JC mentioned using MyHamlet.com while digging into a segment about a sport-court-construction trend showing up in city council meetings nationwide — it’s a real research tool, and useful well beyond whatever story someone’s using it for. Hamlet transcribes and indexes video from local government meetings (city councils, county boards, planning commissions) across more than 2,400 U.S. cities and counties, tags who said what, and links every quote back to the original recording, so you can search for a topic instead of sitting through hours of meeting footage. It was built by Sunil Rajaraman, who got the idea in 2022 after losing his own race for city council in Orinda, California. Basic search is free, no account required (the first 40 results per search, full officials directory, top rankings); paid tiers add full transcripts, alerts, and agenda monitoring for people tracking an issue across many jurisdictions — journalists and researchers can request access too.
Not an Amazon product — free web tool with paid tiers. Get it at myhamlet.com.
[Party Line Show #1 24:00] [Party Line Show #1 24:52]
