Conducting the Research for Mrs. A (Part 2)

Welcome back! This is the second post in the series where I break down the research and writing methodology I used for my book Mrs. A. If you missed the first part, you can catch up on it here.

Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the research process. Writing a book is no small task, and Mrs. A was no exception. For this project, I pulled information from a variety of sources—primarily books authored by Mrs. A herself, as well as a wealth of videos available on YouTube.

Here’s how it all went down.

The Books Authored by Mrs. A

Mrs. A has written several books, and they became foundational to my research. Some of the ones I read were based on biblical characters like Rahab, Ruth, and Tamar—rich stories of faith and resilience that tie directly into her broader life philosophy. But there was one book that really stood out for me: Neoheritage: Defining Contemporary African Architecture, published by Rizzoli.

In Neoheritage, Mrs. A discusses her philosophy on architectural design, the history of African architecture, and her most significant projects and achievements. This book was essential for Chapter 4, which I titled “Architect A.” I took detailed notes from this book, as it offered deep insights into her approach to architecture—blending tradition with modernity, a theme that also permeates her life and teachings. It was a goldmine of information and one of the key pieces that shaped the narrative of Mrs. A.

The YouTube Videos

Next, I turned to her YouTube channel, which offers a treasure trove of content. I quickly realized that Mrs. A’s videos fall into distinct categories:

Sermons and speeches—either at Awesome Treasures Foundation events or guest appearances at churches around the world.
Interviews—sometimes she’s interviewing others, and sometimes she’s the one being interviewed.
Promotional videos—these were scattered but not the focus.

The challenge here wasn’t a lack of content—there was plenty. It was the sheer volume of material that I needed to organize, track, and pull valuable information from.

Here’s the step-by-step process I used to make sense of it all:

Step 1: Extracting Video Titles

The first task was to catalog all the videos on her YouTube channel. I started manually listing them out, but with so many videos, this approach quickly became inefficient. There had to be a smarter way.

Enter a little bit of YouTube coding magic. Using the tips from this video, I learned how to extract video titles and metadata from the YouTube page quickly. Here’s how I did it:

I used a script in the browser’s console to scroll through the entire list of videos and gather metadata like titles, upload dates, and views. This saved me hours of tedious scrolling and copying.

For anyone interested, here’s the basic script I used:

Step 1:

var scroll = setInterval(function(){ window.scrollBy(0, 1000)}, 1000);

Step 2:

window.clearInterval(scroll); console.clear(); urls = $$('a'); 
urls.forEach(function(v,i,a){if (v.id=="video-title-link" && v.href){
console.log('\t'+new Date().toLocaleDateString()+'\t'+v.title+'\t'+v.href+'\t'+v.__shady_native_innerHTML.match(/aria-label=\"(.+?)\"/g)?.[0].match(/[\d,]+ views/g)[0]+'\t')}});

his helped me keep track of which videos I had already watched, and allowed me to classify them—sermons, interviews, or promotions—so I could reference them later.

Step 2: Extracting YouTube Transcripts

While watching the videos and taking notes was helpful, I knew there was still valuable information I might have missed in the moment. So, I needed the actual transcripts for these videos. Again, doing this manually would have been a headache.

Here are a couple of ways you can go about it:

Manual transcription: You could copy and paste transcripts directly from YouTube, but that gets tedious, especially when you’re dealing with multiple videos.
Using tools: A faster method is to use a tool like Tactiq, which automatically extracts YouTube transcripts and saves them as text files.
Or code it yourself: I opted for a bit of coding magic using Python to extract transcripts in bulk. Here’s a snippet of the code I used (replace the video URLs with your own). Also, I used google colab for this:

!pip install youtube-transcript-api
from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi

def download_transcript(video_id):
    try:
        transcript = YouTubeTranscriptApi.get_transcript(video_id)
        with open(f'{video_id}_transcript.txt', 'w') as f:
            for entry in transcript:
                f.write(f"{entry['start']} - {entry['text']}\n")
        print(f"Transcript for video {video_id} downloaded successfully.")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Could not download transcript: {e}")

video_ids = ['Q5hbVAnhTS8&t=79s', 'CfMGkZp2Nt8&t=203s', 'pgRH4_9BQpw']
for video_id in video_ids:
    download_transcript(video_id)

Step 3: Cleaning Up Transcripts

Once I had the transcripts, it was time to clean them up. YouTube’s automatic transcription isn’t perfect—it often messes up words, punctuation, and timing. You can clean these errors manually, but I found that using a GPT assistant (like ChatGPT) really sped things up.

I used a specific GPT model designed for summarizing and cleaning transcripts. While this was super helpful, I wouldn’t recommend relying solely on GPT for this process. You still need to watch the videos yourself and make your own notes. GPT can miss things, or worse, misinterpret key points, and without your own prework, you could end up with an incomplete or incorrect summary.

Step 4: Writing the Book Using Obsidian

Once all the research was done, it was time to get down to writing. I used the Obsidian Note-Taking App for this. Obsidian became my go-to tool because it allows for interconnected notes—perfect for organizing all my research, quotes, transcripts, and drafts in one place.

If you’re a fellow note-taking nerd, I highly recommend checking out this guide on choosing the best app for your style. For me, Obsidian’s flexibility and linking features made it the perfect fit for writing a structured, research-heavy book like Mrs. A.

So, What Did We Learn?

Those are my four main steps for conducting research and organizing information for a project like Mrs. A. It’s a process that definitely took time and effort, but I hope you gained some value from reading about it. Whether you’re working on your own book, a research project, or just looking for ways to streamline your workflow, these methods have worked wonders for me.

There’s still more to share, and I’ll dive deeper into some other aspects of the process in another post. But for now, we’ll leave it here.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

T.M. Kayode

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