Worst Voices on Podcasts

Her voice is maddening. I cant imagine her husband being stuck in their apartment for the last year+ with that voice, three teenagers and three dogs.

Chris Hardwick. Why do American men always have to speak so LOUD? Pepper a sentence with like every two words and you have Chris in an irritating nutshell.

This is one of those "my every random thought should be a DL thread" threads. But, carry on, I'm sure there are many, many people annoyed with weird voices on podcasts.

I’d have totally expected that, OP.

There's a really horrible-sounding voice on my local PBS classical radio station. It's kind of a squawking sound she makes, truly ear- and brain-piercing. It goes way beyond mere upspeak or vocal fry, either of which would be a relief in comparison. Her father must be an extremely big contributor to the station: her voice is so horrible, no one in power could have hired her otherwise.

Nasal baby voice, with vocal fry and upspeak, is now standard for all American women under the age of 50.

It's a cross between DisneyPrincess and Kardashian.

I listen to a Survivor podcast (yes, I'm lame) and one of the hosts is a woman named Shannon, who has a terrible speech impediment. She sounds like she's speaking whilst sucking a dick. Take a listen, if you dare:

r7 I might be wrong, but think it's called a "lateral lisp". Here is an example

The chick who does You Must Remember This.

R7, Shannon Guss is Australian. She speaks with an accent. I don’t hear anything wrong with her voice.

I love the 99% Invisible podcast but there is one contributor, I think the name is Joe Rosenberg who has such a feminine and scratchy voice. I think he may be a transman which explains it. Trans men have annoying frog voices.

joe rogaine

Apparently it’s misogynist to point out the obvious - that not all people have good radio voices. I’ve even seen women complain that the standard settings on recording software/microphones were based on men’s voices and that’s why they sound so bad.

Jason Mantzoukas' voice can sometimes be annoying on the How Did This Get Made? podcast.

Good Lord, I know what you mean about those whiny, baby-girl grating voices. Just maddening. One would be forgiven for doing absolutely anything to silence it.

Hopefully she was just guesting, but a writer named Inkoo Kang was on this podcast and it was shocking how painful it was to listen to her. I can’t imagine a sound engineer allowing her to go on and even questioned if she was given any media training or how she could of auditioned for this and still got the job. I mean, even if you just heard her on the phone you would know she was not appropriate for the radio.

"Her voice is so annoying."⁠ ⁠"I hate the way he turns everything into a question."⁠ ⁠Upspeak, vocal fry, tone policing. What it essentially boils down to is good old fashioned gatekeeping (usually directed towards women & POC). ⁠Say it: every voice is a podcast voice! ⁠

As producers, we hear these comments all the time. OF COURSE avid podcast listeners have strong opinions about host voices—after all, a podcast is literally in your ears (intimate!). ⁠ ⁠And podcast culture is all about downloading entire back catalogues & brewing hot takes. But when podcast reviews say things like, "I wish these girls would stop giggling!" and, "They sound kinda immature," it's entering the territory of gatekeeping, and that's no fun. ⁠

I'm sensitive to voices and sound quality. There are some YouTubers I like who have 1 million-plus subscribers, but use a cheap microphone. Sounds like they're in an empty room with marble walls. I have a hard time listening.

I hate uptalk (where every statement sounds like a sentence).

There are some sounds that I am OK with like city noises and even babies crying on airplanes don't bother me *that* much.

[quote]I hate uptalk (where every statement sounds like a sentence).

We know you meant "question"? And not "sentence"?

Yes, R19, I meant question; every sentence sounds like a question.

Broadcast standards should still apply, especially at places like NPR, I’m not saying everyone has to be trained in the Mid Atlantic accent, but vocal fry should be considered grounds for not going on air, just as if they had bad grammar and sentence structure I would expect a writer to be in print. The voice is the tool of the radio announcer and should be held to a certain level of esteem.

I tried to listen to a podcast about the crazy lesbians who drove off the ledge with the adopted kids. Couldn't hack it. The vocal fry was so bad.

Here's a video about vocal fry in men vs. women. Maybe the man who demonstrates the vocal fry is not the best demonstrator. Anyway, the point is that women get skewered more for vocal fry than do men.

Also, the video demonstrates that vocal fry actually has a place in some languages.

I noticed in the Halston miniseries that "Liza Minnelli" had a horrible case of fry in a scene reading a newspaper review to Halston. Is that historically accurate?