Forum from the Archives: Have You Lost Something That Once Defined You?

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Musician Greta Morgan began performing professionally when she was 16, singing for groups like The Hush Sound and Gold Motel before touring with Vampire Weekend and charting her own path as a singer-songwriter. But in 2020, a severe case of Covid led to a neurological disorder that reduced her voice to a hush. We talk to Morgan about what a drastic change to her singing voice taught her about her inner voice and how her listening became so powerful that when she watched a meteor shower, she thought she could hear the stars. Morgan’s new memoir is “The Lost Voice.” Guests: Greta Morgan, musician, songwriter and author, "The Lost Voice: A Memoir" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for KQED Podcasts comes from the Exploratorium.
0:04.6	Leap into the wild new world of artificial intelligence this summer at the all-new All-Ages exhibition, Adventures in AI.
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0:37.2	From startups to scale ups, online-person, and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. From KQED. From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Mina Kim. Coming up on Forum, how do people emotionally survive life-altering identity-shattering changes?
1:18.1	It's a question singer-songwriter Greta Morgan asked in 2020 when she was diagnosed with a lifelong voice disorder after contracting COVID.
1:26.4	Morgan was a touring member of the band Vampire Weekend
1:29.0	and began performing with the hush sound when she was still in high school. In her new memoir,
1:33.0	The Lost Voice, Morgan charts her path from losing the voice she once had to finding a truer
1:39.0	voice. We listened back to our conversation from earlier this month. Join us.
1:54.5	Welcome to Forum.
1:55.5	I'm Mina Kim.
1:58.9	Here's my guest, Greta Morgan, singing a verse from the song,
2:02.7	Hold You Now in 2019, with the band Vampire Weekend.
2:07.2	I know the reason why you think I understood.
2:13.0	Maybe how you're telling me on my wedding day.
2:23.6	Crying in those rumpled sheets like someone's about to die, just watch your mind talking about the father of the pride.
	...

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