Megan Figueroa: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries Podcast. The podcast about linguistic discrimination.
Carrie: I’m Carrie Gillon.
Megan: And I’m Megan Figueroa, and I’m still a little bit sick. So if I squeak, forgive me. [laughter]
Carrie: I think I’ve heard the squeaking stage right now. The squeaking stage is- I mean you feel mostly better. You sound so bad and you kind of hate how you sound.
Megan: I know. I liked it better a few days ago when I was just really deep and I felt like Tina from Bob’s Burgers. Because I whine like she does but it was really on point when I had a deeper voice a couple of days ago.
Carrie: Yeah. I enjoy when my voice is a little lower. It feels sexier. I know it’s not, but that’s how it feels to me.
Megan: It’s not because of you-
Carrie: Because you’re slimy and gross, [crosstalk]
Megan: I was going to say that there’s mucus involved.
Carrie: We forgot to thank some patrons last time.
Megan: Yes, we sure did. And that’s on me.
Carrie: That’s some assholes.
Megan: Yes. So we definitely want to thank our two newest patrons from last month. Daryl Ducharme and Mary Tady. And thank you so much for telling me how to pronounce your name because I definitely would have fucked it up.
Carrie: Yeah. And we don’t want to fuck up names. I mean, that’s a really important thing to us.
Megan: As it should be to everyone. A name is very important to people. They’ve done studies on this or they are doing more looking into this. [crosstalk]
Carrie: Oh, yeah?
Magan: Yeah.
Carrie: That’s cool.
Megan: How important it is to get folks’ names right. And I don’t really think it’s linguistic research, it’s more socio-emotional, learn- in education and stuff but it’s important that teachers get kids’ names right.
Carrie: And especially if the sounds are actually in your language like all of those were.
Megan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Carrie: It’s a little bit harder when they’re not. But at least as close as you can, and especially if it is in your set of sounds, which Tady is. Anyway, thank you.
Megan: Yes. So today I’m the guest on our show.
Carrie: We’re going to pretend that you’re the guest. [laughter]
Megan: I’m excited to talk with you today, Carrie.
Carrie: Welcome to my podcast.
Megan: Before that, I saw something on Twitter and it actually kind of transitioned. It will transition into what we’re talking about today. But I saw a tweet about how everyone’s being sexist and misogynistic toward Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And someone- this is from a tweet. Is this a tweet? No. Okay. So I don’t know if this is a tweet but it says that- In a tweet, it says, Candace Owens of Turning Point, USA said about Ocasio-Cortez, “Similar to Christine Blasey-Ford, Ocasio-Cortez constantly infantilizes her voice to sound like a toddler, so that journalists don’t critique her dangerous ideas. This is creepy. She is a 30-year-old adult woman trying to pass as a naïve threatened little girl.”
Carrie: It’s interesting because I never noticed anything particularly notable about her voice. She does not sound like she has a particularly high voice. It’s not particularly low either, but it’s definitely within the normal range for a woman’s voice. And it’s also interesting, because we were just interviewed by get your WIT.
Megan: Yeah. And WIT is Women In Tech.
Carrie: We were interviewed about Elizabeth Holmes’s voice and she is the opposite. She really sounds very deep.
Megan: She’s the CEO and founder of Theranos. The thing that you should Google if you have not heard of it. It’s a wild ride.
Carrie: But anyway, it’s interesting that she’s being picked on for something that- there are women who have particularly high voices and you still shouldn’t make fun of them for them, obviously, but she’s just lying.
Megan: Yeah, she’s lying. We’re not out looking for reasons to disparage or undermine women like, obviously, Candace Owens of Turning Point USA is, but yeah, it’s an outright lie that Alexandria is doing this. It’s sexist as fuck.
Carrie: Just goes to show women do it too. Which we’ve talked about before but-
Megan: Yes, yes, yes. We are definitely flag bearers of the patriarchy too.
Carrie: Yeah. Well, it would collapse instantly if all women give it up.
Megan: It’s true.
Carrie: That was just something that stood out to me recently, as really terrible and…
Megan: Stop picking on women’s voices. I mean, it’s as simple as that, right? It’s what we’ve been saying since day one.
Carrie: I know. But of course, she’s not going to listen to us even if she heard this or she won’t because she doesn’t even care. She’s completely disingenuous on many fronts.
Megan: Yes. Yes. She doesn’t care. If she started one of our podcasts, she’d automatically stop listening to it because of my vocal fry, probably.
Carrie: Well, I don’t know about that, but definitely the content. She would just be like, “Oh, they’re liberal.”
Megan: Snowflakes.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: So I think it’s been shown on this show before that I am the queen of terrible transitions but today we’re going to talk about child language development but we’re doing this because, when was it? Someone asked us.
Carrie: So one of my friends, Dave Tompkins, also known as Dancing Dave, he said that he’d be interested to learn more about correcting children’s language because he has two children now but one child is old enough to speak. The other one’s an infant.
Megan: But still putting in the work. Still learning, but just not expressing it outwardly.
Carrie: Anyway, so his daughter was making what adults would consider to be mistakes and he was wondering, “Am I supposed to be telling her how to say this correctly?” The answer is no. Can you explain to us why that is the case?
Megan: Yes, I can explain why that’s the case. But first, I want to point out, because you said that what adults will refer to as mistakes, and that’s really important because I specifically state in my dissertation that I won’t call what children do errors because they’re just pattern ways that kids go through language and it’s kind of unfair to call them mistakes or errors because they’re actually very creative and very smart ways to solve a problem. And there are different problems that the kids are solving.
Carrie: Do they have a different rule than the adults do? That’s all.
Megan: Yes. Sometimes. And then when it comes to sounds, maybe it’s just because of the motor issues, right?
Carrie: That’s true. Yes. Actually. So maybe we should start with what kinds of errors there are. Because the kinds of errors he was talking about had more to do with, they were more grammatical errors.
Megan: Let’s talk about sound first. And also, I just wanted to say really quick that we’re going to be talking about sound, but of course, there’s another modality, which is sign. And deaf babies, actually, their acquisition parallels, that of spoken language development as long as deaf babies have full access to a sign language. And I just want to say that I’ve heard and learned from the hard of hearing and deaf communities that it’s language deprivation if you don’t give deaf babies full access to a sign language.
Carrie: Absolutely.
Megan: Yeah. So when I could talk about all these things, deaf babies are doing this too. They’re just doing it with their hands. So they’re babbling, they’re having their first words, they’re doing with their hands. So, sound. There are some really cute stuff that kids do with sound and we’re able to talk about it because there have been many kids over the years that have done the exact same things. It’s not so important to know what it’s called but these are biological processes and the first one that I’ll talk about really briefly is fronting. So a kid might say Tau instead of cow and what they’re doing is they’re saying the ka- sound in cow is further back and you make it for the back in your mouth. And so they front it and say Tau, Ta-, which is further front so that’s why they call it fronting. That’s just why. But that’s something a kid might do.
Carrie: And that’s because T is easier to pronounce than a K?
Megan: Yes. Actually. That’s something you might want to ask a speech pathologist. That’s what I’ve always assumed and now that you ask me that, I’m not entirely sure.
Carrie: Well, I do know that we acquire alveolar sounds, what are called alveolar sounds like T and D and N first, before the velar sounds like K, G, and -ang.
Megan: I’m assuming so because you’ll hear babbling that sounds like mama, but it’s really just babbling and it’s not a child’s first words yet, but a lot of moms will think that the child is actually saying, “Mama.” But they’ll babble with this “ma” sound because it’s bilabial. We’re using our lips and babies can see that being made. So it’s one of the first sounds that they’ll make. And that’s why mama will have a similar word across so many world’s languages because it’s one of the easiest babbles to make. So yeah, I’m just guessing easier sounds kind of go from front to back.
Carrie: Well, kind of. It’s a little bit more complicated because “sha” is much more complicated than “ka.” But anyway.
Megan: Also, I’m not a phonologist or phonetician. I just know that these things are patterned and they happen.
Carrie: Yeah, there’s definitely an order.
Megan: Or someone who focuses on motor development, but I know that that definitely plays a role. And that’s why you’ll actually see deaf babies start babbling first because it’s easier to sign than to do some of these things with your mouth.
Carrie: That’s a very good point.
Megan: So you might also hear a kid say wed for red and that’s because that “R,” the North American English “R” is the hardest sound that we have in English by far. Kids will be saying wed up until they’re like six, some of them. R is usually the last one to develop. So another one is called consonant harmony which means that you make two consonants in a word match. So dog becomes gog.
Carrie: I love that one.
Megan: I know, it’s cute. These two next ones are very popular with the kids. Very popular. They’re really hot. They’re really hot. Final consonant deletion. So boats becomes “bo-” And then consonant cluster reduction, meaning when something has two consonants, they turn it into one. So pretty becomes “pity.”
Carrie: And these are all or at least most of these are because of the motor development. It’s harder to pass two consonants in a row, than one [crosstalk]. R than W, et cetera, et cetera.
We should say that there are languages that don’t have any consonant clusters. So for example, Hawaiian only has consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel. That’s it. And so, yeah. English actually is quite complicated clusters, although not the most complicated.
Megan: Like the S,T,R sounds, strike, or stroke or whatever, that beginning “stra-” is pretty difficult for people that are learning English if they don’t have-
Carrie: Yeah, they don’t have that sequence of sounds which many languages don’t.
Megan: That’s three consonants at the beginning. It’s pretty hard. Still not the most, but yes.
Carrie: It’s true. It’s true. It’s true.
Megan: And another thing you might hear is that children might say things like “nana” for banana and “raf” for giraffe.
Carrie: Truncation.
Megan: Yeah. Well, they call it weak syllable deletion. Again, you don’t need to know this. It’s not going to help you raise your children. But all this is to lead me to the point of the Fis phenomenon. Okay. So this is why you shouldn’t try to correct your kids as they go through these stages. And again there’s caveats. Of course, there are going to be children that do need speech language pathologists to come in and intervene and stuff but imagining that this is typical development, these are things that kids are going to go through and they’re not scary.
So the Fis phenomenon is there was a researcher and the researchers saw that the kid had an inflatable fish and the kid called the fish, “fis.” And so the researcher was like, “Oh is that your fis?” And the child was like, “No”. He said, “It’s my fis.” And so, the researcher again, said fis and the child got angry like, “No, that is not what I’m saying.” And so the researcher finally said, “Oh, it’s your fish.” And he said, “Yes, it’s my fis.”
Carrie: So the kid could perceive the differences but couldn’t pronounce them.
Megan: Exactly. So the Fis phenomenon is one good summary of why we shouldn’t try to push kids by correcting things. They know what’s happening.
Carrie: Yeah. So my cousin who’s a grown-ass woman now but she’s a lot younger than me. Her name is Jennifer and at one point she couldn’t say, “Je” or “Fa” so she pronounced it “Deniber.” And so I called her “Deniber” and she was like, “It’s not Deniber, it’s Deniber.” So it’s the exact same thing as the Fist Fis thing.
Megan: Yeah. So those are the sound one reasons for why you shouldn’t bother your kids with sound because they’re just going through stages. It could be related to motor development. It might be just like a cute little quirk that they’re going to go with for a while but eventually, they get the adults pronunciation. Okay, so when it comes to more like lexical items-
Carrie: AKA words.
Megan: Oh sorry, yes, words. Oh my God. I’m using jargon.
Carrie: It’s okay. People should learn from us as well but now, to want to give them both.
Megan: It’s all of a sudden since I’m being interviewed I forgot to not use jargon. To kind of get us going with words, I’ll tell you about the Gavagai problem. So imagine the Gavagai problem is this. You’re somewhere where you don’t know the language and you see a rabbit hop by, and someone who speaks this language that you don’t know says, “Gavagai.” Could the gavagai be the whole rabbit? Could it be food source? Could it be only talking about the rabbit’s ears? We don’t know what gavagai means, and this is the problem that children face all the time when they’re we’re trying to learn words, right?
Carrie: Or it could be hopping or something.
Megan: Yeah, exactly. It could be hopping. It could be a nuisance. There’s a nuisance. I don’t know. It could be anything. So, kids are trying to solve this problem. So sometimes they’re going to have under-extension or overextension patterns. So an overextension would be when a child uses a word for a larger set of reference than adult usage. So they might say “Daddy” to refer to all men. And I think one of my cousins did it. I feel like I’ve actually seen this in practice. That’s a pretty typical one.
Carrie: I don’t know if I’ve seen that word, but makes sense. But definitely, I’ve seen doggy refer to horse, things like that.
Megan: Yes, so that’s another big one. Yeah, dog. That’s at least one that’s in the textbooks always, dog to refer to horses. And actually, they might refer to a picture frame that has a picture of a baby, that might be baby too. So the whole thing. So anytime you see a baby, something’s baby. And again this is such principle way of children going through language. It’s in textbooks, right? These are patterns, not errors. It’s very creative problem-solving.
Carrie: All right. So what’s an example of an under-extension?
Megan: Using a word for a smaller set of reference than adult usage? So when a child first uses the word dog, they’ll only use it to refer to the family dog and not other dogs that they see.
Carrie: And that might be really hard to even notice because if they’re not saying the wrong thing then you might not notice that they’re they’re just using it basically like a proper name.
Megan: Yeah. And of course, this is not to say for these over and under-extensions not to play with your kids and point out the names of things. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that, again, there’s principled reasons why kids might say what they’re saying.
Carrie: Yeah. And in this case, I think it’s okay to help them learn that they’re under or overextending if you’re noticing it. They might not accept your correction, but-
Megan: Right. So we’ll get to that.
Carrie: We will get to that because there are some examples. But I don’t think pointing out, “Hey, look, this is also a dog,” is going to do them any harm.
Megan: No, no, no. You will not harm your child by labeling objects for them.
Carrie: And interestingly, this is not a thing that happens in all cultures, but we certainly do it in ours and there’s nothing wrong with doing it.
Megan: Yeah. So this is actually a good time to bring in the point that all children learn the language around them. And we are not to be judge and jury of other cultures even within the US. And that happens a lot.
And this actually goes back to our episode when we talked to Dr. Nelson Flores about the word gap. A lot of people, including myself, have a problem with the way that we talk about, or even calling something a word gap because it assumes that the way that some people interact with their children is wrong.
Carrie: Yeah. And that’s fucked up.
Megan: Yes. Listen to episode 25 if you haven’t. It’s a great one about the word gap. And it also gets more complicated if we talk about children learning two or more languages. Kids will learn both languages. Our brains are being underused in America. We only teach kids one language.
Carrie: They just have a slight delay in production, that’s all.
Megan: And kind of saw before, that doesn’t mean they don’t know things. So perception is way ahead of production.
Carrie: Yeah. Anyone who’s tried to learn a second language probably knows this already. Your comprehension is always a way beyond your production. But it’s especially true for children because they also have the motor issue if they’re speaking mode as opposed to signing mode.
Megan: Yeah, exactly.
Carrie: Okay. So what else do we have besides, so we’ve talked about sounds, we’ve talked about words.
Megan: Talk about the grammar.
Carrie: Let’s talk about the grammar.
Megan: Yes, because my favorite subject. Well, I love grammar, but Oh, I spent my whole dissertation on.
Carrie: Yeah, let’s start with that. The over-
Megan: Well, I’ve been saying extension in this podcast, so I’ll say extension. The overextension of the past tense -ed in English. So many people for so long have been like, oh, kids say things like, “I catched the ball and I breaked the toy,” and what’s that about? And so it’s been said that that’s when children learn the rule that you need to add the past tense -ed to verbs to create the past tense. And it’s very exciting, right?
Carrie: Because you could just see the rule. It’s so beautiful.
Megan: Yeah. You see it out there.
Carrie: When someone makes a “mistake” like that, you can see, “Oh, that’s the rule.”
Megan: It’s beautiful.
Carrie: It’s beautiful.
Megan: Yeah, no, it is. It’s beautiful. And the thing with that though is there are a lot of dialects of English that actually use these in the dialect. So you’ll have people saying breaked or other overextended uses of -ed. My mom has some, and I realized that’s maybe why I’m so comfortable with a lot of them.
And I became more comfortable working on my dissertation with catched and breaked because I kept seeing them over and over again. I was like, “Oh, that sounds fine to me.” But breaked sounds way better than catched because breaked is actually a past tense where we have like, to brake a car, I braked.
Carrie: Oh yeah, you’re right.
Megan: Anyway, my dissertation was basically, “Oh, we know perception proceeds production, maybe kids know how to do this before.” And I found out that they do know how to do it before. Before they’re even saying any verbs out loud. Well, maybe they’re saying go or eat or something. Yeah. I looked at 16-month-olds and they were happy with adding -ed to verbs. So if you want to know more about that, you can message me.
So we love over-regularized verbs or over-extended verbs like this because we see that kids have a rule. But some parents might try to say like, “No, it’s caught,” or whatever. I wanted to say an example of how it just doesn’t matter if you try to fix the child’s grammar, it’s just kind of pointless. So this is a classic example from Brain, 1971. So the child says, “Want other one spoon, daddy.” Father says, “You mean you want the other spoon?” Child, “Yes. I want other one spoon. Please, daddy.” Father, “Can you say the other spoon?” Child, “Other one spoon.” Father, “Say other.” Child, “other.” Father, “spoon.” Child, “spoon.” Father, “other spoon.” Child, “other spoon.” Now give me other one spoon.
Carrie: Yeah. That was an example I would always bring up in my class.
Megan: Yeah. It’s iconic. If you ever take a language development class and they’re going to show you that. And there’s another one that’s kind of cute. It’s from McNeil, 1966. Child, “Nobody don’t like me.” Mother, “No. Say nobody likes me.” Child, “nobody don’t like me.” And then eight repetitions of this follows. Mother, “Now listen carefully. Say nobody likes me.” Child, “Oh, nobody don’t likes me.”
Carrie: Yeah. Which is a beautiful example of them not figuring out what you’re trying to correct.
Megan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And both of those children are going to grow up and say it just like adults do. So it was just pointless. It’s cute, it’s funny, but pointless.
Carrie: It’s very pointless. So, yeah, there’s no point in correcting your children when it comes to these things. Now if they’re saying mean things or bad words, definitely you can correct them for that. But the innards of our language, the grammar, no, you’re just wasting your time.
Megan: They’ll get it. Don’t worry about them.
Carrie: They will definitely get it.
Megan: So yeah. Kids may talk funny but they’re going through stages of development that are patterned and I don’t know. I just think it’s beautiful. It’s very creative. It’s very cool.
Carrie: Yeah. And it kind of shows us the inner workings of our grammar because you see stuff that’s like, “Oh yeah, you’re right. There is that rule. You’re just over-applying it.”
Megan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Carrie: It’s so fun. It’s so fun.
Megan: You got to overapply it, so then… I don’t know. You’re just just figuring out what the rules are. You have a rule, but I need to know what the specifications are.
Carrie: Right. What the boundaries are. Does it apply across the board? Turns out, no. Okay. So I have to learn, oh, there’s this other kind of rule for the past tense like what we call hablar which is just vowel change. For example, buy bought. Although it’s more complicated because there’s a consonant there too.
Megan: Yes. No, no.
Carrie: See, saw.
Megan: It’s so complicated. Yeah. Sea and saw. Speaking of, it’s really fun. So the sit in the past tense is sat. I realized that my mom’s past tense is set.
Carrie: That’s very common in the South.
Megan: Yeah. Well, yeah. Her family is from the South, so yeah. Again, might sound different to people that don’t have that, but it is the way that some dialects are. And I think that the same, don’t be an asshole message, that we’ve been saying this whole time about adults applies to children too.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. Don’t be an asshole to your child.
Megan: Yeah. They know more than they can say. Give them a break. Or more than they can sign.
Carrie: Yes. Although I think they can sign a lot better than they can speak.
Megan: Yes, yes, yes, yes. That’s why a lot of parents are doing the baby sign stuff.
Carrie: Right. Because it lets them say things before they’re able to produce them with their mouth.
Megan: Yep. Exactly.
Carrie: But they still have developmental stages, the signing-
Megan: Yes, exactly.
Carrie: … has the same developmental stages. Their motor skills developed faster for their hands than for their mouth. It’s just way more things going on in our mouth.
Megan: Yeah. I read somewhere that signing babies will start overextending at two or three, which is way earlier than speaking babies.
Carrie: Interesting. Overextending in the grammatical sense?
Megan: Yep. So they’ll start overextending like -ed.
Carrie: The equivalent of -ed.
Megan: The equivalent of an -ed past sentence. Yeah.
Carrie: That’s interesting. I don’t know anything about the past tense in ASL or any sign language.
Megan: No, me neither.
Carrie: Cool.
Megan: And then one more thing that I feel might be a question from parents is, does baby talk work?
Carrie: Oh, yeah. That is a good thing to talk about.
Megan: Yeah. It’s sometimes called motherees or parentees or in the literature it’s child-directed speech. It’s important to distinguish child-directed speech from when you say like, “cutesy-wootsy,” or all these… That’s not child-directed speech. It’s more like when you have this kind of sing-song kind of maybe speak a little bit slower and you hyperarticulate is more what child-directed speech is. Some of us do it with our dogs.
Carrie: Yeah, I was going to say there’s also pet-directed speech which is very closely related.
Megan: Yes. Yes. And you’re not hurting your kid. If anything, I mean, jury’s still out of course because it’s science. But it’s probably a net positive because when you hyperarticulate or maybe go a little bit slower you’re making it easier for them to pick out patterns.
Just imagine if you were learning a second language, which we probably all have tried to do, it’s really hard to break up the speech stream and we’re like, “Where does one word start and the other one end,” and all this. So if you’re a kid, you’re doing the exact same thing. So if your parent is kind of hyper-articulating or saying something slower, then you can pick up where the word boundaries are. If anything, you’re helping and at worst you’re doing nothing.
Carrie: At worst you’re doing nothing. Makes no difference at all. So that’s fine. If you want to do it, absolutely go nuts because you’re not harming your child.
Megan: Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that’s the big things. I think the message is that kids are fucking cool. What they’re doing is just amazing. It’s spectacular. We all have done it. We were amazing once too. Now we’re just shits.
Carrie: Yeah. I’m a little bit jealous of kids of linguists in that as long as their parents are actually taking notes, they can see their own development. It’d be fun to see the stages that I went through. Did I do this particular extension or did I do that one? I don’t know because my parents weren’t linguists and they didn’t. There might be one or two examples that they could come up with on the top of their head, I’m not sure.
Megan: Well, here’s the thing that I did quickly. So my grandma’s name was Opal and her partner or whatever, my closest thing I had to grandfather, he would call her Opal. And no one else I knew called her Opal. Obviously, I called her grandma. My mom called her mom. My dad called her Pauline, which was her middle name. And for whatever reason, because my grandfather called her Opal, I as a child thought that his name was Opal.
Carrie: Ah, yeah. Okay. Interesting.
Megan: So until he died, I called him Opal. And obviously, I was the only person in the world that called him that because that was not his name.
Carrie: Right. That’s definitely not his name but that’s kind of sweet.
Megan: Yeah. It’s interesting. I did one of those things. I did an under-extension. I don’t know what I did.
Carrie: Well, I think it’s a switch switching of the reference or something. I think some kids do it with pronouns too where they’ll mix up I and U. Because everything is directed at them as you so they think that their name is you.
Megan: Yeah, exactly. Or they get confused when they hear other people call their mom or dad by the, like, Jose or Sally or whatever. They’re like, “What? That’s not the label for that person,” kind of thing. I mean, they’re problem-solving so many things.
Carrie: Yes, there’s a lot going on.
Megan: It’s no wonder that they’re doing these things.
Carrie: And their brain is still growing.
Megan: Their brain is still growing.
Carrie: It’s amazing. If you stop and think about what kids have to do between ages, even just zero and six, they learn a lot, almost all of what they need to know in those years.
Megan: There’s so much going on that they have to learn. And their brain is growing. Most people don’t even stop to think about how amazing that is.
Carrie: It’s true.
Megan: And their mistakes, A, aren’t really mistakes and, B, are going to go away over time. So cool your jets.
Carrie: Cool your jets.
Megan: And teach your kids two languages. If mom and dad or caretaker and caretaker have. Bare minimum, whatever languages you speak, you better teach your child them. And then if you only have one, find someone.
Carrie: Maybe you’re lucky enough to be around a dual language school or something, I don’t know, or a preschool that has lots of languages. We are under-using our brains.
Megan: Yes. And your kid will be happy for it when they’re older. They really will.
Carrie: And think about the way we talk about other people’s kids’ learning language too.
Megan: Yes, yes. Definitely. All children learning language are doing cool things. [crosstalk]. Stop judging.
Carrie: Yes. Don’t be assholes, as I’ve heard before. I’ve heard that somewhere.
Megan: I wonder where we heard that before.
Carrie: And just to remind people, we thanked our patrons in the beginning, but we have on Patreon, bonus episodes. And they’re more like this one because it’s just the two of us, they’re shorter. But if you’re interested in that, you can support us at the $5 level. You also get a sticker and if you just want a sticker and a shoutout on the show, then there is a $3 level. And if you just want a thank you, you can support us at one. Awesome. Two.
Megan: The bonus episodes are really salty. They’re usually just nerd raging.
Carrie: They’re a lot of nerd rage, which is kind of fun.
Megan: Yeah. I enjoy nerd raging.
Carrie: It’s usually related to pop culture.
Megan: Yeah. Or something going on in the larger sphere.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Sometimes politics.
Carrie: Yeah.
Megan: Oh, but, Carrie, we should stop being so political.
Carrie: Why? We’re not partisan.
Megan: No.
Carrie: We’re just political because everything’s political and what’s not political? Kittens?
Megan: I dare you to tell me.
Carrie: Even kittens are, at a certain level. If you’re a bird person, kittens are definitely political. So I’m just like, stop saying, don’t be political. You can say don’t be partisan because that is fine. But everything’s political. Especially that cat that has that Hitler mustache.
Megan: The Hitler’s…
Carrie: They’re so cute though.
Megan: No, they don’t want it. They didn’t ask for it.
Carrie: So Yeah. So thanks for listening and-
Megan: Don’t be an asshole.
Carrie: … Don’t be an asshole, especially to your children.
Megan: Yes. Bye.
Carrie: The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon for Halftone Audio. Theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @VocalFriesPod. You can email us at vocalfriespod@gmail.com and our website is vocalfriespod.com.
[END]
The Vocal Fries Pod 