March 6, 2023

Do I Have The Right Voice For a Podcast?

Content Warning: Enthusiastic Yes

When I ask potential clients what scares them about starting a podcast, the sound of their own voices is usually near the top of the list. They’ll either phrase it as a question - “what if my voice is terrible?” - or a declaration - “I hate the sound of my own voice.”

The latter issue is a problem for literally everyone.1 The bones in the skull add depth and resonance to the voice that reaches the eardrums but isn’t picked up by microphones,2 so the first time hearing a recording of their own voice is offputting for just about everyone.3

Anxiety about how their voices will be received is also natural, but it’s a much more social kind of pressure. I work with lots of small-business owners and subject-matter enthusiasts who’ve had no formal voice training. Many of them also identify as women. Even though the dominance of the authoritative male announcer has waned quite a bit, women’s voices are still policed for perceived tone, vocal fry, upspeak, and accent or dialect far more harshly than voices coded as male. Of course they’d be nervous about putting their voices out there to be critiqued.

Like any other social norm, what’s considered an “acceptable” voice is a group choice, an unspoken4 consensus reached by the participants. It’s subject to all kinds of implied rules that are hard to articulate but easy to recognize when they’re broken. The acceptable voice is also, quite literally, a conversation among speakers and listeners that has evolved alongside our attitudes about gender, race, and ability.

Podcasting has lowered the barriers to entry for the audio medium, and added to the conversation literally millions of voices that never would have been widely heard on radio alone. It’s dramatically expanded the range of voices that are acceptable, or even appealing. Every person who steps up to share their perspective adds to that momentum, and helps make room for folks who sound like them to be taken seriously when they speak.

This participation is critical, because podcasters are still operating in the same societal systems of bias and privilege as other media. Podcasting in the US, for instance, is less white than the population at large, but it skews heavily male. I’m not aware of research on the percentage of people who podcast with hearing loss or speech disorders, but I’d be willing to speculate that they’re not well-represented.

In order to continue broadening the scope of voices welcome in podcasting, people who aren’t part of the in-group have to put their voices out there to be heard; those of us who are already welcome must do everything we can to help them make space. Your voice won’t appeal to everyone,5 but sharing it with the people who need to hear your message might have the added benefit of making someone else’s decision to speak up a little easier.

Do you have questions about how to get your voice out there? I’d love to help! Let’s talk about what it would take to make your podcasting dreams a reality. Click here to book a call.

Listen Up:

When Things Fall Apart, a typically excellent episode of the Throughline podcast from NPR. Throughline examines the threads of history that weave their influence through current trends and events. In this episode, they look at the philosophical debate over humanity’s inherent character, how fear of social breakdown has been used to justify all kinds of authoritarian atrocities, and what science says about how people treat each other in dire circumstances.