Verbatim Audio Drama — Season One

The
Record

Official transcripts. Real voices.
APPROACH: Say your souls on board, United two thirty-two heavy.
FLIGHT ENGINEER: Ah, two ninety-two.
APPROACH: Roger.
About the Show

The record
speaks for itself

The Record is a dramatized audio series. Each episode is performed from the official public record of a real event: cockpit and bridge voice-recorder transcripts, mission audio transcripts, hearing exhibits, and accident reports published by the National Transportation Safety Board, the United States Coast Guard, NASA, and other government bodies.

The voices you hear are actors. They are not the people who lived these events, and no recording of the actual people is used. Speech is performed as a script, not as an imitation.

Every voice is an actor’s. Every word is real.

Captain Al Haynes — United Airlines Flight 232 “Can’t think of anything that we haven’t done... There really isn’t a procedure for this.”
Denny Fitch — United Airlines Training Pilot “I’ll tell you what. We’ll have a beer when this is all done.”
The Record is produced by Record Media Productions, LLC. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the NTSB, the Coast Guard, NASA, any airline, shipping company, or manufacturer, or by the families of those involved. The show is a work of journalism and dramatic performance and is not intended as legal, technical, or safety guidance.
These episodes depict real accidents, some of which ended in loss of life, and include recorded last words.
Listener discretion is advised.
Our Process

How the record
becomes an episode

01The Words

Every spoken line is drawn from the official public record. Where a transcript is unintelligible or a word is missing, we leave it out; we do not fill the gap.

02The Edit

What we do is edit, the same work any documentary filmmaker does with footage, any journalist does with interview tape. We shape the transcript into a listenable narrative, removing procedural repetition and technical exchanges that would lose a non-specialist listener.

An episode presents a selection of the record, not the whole of it, arranged for clarity and length.

03The Narration

Narration is written by the producers and is limited to what the official investigation established. Where an investigation reached findings, we report those findings; we do not add conclusions of our own about anyone’s conduct or state of mind.

04The Sound

Sound design - engines, weather, alarms, ambience - is created for the production and is not taken from the original recordings. The occasional music cue is ours.

05The Names

In some episodes the names of crew members have been changed, including where a name is spoken on the tape. When we do this, the episode says so. Public officials and company representatives who appear in the record under their own names may be named as they appear there.

Season One January 2027 Six episodes - released weekly
Episodes

Season One

Six episodes, released weekly. Six moments when everything was at stake.

Aftermath

What changed in the aftermath

Every accident in this season produced findings, and most produced recommendations that altered how aircraft are inspected, how crews are trained, or how ships are run. The tape is the reason those changes exist.

Entries are added as each episode releases.