The Vocal Fries

I fell in love with linguistics in college in Inge Genee’s class at the University of Lethbridge (you should have her on the show!). I am now many years past college and that love has stuck with me and I get to keep learning thanks to Carrie and Megan. I love how accessible they make a very academic discipline and the way they force me to address my own biases and preconceptions. Thank you, Carrie and Megan! Please never stop!

Me: cool another linguistics podcast, I love those! Them: (a few episodes in) Schadenfreude is mean but ok if it’s “about a white dude” Me: oh right, it’s a podcast about linguistic discrimination! Byeeeeeee!

I’ve tried to listen to several episodes but couldn’t bear the consistently uninformed views that betray the hosts’ meager knowledge of history (just one example, in an episode about dialects, one of the hosts speculated that, since the founding of the U.S. was contemporaneous with the French Revolution, perhaps the “English only” movement in the U.S. was modeled after France’s insistence on a single uniform national language). I never managed to finish an episode and I can’t believe they’ve lasted long enough to make over 100 episodes of tiresome dreck. I’m sure they mean well but these are not serious people, despite their academic credentials.

Moronic drivel.