The voice of SpongeBob, Tom Kenny
Fresh Air
NPR
4.3 • 36.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We take a trip to Bikini Bottom and revisit our interview with Tom Kenny, who plays SpongeBob on the popular Nickelodeon cartoon series, and in the new ‘Spongebob SquarePants’ film. Kenny’s been voicing the character since the show began in 1999. In 2004 he talked about creating the voice, including experimenting with inhaling helium.
TV critic David Bianculli reviews ‘Man on the Run,’ the new documentary about Sir Paul McCartney in the decade after the Beatles split up, and Justin Chang reviews the new erotic drama ‘Dreams,’ starring Jessica Chastain.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Get in loser. We're taking a trip under the sea to a junkyard. |
| 0:04.5 | I've done cobra helicopters. We've seen old washer machines. |
| 0:08.4 | Does a second trip boat count. |
| 0:10.2 | This junk helped create one of the world's largest artificial reefs and a new home for many marine animals. |
| 0:17.5 | But how did our trash become another fish's treasure? |
| 0:20.4 | Find out on Shortwave. Listen in the |
| 0:22.1 | NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. and Cooley. The latest |
| 0:27.9 | SpongeBob SquarePants movie, The SpongeBob movie Search for Squarepants, is now streaming on Paramount |
| 0:34.4 | Plus. And that's reason enough to revisit our interview with Tom Kenney, who has been providing |
| 0:40.5 | the voice of animation's most celebrated Sponge, since it premiered on Nickelodeon in 1999. |
| 0:47.6 | SpongeBob SquarePants isn't the oldest continually running animated series currently on TV. |
| 0:53.7 | Comedy Central's South Park first appeared |
| 0:56.1 | two years earlier in 1997. Both shows have launched popular Broadway musicals and movie spinoffs, |
| 1:03.9 | and like Fox's The Simpsons, which launched as a series way back in 1989, all have had a major impact on the current generation, |
| 1:13.4 | which has been watching these shows and characters all their lives. |
| 1:16.9 | When I teach television history to young 20-somethings in college, |
| 1:20.9 | the one show with which they are more familiar and fluent than any other is SpongeBob SquarePants. |
| 1:26.8 | They all know and love the antics of SpongeBob and his |
| 1:30.3 | undersea pals, including Patrick the Starfish, Squidward the Octopus, and Mr. Crabbs. All these characters and more were created by Stephen Hillenberg, who was a marine science educator as well as an animator. He died in 2018 |
| 1:46.5 | at age 57, but his characters and his series live on. In Search for SquarePants, Spongebob |
| 1:54.5 | wakes up one morning to discover he's had a small growth spurt, making him 36 clams high, |
| 2:00.7 | which, to a sponge who's been waiting all his |
... |
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