The American Podcast Voice

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