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Short Wave Podcast Transcripts

NPR · 1,967 episodes with transcripts

New discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines — in just under 15 minutes. It's science for everyone, using a lot of creativity and a little humor. Join hosts Emily Kwong and Regina Barber for science on a different wavelength. Support public media by joining NPR+ at plus.

Spoken has transcripts of 1,967 Short Wave episodes, with the speakers named. The newest listed here is from October 9, 2026.

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Every Short Wave transcript in one script

1,967 episodes of Short Wave have transcripts. Fetch them all as speaker-labeled Markdown in one script — 1 credit each, and re-fetching one you already have is free:

archive.sh
curl -s -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
  https://spoken.md/podcasts/1482575855/episodes \
  | jq -r '.episodes[] | "\(.id) \(.title)"' \
  | while IFS=' ' read -r id title; do
      slug=$(echo "$title" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr -cs 'a-z0-9' '-' | sed 's/-*$//')
      [ -f "${id}-${slug}.md" ] && continue
      curl -sf -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
        -o "${id}-${slug}.md" \
        https://spoken.md/transcripts/$id || rm -f "${id}-${slug}.md"
      sleep 0.34
    done

Already-saved files are skipped — safe to re-run after a top-up.

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Latest Short Wave transcripts

One of the toughest parts of ADHD is left out of the diagnosis

October 9, 2026

Regina Barber (0:00)

You're listening to Short Wave, from NPR.

Sasha Hamdani (0:05)

I went to med school with the full intention of being a pediatrician. I think it just sounded so amazing that I was like, this is a superhero job.

Regina Barber (0:14)

Meet Sasha Hamdani, a doctor, but not a pediatrician.

Keep reading this transcript

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Any Short Wave episode comes back as Markdown with the speakers named, one credit each.

request
curl -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \
  https://spoken.md/transcripts/1000793920401

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