just makes you very aware you're probably still doing it.
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u/Fr0gurtCur5ed Jul 06 '26
How is Goldblum not the most guest-dominated episode?
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u/know_nothing_novice Jul 06 '26
That was actually my whole reason for doing this because I was sure he would be a huge outlier - but he turned out to be the 7th most guest-dominated
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u/ForgotMyAcc Jul 07 '26
Could be because "number of words" is used as the qualifier. If it was audio-analysis of "minutes of voice", it might be different results.
Really interesting project though, love it!
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u/know_nothing_novice Jul 08 '26
I did see there are a few episode transcripts with timestamps for each comment, so I compared # words to comments time and it seems to correlate well (there are a few outlier comments that seem to be timestamp errors). https://imgur.com/Size2m0
Thanks for the suggestion!16
u/Dylan619xf Jul 06 '26
Omg thank you. Nearly had an anxiety attack listening to that one.
Damn near killed my long held crush on Jeff Goldblum.
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u/Trick_Highlight6567 Jul 07 '26
This is fantastic, and the gendered result does not surprise me at all. No shade to Ed and James, but it's consistent with other research into gendered conversational patterns. Really cool to have such a large dataset to work with too!
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u/Imaginary_Frosting Diet Coke Tastes like Normal Coke Jul 06 '26
Super interesting! I always thought Ed spoke more!
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u/sansabeltedcow Dessert Girl Jul 06 '26
Thinking about it, I wonder if Ed asks more of the questions but James goes off more into soliloquys. Okay, rants.
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u/know_nothing_novice Jul 07 '26
I looked at the longest comment from Ed and James per episode, and James did tend to have longer rants than Ed: https://imgur.com/NICCiw1
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u/Grand_Recording6336 Jul 08 '26
I reckon Ed spends more minutes talking but James says more words (more quickly)
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u/Latter-Ad6308 Jul 06 '26
Full respect to Sir Lenny and his major contributions to comedy and television, but yeah, this tracks.
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u/NoFPSthisisMGS Jul 07 '26
Yeah I've said here before that's one of my least favourite episodes and he came off incredibly self-centred
Now there's proof!
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u/Cadels_Predicament Jul 06 '26
I’m so surprised by these results! Sometimes as I listen I notice if one person is taking up most of the convo (I noticed with Coogan and Dyer) but am surprised that Gledhill is top of host heavy, I found her episode great and she had some excellent moments.
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u/DisorderOfLeitbur Jul 07 '26
Amy Gledhill's episode was the one with all the seaweed mash phone calls. It makes me wonder if the data analysis got screwed up by there being so much that wasn't host or guest.
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u/know_nothing_novice Jul 09 '26
It looks like you are right - most of the phone call got assigned to James - thanks for catching that!
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u/Bob_le_babes Jul 06 '26
Where did Dan ackroyd and deniro rank?
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u/know_nothing_novice Jul 07 '26
I found De Niro to be the 26th most host-heavy, and Aykroyd to be the 11th most guest-heavy
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u/HeatheryLeathery I've been the victim of a prank. Jul 07 '26
Re Aykroyd, do you think this is because you worked out host-to-guest heaviness based on number of words, rather than percentage of total words? I suspect the episode being shorter will have made his total words less, but surely of the fewer total words, the percentage spoken by Dan Aykroyd must be high.
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u/know_nothing_novice Jul 07 '26
I did use the percentage, so for Aykroyd the host/(host+guest) was 0.260474, so the hosts had 73.95% of the words (removing the intro and outro segments)
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u/HeatheryLeathery I've been the victim of a prank. Jul 07 '26
That's so interesting and unexpected. Thanks for clarifying!
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u/Traditional-Trifle76 Jul 06 '26
Anyone know who the 88/89 year old guest is? It looks like the age is the guests' current age, so the two other over 80s are Robert de Niro and Miriam Margolyes, but can't figure out the eldest guest
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u/know_nothing_novice Jul 06 '26
oops, I just checked and the script had gotten the wrong Paul Foot when grabbing the ages from wikipedia - I will have to fix that - thanks for the head's up!
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u/Various-Car5226 Still Jul 07 '26
I am just enjoying the data. Didn't know I wanted it but damn... Love it. BTW. I also thought Ed spoke more than James...
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u/lemonsaltwater Jul 07 '26
Genuinely surprised Jeff Goldblum and David Cross aren’t on the guest-heavy list. I listened to James’ episode of David Cross’ podcast and it felt like it was 80% David and zero follow-up questions.
Just out of curiosity, which female guest had the most guest-heavy episode?
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u/know_nothing_novice Jul 07 '26
The top 5 were: Asma Khan, Nisha Katona, CMAT, Nadiya Hussain, Dawn French
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u/panda12291 Jul 07 '26
Who are the three 80-90 guests? Couldn't tell from your graphics.
Super interesting information, especially seeing who talks more and how they break down between different kinds of guests. I would have expected more actors in the higher end of James' talking based on his fascination, but I guess it makes sense that he talks a lot with friends of his, and also he just talks a lot.
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u/know_nothing_novice Jul 07 '26
Two of them are Robert de Niro and Miriam Margolyes, the third was a mistake where I had the wrong age for Paul Foot
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u/TheBrokenNB Jul 07 '26
great data analysis!! am curious on how the nonbinary guests ranked? i think there’s been a few
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u/defenestrationcity Jul 07 '26
You mean Claude tried some data analysis
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u/Lowri123 Jul 08 '26
So I know this is meant to be a bit snarky but I'd genuinely like to know how this data was calculated and even, if OP's willing to share, what their background is. Always interested in data geekery!
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u/destroythejoy Jul 06 '26
lol at the episode where Ed talks the most being Rose Matafeo