The American Podcast Voice

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

I listen to On the Media pretty regularly, and despite it being a public radio show, Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone have much more of a jaded, sarcastic tone than the faux-naive thing described in this thread. Not in an edgy way, more just in a 60-something New Yorker way.

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

I guess radio play/fiction is its own category too

infinite monkey cage and in our time are both radio shows that happen to be distributed as podcasts

so is This American Life, the only concrete example of this alleged universal voice that anyone has actually managed to identify

would 100% listen to an (episode or three of) investigative / journalistic Serial-type podcast with the narration being screamed by a stoned Jon Gabrus though

Educational/journalism/post-NPR

i used to say the 4th was 'knowledge straight into my veins' but every example i could think of was crossed with at least one of the other genres so i figured it could go. but yes

'murder' is mystery obv, but so is pretty much all audio fiction and according to my theory if it doesn't have a mystery at it's heart it doesn't really exist as a podcast. audio art or something but not a podcast

Lol at popeye stamp

Tracer, i know the convo has shifted (note btw fans that as i am an adaptable beast and not every thread follows the same rules i tapped no sign) but i was in my op literally referring to a *voice* so when drawing those out what i refer to is more the actual delivery of those speaking and not so much structure/format- if the distinction makes any sense

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

Oh fuck no

TBF, I'm not really referencing podcasts per se itt but rather radio shows (which may or may not have attendant podcasts) that I've overheard on NPR whose announcers shocking thieve cadences like they're in an Ira Glass cover band. But alas I do not pay enough attention to overheard NPR to say what specific shows these are. My ears have perked up in passing enough times though to confirm that this is A Thing.

sic my pet theory is that the american tradition of speech radio since the early 70s played to such a more niche audience who were listening to it in the ideal listening space of their cars, such that long-form speech radio already kind of sounded like podcasts before podcasts existed, is how i break it down to an extent. i.e. jean shepherd as the first podcaster. in the UK you were fighting through the kitchen noise and had the continuous tradition of a varied schedule and a mandate to reach every member of the public and still today most british presenters sound pretty 'broadcasty'

dmac i agree with you - those voices work, they do not display those tics - however i do balk at calling melvyn bragg or robin ince 'natural' or 'naturalistic' in the way that say elis james & john robins are. i interviewed ince and cox once and the degree to which they're pros astonished me. once my recorder was on and i'd asked a question it was like a switch had flipped - they were 'on' - doing their thing - everything heightened, on another plane than the one we'd just been quietly chatting on - even though it was supposed to be an interview, not a performance!

Mar dhea but dont we all do that

'murder' is mystery obv, but so is pretty much all audio fiction and according to my theory if it doesn't have a mystery at it's heart it doesn't really exist as a podcast. audio art or something but not a podcast

I thought the murder shows were just meant to provide macabre, voyeuristic thrills by delving into past monstrosities perpetrated by humans, as a way to deal with one's own fears and vulnerability. But I don't really listen to them.

lol yeah i guess that too

i’ll concede it’s possible that my absurdly reductive formula might have a coupla holes in it

TBF, I'm not really referencing podcasts per se itt but rather radio shows

my pet theory is that the american tradition of speech radio since the early 70s played to such a more niche audience who were listening to it in the ideal listening space of their cars, such that long-form speech radio already kind of sounded like podcasts before podcasts existed, is how i break it down to an extent. i.e. jean shepherd as the first podcaster.

so we've nailed down that this is actually an American radio voice, not a podcast thing, just like whenever this has come up before? glad we got it sorted, lock thread

https://i.imgur.com/ZVhvWog.png

xp dont make me take down the sign

I would pontificate upon the voices featured in podcasts qua podcasts but pretty much all of the podcasts I listen to are history podcasts presented by what I can only assume are well-read grad students whose oratorical skills are best described as 'existent'.

THE BAR IS GLASS

I talk sorta like this anyway. Never knew it until I was forced to watch video of myself teaching in grad school

I am so not surprised that treeship sounds like this tbh

I was disappointed when I figured it out. I was hoping I sounded tough, streetwise, with just a hint of my jersey roots. But alas

honestly, i probably sound more like a direct to consumer pharmaceutical ad than this post-Glass type

That’s a good one. Polished, elegant

And authoritative

I could only dream of sounding like a pharma advertisement

Polished glass eh

the years of having to record voice over for radio spots where the time duration had to be between 28-30 seconds or 56-60 seconds and the script was dictated by the people in sales such that sometimes we really were having to do the equivalent of rattling off all the potential side effects in as tightly enunciated a fashion as possible

basically, having to sing Bach and other German composers in choir was really good practice for radio voice over stuff

Like the terms and conditions at the end of a financials radio ad, basically?

A skill in itself

yes ... or car sales

Auctioneer-style rapid monotone should be the new voice of the 21st century. Flat, transactional, and traveling at the speed of information, not intonation

TH:

Narrator of a big budget investigative podcast pic.twitter.com/I25zlGzYSI
— cancela lansbury (@gossipbabies) September 26, 2019

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Sunday, February 21, 2021 7:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i knew what was coming and am still in tears laughing at this

flatness ... damn ... that was actually one of my problems in doing radio, because I was in New England and regionally there is a much flatter tonality to those accents than I have/had, so I was never the "most requested" person because I didn't sound like a native.

The chevy chase/dan ackroyd default pace