In a Manner of Speaking

Episode 90 of In a Manner of Speaking is a July 2025 retrospective of Paul Meyer’s monthly podcast on the spoken word, with a short hiatus and a planned return in January 2026.

In Episode 89 of In a Manner of Speaking, Paul Meyer and Cameron Meyer talk with Sarah Nichols about voice coaching, sound design, and amplification in theatre, with Nichols' 2022 Voice and Speech Review article at the center.

In "In a Manner of Speaking" Episode 88, Paul Meyer centers a May 2025 conversation on AI, audiobook narration, and human speech with Michael McAuliffe, Tanora Marshall, and Cameron Meyer.

Paul Meyer, a dialect coach with 50-plus years in the business, interviews playwright James Still on Episode 86 of In a Manner of Speaking about how playwrights hear characters' voices.

Paul Meyer opens Episode 85 of In a Manner of Speaking with a puppetry interview and an accent challenge, then welcomes Spencer Lott, whom he taught in voice and speech classes 15 years earlier.

In a Manner of Speaking Episode 84 features Cambridge zoologist Arik Kirschenbaum discussing why wolves, dolphins, hyraxes, parrots, gibbons, chimpanzees, and humans communicate.

In a Manner of Speaking Episode 83 features voice teachers and authors Jeremy Fisher and Gillian Kayes discussing their book Just How Boring Are You?

In a Manner of Speaking Episode 82 examines how American and British singers use, suppress, or modify regional accents in popular song.

Paul Meyer and Jacqueline Springfield examine 11 recorded voices of the Black civil rights movement, from Booker T.

Paul Meyer interviews David Crystal about Trace That Place, a website documenting the stories, pronunciations, and cultural background of British place names on road signs and railway stations.

In a Manner of Speaking Episode 79 features dialect coach Joel Goldies discussing seven years of work on Come From Away, where 12 actors played more than 70 characters.

Paul Meyer, Cameron Meyer, and Barry Kreinick examine transatlantic speech, old Hollywood dialects, and Barry’s audio drama about Eva Le Gallienne.

In a Manner of Speaking Episode 77 features Danish-American actor, director, and writer Lucas Hassel discussing his move from Denmark to Trinity College in Dublin, New York acting, and American English accent training.

Paul Meyer interviews Patricia Sukor Avila, president of the American Dialect Society, about African American English and her recordings from one rural Texas community over more than 30 years.

Paul Meyer interviews Dennis Preston, professor emeritus at Oklahoma State University and former president of the American Dialect Society, about how ordinary people understand language.

Betsy Evans, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington and Executive Director of the American Dialect Society, explains how North American language variation is studied across regions and communities.

Paul Meyer interviews Victor Boucher, a speech scientist and University of Montreal linguistics professor, about why spoken language does not divide cleanly into written words.

Paul Meyer interviews Professor Paul Sanger about how spaces between words helped transform reading from an oral practice into modern silent reading.

Karen Burgos uses Benjamin Franklin's 1768 phonetic alphabet, pronunciation dictionaries, poetry, spelling, and colonial writing to reconstruct how American English sounded in the 1700s.

In a Manner of Speaking Episode 69 pairs host Paul Meyer with rhetoric and media scholar Brian L.

In Episode 68 of In a Manner of Speaking, Paul Meyer and David Crystal trace English pronunciation from Celtic and Latin in Britain through Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Shakespearean, British, and American developments.

In a Manner of Speaking Episode 67 examines harmonic overtone chanting through Paul Meyer's conversation with Jill Purse, who teaches listeners how vowel shapes make internal components of sound audible.

Praveen Shanbag, founder and CEO of NameCoach, explains how his sister Pratima Shanbag's graduation mispronunciation inspired a service built around recorded name pronunciations and phonetic respellings.

Paul Meyer interviews former BBC pronunciation advisor Graham Poynton about how broadcasters decide whether to preserve a person's or place's preferred pronunciation.

Paul Meyer interviews Dr.

Paul Meyer examines fast speech through reported records of 586, 637, and 655 words per minute, while questioning whether those performances remain intelligible.

In a Manner of Speaking Episode 60 examines whistled speech with linguist and acoustician Julien Maher, who describes it as ordinary speech transformed into a whistle-based acoustic form.

Enrique Pardo and Linda Wise describe Roy Hart’s legacy through Alfred Wolfson’s influence, Hart’s reported six-and-a-half-octave range, and experiments with animal sounds.

Paul Meier hosts a podcast about spoken language, featuring accent challenges and interviews with experts on how to do accents.

Paul Meier discusses heightened language in black playwrights with guest Jacqueline Springfield, including a clip from the movie Fargo to illustrate dialect.

Paul Meier discusses variations in Southern American English pronunciation, focusing on how vowels differ before voiced and voiceless consonants.

Paul Meier discusses glossolalia and dialect variation with linguist Paul DeLacy, exploring pronunciation differences in the American South.