The Waves: Why You Hate Women’s Voices
Slate Books
Slate Podcasts
3.8 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior supervising producer of audio Daisy Rosario is joined by author Elissa Bassist to talk about women’s voices. They discuss Elissa’s new book, Hysterical and unpack why we cringe when we hear vocal fry, and ask why we don’t have similar words to describe male vocal ticks. Later in the show, they dig into how the fear of scrutiny women have over their voices silences them in ways you haven’t imagined.
In Slate Plus, Elissa talks about her involvement in Cheryl Strayed’s famous quote, “Write like a motherfucker.”
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Waves Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and this week, women's voices. |
| 0:19.9 | Every episode, you get a new pair of women to talk about the |
| 0:22.1 | thing that we cannot get off of our minds. And today you've got me, Daisy Rosario, I'm senior |
| 0:26.8 | supervising producer of audio here at Slate. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by author, |
| 0:34.3 | Alyssa Bassist. She is the writer behind a new book called Hysterical, which talks all about |
| 0:40.9 | her own personal experience with losing and finding her voice. And in the process of writing |
| 0:45.5 | that book, she did a lot of research on women's voices, which she presents in the book as a series |
| 0:49.9 | of essays. So I'm very, very excited to talk to her. After the break, I'm going to be joined by |
| 0:57.1 | Alyssa Bassist. Hey, Waves listeners, if you're loving the show, and we really hope that you are, subscribe to our feed. |
| 1:18.3 | New episodes come out on Thursday mornings, and while you're there, check out our other episodes too. |
| 1:22.8 | Recently, we've been talking about Britney Spears and why her fans need to just give her some space, |
| 1:28.3 | co-ed sports, and why the government wants to know your sex. |
| 1:38.2 | Today I am joined by Alyssa Bassist, who wrote this incredible book, hysterical, which is many things, which is part of |
| 1:47.4 | what is fantastic about it. It's a memoir. It's a bit of a medical mystery. It is a history of |
| 1:52.9 | women's voices and not just literal voices, but communication and the way we communicate. |
| 1:58.1 | And so we will be talking to her today about women's voices. I am so excited to hear |
| 2:04.0 | her actual voice. Elizabeth assist, welcome to the waves. Thank you so much for having me. |
| 2:08.9 | I just have to say, I loved this book. It's really fantastic. And I'm almost too excited in that way |
| 2:16.4 | that I get when something is so good that it gets all the |
| 2:20.2 | synapses firing. I could talk to you about so many, many parts of this book, but I would love to |
| 2:26.0 | just hear from you a little bit about how it came together, because it is a story about something |
| 2:29.9 | that genuinely happened to you combined with incredible research, you know, historical research, |
... |
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