Contemporary short-form public conversations are railroad-fests

there’s a way people talk in public (news interviews, short podcasts etc) where they draw out the ends of sentences, use “ummm”, speak slowly in a sentence but then quickly smash two together by plowing through the period and quickly starting the next word. all these things, when paid attention to, come off as a way to make sure the speaker gets their point across without being interrupted and within the time allotted. this is conversationally rude, weird-sounding and kind of hard to parse as a listener.

one of the beautiful things about non-confrontational long form podcast conversations is that this tends to happen much less. consider how joe rogan just sits there silently while the other person talks for as long as they want. this is an entirely different and better atmosphere and the removal of those sparring speaking styles is a big part of it.

#attention #conversation #media