Item — HN Reader

There was one NPR broadcaster who used to read the news on weekend mornings for my local station (WHYY), I forget her name, and I haven't heard her in a while thankfully, but she literally whispered the news.

It was like someone I don't know, whispering sweet, unsolicited nothings in my ear. Felt uncomfortably intimate in a way I hated. I was always like, "Lady, I don't know you like that, so cut it out."

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Years ago when I moved for my first job out of school I decided to set my clock radio to the local NPR station (KERA Dallas) to wake up to the news. I had to switch to a hard rock station because I'd fall back asleep to their soft voices.

Reminds me of ASMR.

The amount of vocal fry on NPR has become as bad as Mary Louise Kelly's dry mouth clicking. And once you hear it, you can't unhear it.

Language Log investigated the "vocal fry problem" a few years back.

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17489

"And they want to talk about the crazy ways that young women are speaking. And the first thing they do is attribute it to young women, even though young men are doing it too. So it's a policing of young people, but I think most particularly young women."

Rather, once you've randomly decided that that's a horrible thing.

Men (and women) have spoken with vocal fry for the past several millennia, but I don't recall reading of anyone being annoyed by it until recently when everybody decided that millennial women speaking like that on the radio was anathema.