To Swear or Not to Swear in Narration
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When I coach someone on their writing, I'll often ask them to picture their audience, you know, picture the people they'll be speaking to. And more often than not, I offer this as a scenario. You've been invited over to someone's house, a casual acquaintance, not a friend, but also not a stranger. A couple of their friends are coming over too. And the point of the invitation is for you to tell a story.

So as you write, picture yourself talking to these three people and you're sitting in a comfortable place, something like a living room. The reason I paint this picture for people is this. Well, there are a bunch of reasons, really. One is the invitation. That's important because in a way you have been invited. When people turn on the radio or press play on a podcast, they're allowing you into their space. You're a guest and they can uninvite you at any time.

A second important part of this scenario is the reason you've been invited: to tell a story. That means there's a sense of purpose to your visit. Take care with the writing. Don't wing it. Lastly, keep in mind the intimate setting, a comfortable living room that gives you permission to be conversational. But not too conversational, I would argue. Don't be so relaxed that your writing is like the equivalent of putting your feet up on the coffee table and dropping crumbs on the couch.

I heard Dan Taberski nailing all of this in a recent podcast he reported and narrated. He was a good guest. I wanted him to stay and keep telling me the story episode after episode because of his writing. To wax on a little bit more, Dan was a great guide. He clearly gave a lot of thought and consideration to what he had written. No winging it. And he was very conversational. But there were a couple of points in the story where I thought, uh-oh, he crossed a line. Too conversational.

Why? Because Dan swore in his narration. I'm not referring to off-the-cuff moments in an interview. He made a choice, and he wrote the swears into his narration. And I think that's a curious choice. I'm hard-pressed to think of a time when I've heard a reporter swear while narrating. I also wondered, should you swear in narration?

Did Dan just put his feet up on my coffee table and drop crumbs on my couch? I think that's possible. I feel like my writing style and sort of my personality is I am a little too familiar with people in general. It's the sort of who I am as a person. And sometimes it does cross the line to being a little disrespectful, right?

It is unusual to hear it in narration. And it is unusual that I did it in narration. I agree with that. And I did it a couple times in the show. I counted three times in the first episode. No, in narration? No, that's a lie. We're going to come back to that. I'm Rob Rosenthal, and this is Sound School, the backstory to great audio storytelling from PRX and Transom.

Before I put the question to Dan to swear or not to swear in narration, I feel like I need to say this right from the get-go. It's the old, I'm not a prude defense, and I'm not. I don't have a sign in my house that has the word swears in a red circle with a line through it.

I swear, my wife swears, my kids swear, I sometimes swear at work, in the classroom. I could even swear right now if you want. But I actually don't think that's the tone I want for this episode or any episode of Sound School, really.

And that's what I want to wrestle with with Dan, the issue of tone. But let me set the table first. There's a good chance you've heard Dan on a podcast before. I first listened to him a handful of years ago on Missing Richard Simmons, where Dan tries to figure out why Richard, the exercise guru, disappeared from public in 2014. I didn't really care for that series, to be honest. I thought Dan should leave Richard alone. But I think I was in the minority because that show was a big hit.

Later, Dan made Running from Cops about the TV show Cops and the cultural impact it had on policing. The series was nominated for a Peabody. Dan also reported The Line. It's the story of an Iraq war crime trial, a show that earned a prestigious DuPont Columbia Award. So to put it succinctly, Dan has chops. His latest is a series for Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios called Hysterical. Here's the opening scene from the first episode.

In December of 2011, a young woman posted a video on YouTube. Hi everyone. My name's *** and this is my first video. She's got shiny red hair with side bangs and she's wearing a white graphic hoodie. A poster for the metal band Avenged Sevenfold is tacked to her bedroom wall behind her. So I'll start off by telling you a little bit about myself. I'm 16, I'm in 11th grade, and I play softball, like all the time.

When she made this video, there was no TikTok. There was barely an Instagram. She's not looking to monetize, not trying to influence. What this 16-year-old is looking for is a little help. She's been having strange symptoms that so far no one can seem to explain. Recently, last August, I had passed out at a concert. I was headbanging and I thought, you know, I was just dehydrated and all that.

By now you've noticed that her speech is a bit halting, and her nervous teenage energy is more than just fidgeting. And about a month after, I pass out again. The homecoming dance, that's awesome, right? It has pattern and repetition. Eyes twitching, hands in the air, fingers flying. And a few days ago, my twitching has progressed into noises like through my nose or in my throat. And...

It's something that won't go away. The more she talks, the worse it gets. She's neck tilting now, and jerking her head. That's another thing I do a lot. Um, we're still trying to get answers, so going back to the doctors again. Then she signs off, her first missive of many, to wait and see what kind of response she might get. And if anyone wants to talk about this, or if anyone's starting it, I'll be willing to talk. At all.

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There's nothing special about Dan's writing in that scene. Yes, he's conversational and sure-handed, but, you know, it's pretty much meat and potatoes. Then as the story progresses, little flourishes appear in the writing. Actually, there's a slew of them. Small, satisfying choices that transform his writing from meat and potatoes to storytelling. Like in this next clip, when he says, you don't want that one. I recently googled the phrase, I twitch. The simplest of her symptoms, just to see.

An eye twitch could be a symptom of dehydration or low electrolytes. An eye twitch could mean you have glaucoma or a disease like acanthamoeba keratitis. You don't want that one.

I know. I know. You don't want that one. Hardly seems worth noting as an example of good writing. Dan was surprised it grabbed my ear. It's an aside. Sure, it's an aside. But even though it seems like nothing, Dan says it accomplishes a couple of necessary tasks. I didn't want to actually scare people, but I wanted people to know the seriousness of it without getting serious. And it's also a way of it's me talking to you. It's not me presenting something. You don't want that one.

That is a comment I'm making to one person. You know what I mean? And I feel like there's maybe an intimacy to that and a friendliness to that that I feel like people might pick up on. I'm just sort of joking around with my friends a little bit. And I do like the direct address aspect of that. I find that satisfying when I hear it and I like to do it.

Later in the story, other girls present with similar bizarre symptoms, about a dozen of them, all from one high school in Leroy, New York. It's maybe an hour outside of Buffalo. Is it something they caught from other kids? Is it something environmental? It was a real mystery. Doctors were baffled. What was the first you heard that something was happening? I had a patient come in, and I hadn't heard anything.

If anyone should get credit for putting the pieces together first, that something strange was happening, it's Dr. Jennifer McVig. In the fall of 2011, McVig was a young physician working at the Dent Neurologic Institute in Buffalo, New York, a neurologist, newly minted.

I like that writing, a neurologist, newly minted. He's written those as sentences, even though they're not. And I like that they're just two words together. It breaks up the rhythm of the longer sentences that precede them. Slowing down and speeding up is a great way to get people to not be lulled. The neurologist saw one patient who'd woken up one morning with, as the doctor put it, full-blown vocalizations and motor tics.

Then a couple of weeks later, a second patient, another girl in high school with tics and spasms, and she blurted out sounds and words. In this next clip, keep an ear out for Dan's repeated use of the word again. And then I get number three. In walks a young woman, again, high school age, again, with severe motor tics, vocalizations like shouts and barks. And again, the onset is sudden, like zero to 60 overnight.

So by the third one, I'm having concerns. You could have just said she presented symptoms like the others. Done. But instead, you parse out each symptom and you kept using the word again, again. I guess that's sort of slowing down the process of her realization, I think. I think if I just said, and then they had the same symptoms, there's no sort of like story.

But the story I'm trying to tell is about this doctor and what she sees with the repetition and how she would be experiencing it. Like her experience wouldn't be like same symptoms. She'd be focusing on the fact that it's happening again. That like, holy shit, this is happening again. And again, this is happening. And again, it's like I felt like that was...

I felt like that was the thing I wanted people to focus on. And I do like a little repetition, things that are fun to say. And I think it's nice to hear. Sometimes you're trying to be pleasant, have something that's nice to listen to. And I think the words are a part of that. They're not just like a fact delivery machine. You're trying to...

You're trying to write a little song, I guess. Dan says maneuvers like repeating again or two-word sentences like newly minted or even an aside like you don't want that one demonstrate to the listener that, well, he didn't put it this way, but I will. He wants to be a good guest who knows he's been invited over to tell a story. I'm trying to sound as effortless as possible and breezy or whatever because that's sort of who I am.

But I want people to know that I've thought about it. I don't want people to think that I'm just like ripping – I'm just sitting in front of the mic and just saying what I think because I want to seem supernatural. I want people to know that I thought about it. I wrote these words down and I'm going to say them now because of this experience I had that I want to share with you. My first question is, is it Leroy or Leroy? The Leroy, Leroy. Well, it depends on who you talk to.

Lynn Beluccio is the official town historian here. She's been writing a local history column in the Leroy Penny Saver for over 30 years. Or is it the Leroy Penny Saver?

You've got to be at least a bit suspicious of a town that can't settle on the pronunciation of their own name. The town supervisor just walked in. How would he say it? Probably Leroy. And how do you say it? Leroy. Okay, let me, and I will explain it. The family that the town is named after is Leroy. Herman Leroy was a speculator who bought up a ton of acreage here at the end of the 1700s.

But sometime between then and now, Leroy slash Leroy became the Timothee Chalamet of small towns in New York. I'm blaming it on the cheerleaders. Why? Because they want to say, let's go Leroy. They don't want to say, let's go Leroy. Or if you're the opposing team, it would be destroy Leroy. So I'm blaming it on the cheerleaders. For what it's worth, I'm going to go with Leroy.

I appreciate Dan's playfulness in this back and forth. He included it to partly solve a problem. Some people he interviewed said Leroy. Others said Leroy. Leaning into it would help listeners know people were talking about the same town, even though they pronounced the name differently.

I also appreciate how he described the culture of this region of New York. Given the subject matter here, just the twists and turns of the story that you're about to hear, I suppose the play would be for me to make Leroy seem dark and troubled, a town with a horrible secret. But honestly, I've always kind of liked it around here. My parents grew up about 50 miles to the west, so I spent a good chunk of my life here in western New York, wearing giant winter coats and giant knit hats with giant pom-poms on top.

My folks were the babies of the immigrant wave who came to work in the smoke belching factories here when manufacturing was king. And from my vantage point, this has always been a place where the bowling leagues are competitive, the Bills fans are drunk, and the Jell-O molds are perfectly set.

And so, yeah, Dan sucked me in with the mystery, the tension the illness caused in the community, the way in which he leaned into the character of this part of New York. Even the pacing and structure of the story were spot on. And it was all delivered with writing that appeals. Like I said, he was a good guest. That is, until he startled me. The first time happened early on in the story, back when he was searching online for info about eye twitches.

Night switch could be the first sign of a condition called Isaac syndrome, in which your muscles don't stop moving and appear to be constantly rippling under the skin even when you're asleep. To be fair, Isaac syndrome is extremely rare. But as those sons of bitches at the NIH are quick to point out, there are over 10,000 rare diseases.

Over 30 million Americans have been diagnosed with one. Yes, it was Sons of Bitches that caught me off guard. Why? Well, because of the tone of everything else in the writing up until that point. And so I think writing Sons of Bitches raises a question about tone. I mean, there's a reason a cursing narrator is so out of the ordinary. Who does that? Well, what about it? Do you want to, I mean, you want me to explain myself? Yeah.

Like, how do you want me to talk about that? I can tell you why I think it's okay to use the curse word. Go for it. Because I think it's true. I think when I did come across that statistic of, like, that there are all these rare illnesses, I'm like, fuck. It's the sort of thing of, like, being in the doctor and he's like, you can't eat candy anymore because you're getting diabetes. And you're just like, part of you is like, fuck. You're mad at the doctor a little bit. And so I'm mad at the experts because

They are sons of bitches for reminding me of that because it's fucking scary. And I just felt like there was a truth to that. And so and so I felt OK about that. And I also wanted to get people I want to let people know that no one's going to die. Like I want people to know the level of seriousness we're talking about.

And if I were to treat it too seriously, people would think that the drama would be too high, like the stakes would be too high and that you can't have casual conversations around talking about how all these people are going to die of this mystery illness. Like I want people to have a sense that everything was going to turn out OK, oddly. I think sometimes people write –

They try to do the most extreme, like they try to create the most drama or they're trying to be the funniest or they're trying to be, you know what I mean? Like, and sometimes that's not, that's not right because it doesn't match the situation you're in. I want people to have an experience that has some drama, but it's also fun and interesting. And also I'm learning stuff and also like I can be myself and,

And so I have to – so by exhibiting all those things, I think I help create that atmosphere. I think that's the idea. And I think that was especially helpful with talking about rare diseases because like you're listing all this really scary shit and we're talking about the 16-year-old girl who's experiencing symptoms. And like I feel like a little bad word or a little joke is helpful to let people know that you can take a breath because she's going to be OK. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.

Then came the F-bombs. Yeah, I grew up in Leroy my whole life. In the fall of 2011, Jessica was just starting her senior year at the high school. Oh, wait, hold on. You said Leroy. Yeah. You say Leroy. Yeah. Everybody who lives there says Leroy. That's not what I heard. But you're telling me that everybody who lives there says Leroy. Everybody who lives there says Leroy. Anybody on the news reporting on it calls it Leroy. Really? Yeah. Pretty much anyone under the age of like 60, I would say, calls it Leroy.

All right, fuck it. I'm on team Leroy. I'm partially like, are you laughing at it? But I'm also embarrassed. Yeah. I don't know. Did you laugh when I said it? Or were you like, why are you cursing? I did both things. I did both things because I did think it was funny. And yet it took me out of the story. But let me talk about the second fuck. Okay.

There was a neurologist up in Canada in the 1970s, and his name was Adrian Upton. Upton was teaching in med school at the time about the human brain and decided to try an experiment that was a little cheeky. Upton filled a bowl full of Jell-O. He put it in the fridge, he let it set, and then he flipped it over onto a plate, making a lime-flavored, brain-sized blob.

Then he hooked the jello brain up to an EEG machine. That's the one that measures brain waves. A squiggly line means brain activity. It means life. No squiggles means no brain activity, no life. And when he connected the wires and nodes of the EEG machine to that jello brain, squiggles, faint, but unmistakable.

In fact, there was a trick to it. The machine was picking up stray electrical signals from around the room. But if you don't know the trick, the fuck? I didn't say, what the fuck? I said, what the fuck? I said it like you would say it in the room. If I was in a class and my professor hooked up an EEG machine to a jello brain and it was showing signs of life, I wouldn't yell out, what the fuck? I would lean over to the guy next to me. I'd be like, what the fuck? That's real. That's just real.

I think that's what I was going for. I wasn't trying to be crude. I was trying to be shocked because it is sort of a shocking thing. So, yeah, I stand by that one. But that being said, I do feel weird about it. Like it's not something I normally do.

I don't normally curse in narration, I don't think. Have you cursed in other podcasts you've made? What's interesting is that my second podcast was called Surviving Y2K. And it was a narrative podcast about all these people who – how they experienced the Y2K, the millennium. And one of those stories was mine. And it was about the dissolution of my marriage and what led to that. A really sort of super exposing story story.

That I had a lot of shame about, that we were talking about in a really honest way. And part of what led to the ending of my marriage was that I had a sexual encounter with somebody. And I made the choice to describe that using profanity.

That was incredibly mortifying. That was really hard to do because it was based on something real. I wasn't just talking about fuck, you know, as a word. I was talking about fuck as the action sort of thing. And that was really challenging. And that's why I realized that you don't want to be too crass. It's off-putting. And there was a line there and that you had to sort of navigate that. But I also realized that I was willing to go past the line for a minute, if that makes sense.

It makes sense to me that you might write that in your narration because, at least in part, there was a first-person story. And so it was coming from you as the narrator, but it was about you. And so I've never really – so I'm talking out loud about things I haven't really fully thought through. But somehow that seems okay to me.

given the feelings that you were just describing, and it's your story. And just as a quick side note, I can only think of one time when I've said an F-bomb in my narration, and that was because I was making a first-person documentary about a punk rock song that I was involved in writing that had an F-bomb in it. And so it made sense for me to be doing that. But at all other times, I feel like...

It's my job to do all the things that you have been talking about for the last however long we've been talking about making sure people aren't lulled, to make sure you sound like you, to be playful, to do all the things. But I have never stepped over the line of

to curse in a story, where should the line be drawn, I guess is what I'm asking. Well, I mean, I think it runs the danger of being really gratuitous. It runs the danger of like being a substitute for poor writing, right? If I just say, fuck shit, you know, that's a really easy way to get a reaction from somebody. But it's also, it can be incredibly lazy, right? Like it's an incredibly lazy way to get a reaction. I think...

I will say this. We spent so much time on the writing and I'm a writer and I work with incredible editors and I'm really proud of how much attention we spend to it. So I'm not afraid that people are going to think that I'm covering up for bad writing by just cursing a lot. I feel comfortable that we're doing a good job here, that we're in charge and that we're showing people a good time and really –

looking at the human experience and telling a story and doing all those things and writing lyrically and different types of emotion. And so I feel like we're checking all those boxes. And so the cursing isn't standing in for something. It's just sort of doing something else.

I'll note this. Dan didn't swear when he was talking about the main characters, the girls. And he didn't do it when talking directly about the medical or psychological issues that were causing their symptoms. Instead, he chose to swear at times not at the center of the story. Do you think there's a risk that the listener won't take you seriously? No.

If somebody kept cursing in a podcast, not because I'm like clutching my pearls, but just if I felt like it was sort of cheesy and like, what are you doing? It would turn me off. So I don't do it easily for sure. I don't do it easily. But I think a little bit of transgression can be really useful in writing to wake people up or remind them where I'm coming from, for better or for worse.

I think there can be an honesty to it that I think can be really helpful in the same way that humor, there's an honesty to it, even if it turns you off or you don't think the joke is funny. Like, it's just truer. That line about, like, those sons of bitches at the NIH, like, that feels really true to me. That's how I feel about that in a jokey way. Like, they know it. But if I said that to them, they know I'm joking. And so I'm OK with it because it just feels like I got something that was true. And that's what I'm trying to do.

That's Dan Taberski. His latest podcast is called Hysterical. The entire season is now available.

Dan told me he really cut his teeth with writing, working for The Daily Show. He wrote and produced field pieces for comedians like Stephen Colbert. And he still formats his script like a TV writer, writing in a long column using only half the page or so, with lots of white space. This is going to sound snotty. I don't mean it quite literally, but it's a little more like poetry in that you can see the rhythm of the words and the rhythm of the sentences.

He also gives titles to each of the scenes in his story, and he even names sections of the scenes. It's really interesting. I don't remember seeing an audio writer format the page quite like this. Dan shared a couple pages of script, so you can see for yourself at transom.org. Sound School is written and produced by me. I'm Rob Rosenthal. I'm edited by Genevieve Sponsler and Jay Allison.

PRX and Transom support the production of this podcast, and so do the folks at WCAI in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The music I used for scoring was provided by Stellwagen Symphonette. Thanks for listening.