The American Podcast Voice

It's harder than it looks to sound natural and non-stilted when reading from a script.

it amazes me that people who suck at this, don't realize they suck at this, and how many of them there are. Some people have problems with it due to things like dyslexia and other learning disabilities or even just, refusing to wear glasses when they need them. And you can practice a lot and get good at it. But it is something that actually comes easily to some people, and is not a rare skill.

this podcast issue just reminds me of that thread from years ago that roxy started about her relative that was starting a cupcake business who made ridiculously awkward looking cupcakes.

Lol. I think it's more subtle than that! Like, I'm very good and fluid at reading things out loud, I could blind read an audiobook no problem. But to read a podcast intro where I'm supposed to sound off-the-cuff and like myself is a horrible experience. It's like telling someone 'act natural' - I think that skill is a bit more rare? Idk.

I have a pretty high tolerance for these things, but one example that drives me crazy is popular food podcast Gastropod. It's clearly tightly scripted, but it's also supposed to sound like two people having a jokey conversation in a way that drives me insane at times.

there are three podcasts: this american life/ college radio show with roommates who want to bonk / money box

I had to stop listening to that Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast out loud because, while it's not NPR voice, the guy has a very specific up-down cadence that was driving my partner crazy.

I really do think it's tough balancing act to pull off for a podcast that is mostly one person reading a script.

oh yeah i only made it through one

It's like telling someone 'act natural' - I think that skill is a bit more rare? Idk.

it's not like being able to memorize Pi to like 100 decimal places or anything ... idk ... maybe the people who have that skill don't do podcasts?

I realized just now that I would consider listening to a podcast by Bob Odenkirk. Just Bob Odenkirk. He has a very good voice.

have often been told i should podcast. but i hate podcasts

act natural is hard its impossible to get extras to look like they're not suffering effects of smoke inhalation if you ask them to walk on camera

everyone's like this is how i walk

Podcasts keep me sane on weekdays while I'm working. A few are definitely in the This American Life/Ira Glass mold (like Radiolab and Freakonomics), but there are really a lot of different approaches out there regardless of the material covered. So I don't think there really is an "American Podcast Voice" tbh.

no its the only voice

yr too deep in this im sorry

"I had to stop listening to that Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast...the guy has a very specific up-down cadence"

He definitely settled into a more natural delivery by the end of the first season, but that was 2017 and he's since built up a rep on twitter as a smug son of a bitch and getting through the second season, whenever it appears, may be more of a chore if he leans into it.

Smugness is for sure an indicator here

it's the conviction that the best vehicle for the delivery of information is a relentlessly gormless airhead who previously knew absolutely nothing about the topic—in fact, had never even thought about it—and whose wide-eyed journey to the far exurbs of expertise is aggressively presented as universal as well as inspiring.

― rob, Sunday, February 21, 2021 5:32 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I vehemently object to this! Although maybe doing it well is u&k as compared to doing it badly.

I very much appreciate someone learning about something along with me as opposed to two all-knowing ppl chatting just to each other like the listener isn't there. I want to like Rev Left and Citations Needed but they can get really into it and my mind wanders and I fall asleep. (Good for napping though.)

Whereas the hosts of You're Wrong About do an excellent job imo. Fave podcast of all.

I do have a hard time with vocal fry. I try not to be a jerk about it but I prefer more mellifluous voices. Someone posted video of movie-goers being interviewed about a Batman movie in the late 1980s, and I didn't remember this but ppl spoke very differently than I think they would now! (The Twitter account seems suspended now or I'd link it here.) Everyone's voices were a lot higher and changed pitch more. It was fascinating to listen to a time I lived through and hadn't noticed the difference. Someone pointed out that ppl wouldn't have been used to hearing themselves at that time, which was interesting.

But to read a podcast intro where I'm supposed to sound off-the-cuff and like myself is a horrible experience.

I've cold-called and phone-banked a lot. I've got this down. Same script, make it seem natural every time.

What is driving me nuts is the e/i vowel shift, where ppl say "pin" in place of "pen."

separate but related my bf hates how everyone in youtube instruction videos says "you're going to want to go ahead and..." all the time

Just one person speaking/reading is a really hard sell imo. I want to like American Hysteria and Vikings Are Gay! so, so much but I always end up tuning them out eventually.

The person who does Noble Blood has a good melodic voice.

What is driving me nuts is the e/i vowel shift, where ppl say "pin" in place of "pen."

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Sunday, 21 February 2021 19:59 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is violence

I've been told it's a Pacific Northwest thing.

Rabia Chaudry did a mini series called The Hidden Djinn last year and I couldn't really listen to it and work at the same time because it's so dense with information, but I'm definitely going to come back to it because she has one of the most amazingly rich voices I've ever heard.

xp when we moved two hours away and my accent subsequently changed such that pronunciation of "pen" now took 33% of the length of time, i can assure you twasnt neither to nor from the PNW

I don't know anything about that, but PNWers do it and it's starting to grate on me. Also it's revealing that I listen to a lot of PNW-populated podcasts so ymmv.

I vehemently object to this! Although maybe doing it well is u&k as compared to doing it badly.

In retrospect it kind of sounds like I'm saying something close to "learning is bad" which I def don't want to say. OTOH, my partner listened to a bit of You're Wrong About and specifically warned me not to try it due to my antipathy to this hosting style, so we might just disagree vehemently on this :)

two all-knowing ppl chatting just to each other

I hate this too though, so another possibility is that I have very narrow podcast tastes. I have never successfully gotten into any unscripted ones.

Running from COPS is probably the best limited-run podcast I've ever listened to. I liked his previous one on Y2K as well.

I deffo do like a density of information being presented, as in YWA and also Behind the Bastards, which are both heavily researched. Listening to ppl just bullshit w each other is not for me.

two all-knowing ppl chatting just to each other

Why see you're doing it wrong, you need to listen to ours, where there are three. Er wait.

Ugh that Gondorian NW accent

What is driving me nuts is the e/i vowel shift, where ppl say "pin" in place of "pen."

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Sunday, 21 February 2021 19:59 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is violence

I had to stop listening to that Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast out loud because, while it's not NPR voice, the guy has a very specific up-down cadence that was driving my partner crazy

I meant io's callout

And i mean she has heard my mean little co mayo vowel ffs, she knew who she was aiming at

Smugness is for sure an indicator here

^^^
Less the voice/sound for me than the tone of how the speaker thinks they are about to blow my mind.

Pin/pen is Texas and wide swathes of the South. The host of "The History of English" does that. What's interesting is that he, and most people who use that pronunciation, literally think pen and pin are homonyms.

pretty sure we've covered this on linguistics threads a dozen times -- but there is the pin/pen homonym where both are pronounced "pen" and there is the converse where both are pronounced "pin" -- i grew up in a 1/2 "pin" household

We moved around a lot, so we were betimes fully pen and betimes full pin but never iirc split

my sister does the when/win pen/pin thing, we’re from suburban nyc and so is the rest of our extended family. i don’t have this particular tic

don’t think it’s regional *shrug*

i do think “the voice” in question is very prevalent in the gimlet/npr sphere and it’s not my favorite. it is distinct from youtuber/tik tok voice which is also a thing.

Am i right or utterly wrong in aligning it with the phrase "nebbish"?

Again im seeing through a glass (not that one) darkly here so apologies in advance if this is verging on a no-no at any stage

i was one of the “pin” homonym people until i moved to london.

my job puts me around a lot of podcast and radio people and what’s funny in relation to this thread is that most british producers think americans just “sound better” in podcasts. the british speech radio tradition is more continuous and hegemonic (and posh) and there’s a “way” to do it, even in music radio. when you try to use that style in a podcast, though, it seldom works, it sounds too loud, too broadcasty. i think it’s true that the american podcast style old lunch parodies so well DOES “work” insofar as it moves your attention along and gets the information into your brain. but yeah it definitely drives me crazy too and i don’t prefer it.

for me, it's not so much a tone or timbre problem, it's the conviction that the best vehicle for the delivery of information is a relentlessly gormless airhead who previously knew absolutely nothing about the topic—in fact, had never even thought about it—and whose wide-eyed journey to the far exurbs of expertise is aggressively presented as universal as well as inspiring.

in my view the three podcasts are: interview / friendship simulator / mystery

there’s a twitter video from a couple of years ago that’s this guy doing an absolute pitch perfect american podcast intro about a rare postage stamp of nude popeye

it’s one of the greatest things i’ve ever seen and i have no idea how to find it now

TH was interested to hear yr thoughts, personally i think most uk podcasts actually avoid this issue very well tbh

Id listen to a range from in our time to monkey cage to the one about uh an expert and a comedian talking through history and they all seem to me to be delivered across a range of "natural" styles

USA Today snapshots

TH:

Narrator of a big budget investigative podcast pic.twitter.com/I25zlGzYSI

— cancela lansbury (@gossipbabies) September 26, 2019

7 years ago!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATXbJjuZqbc

infinite monkey cage and in our time are both radio shows that happen to be distributed as podcasts - in which form they have both found very big non-radio audiences - but i wonder if they would, were they to start up today? i don't think i'd call them 'natural' - IMC is usually live, right? with cox and ince hamming it up for the crowd. it's informal but there is a publicness to it. most podcasts i love make me feel like it's a private thing just for me. and IOT has one of the strictest formats going. the conversation is unscripted but heavily researched and everyone pretty much knows what they're going to be asked in advance.

'true' uk podcasts like, i dunno, no such thing as a fish or shagged married annoyed or my dad wrote a porno do avoid that whole clipped faux-naif schtick completely, yeah - it really is an american/canadian thing afaict. and i don't think there is really merit to the idea that americans 'talk better' on podcasts at all - it's just that that style has held this totemic influence

xpost ALBERT I LOVE YOU!

Here's my stab at the Big 4 podcast genres:

Interview
Friendship simulator (well-put Tracer)
Educational/journalism/post-NPR
Murder

currently imagining a gimlet/npr podcast hosted by a sports radio knucklehead like mike francesa

lol

I edit a lot of the ums and awkward silences out of my podcast interviews, but not all of them — sometimes you want to preserve someone's thought-to-speech rhythm rather than doing the whole "get on with it" process. The thing I've realized by listening to almost 100 hours of myself talking to people is that I put a little extra sibilance in my esses, and I can't really get rid of it. I hope it's not too annoying, or at least less annoying than my conversational space-fillers ("yeah...yeah"), which I'm also editing out more often now.

I put a little extra sibilance in my esses, and I can't really get rid of it.

you actually can, and can make the edit sound natural, but it's a bit more time consuming and challenging than getting rid of slurps and sniffles, and maybe a little more challenging than a popped plosive, though, I can see why you would just leave it.

The solution I find is to place the mic directly inside the mouth, which is why they call the mouth nature's windscreen

I am so relieved to find this thread and to discover everyone else hates the faux-naif thing as much as I do.

Subgenres such as 'recap an entire tv series' can fit under one or more of these categories

Nothing annoys me more about this type of podcast than when guests come on who have never seen the show except for the one episode they will be recapping and they don't get it or ask a load of stupid questions. This was why I eventually stopped listening to the Gilmore Guys podcast. Well, that and the live episodes. I get that you have to make money, and having live episodes is a good way to do that, but do they have to be over an hour long? And not funny?

the only good podcast live episode was Hollywood Handbook at Comicon

I'm less bothered by the "faux-naif thing" than by the "faux off-the-cuff thing", where the presenters' banter is supposed to sound loose and extemporised and yet somehow comes across over-polished and pre-scripted

The "relentlessly gormless airhead who previously knew absolutely nothing" shtick is played out but I think it (originally) came from a good place, as a reaction to the smuggy punditry of the time

it can still be done well imo. like jad abumrad.

Live podcast episodes are a scourge

Idk, they're fun to GO to but not to listen to, is how I break it down to an extent.

I went to a few live tapings of Radio Dispatch, which doesn't happen anymore bc Molly got married & had kids and John now reports from idk where, but it would be a pretty small group and you could go out for drinks afterward with whoever was going, which was cool.

oh shit, i didn’t realize the american podcast voice was canceled https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/business/media/pj-vogt-reply-all.html

I tend to associate American podcast voice with varying degrees of mumbly California shift vowels and uptalk, though I guess there’s some vocal fry too for variety. My uncharitable cultural take is that it’s Americans with university educations who think of their way of speaking and world view as normal and correct. There’s a sort of presumption of “good” politics, that the past was a horrifying place but you and I, dear listener, are beyond that now. “Accent? I don’t even own an accent.”

Also, it has very little to do with what I hear on terrestrial American radio! It’s basically confined to some public radio shows and I guess college radio. Sports radio, right wing politics shouting, morning zoo, regular commercial music DJs, straight news programming—almost none of this is American podcast voice.

yeah, but there is the fact that some podcasts are actually public radio shows, or are hosted by people who have done public radio, or follow the public radio style, which is now the middle-brow professionally casual podcast style. Most podcasters don't actually employ this style afaict.

There possibly are a dozen or so podcasts that are not already radio shows, or produced by former public radio professionals, that model their voice on TAL/NPR. There are hundreds of thousands of American podcasts that don't; not using such a voice is a distinguishing factor of podcasts, rather than the reverse.

okay

The bar is open

Disagree that that is a distinguishing characteristic

Not taxonomically, sure. But measuring by weight.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/25/arts/podcast-voice-sound.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage