Stuff You Should Know - Vocal Fry and Other Speech Trends

Episode Date: October 22, 2015

You've heard lots of complaints about vocal fry, mostly from older white men. But it's not exclusive to the Kardashians. Learn all about vocal fry, upspeak and other quirky speech trends in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we have a very special treat for everyone out there

for your ears. Casey, our video producer extraordinaire, is standing in as our podcast producer. So he basically is in charge of us in every way, shape, and form right now. That's right. I realized, Chuck, that you were just doing vocal fry. Yeah, I have no ear for it.

Oh, really? Yeah, before Casey, we asked him to choose which one to do first, and he went vocal fry. And I didn't even notice. Yeah, you get the fry filter. Do you think that means that I do it? Because I was trying to think. I don't know.

I know that I up speak sometimes, or up talk, but it's fairly infrequent, I think. Yeah. But I don't know if I like vocal fry or not. I have no idea whatsoever. Yeah, I don't know. Did I just do it just now? I did, didn't I?

I don't know. We'll have to listen to the playback. I guess so. I just did it. Listen to the playback. That sounds like normal speaking to me. I know, man. Because, well, we'll get into this,

but a lot of people contend that there's a lot of sexism going on with it. It ought. Because I just said it, and people probably won't write in and say anything about it. But for a woman, people would probably write in and say, the way you talk is so annoying. And you know what?

I think a lot of people are trying to dance around this or prove that it's sexist. It's like, no, on its face. This is a sexist argument that's going on right now. Yeah, I mean, just look around. We had Tracy and Holly on recently, and they talked about emails that they get about their voices being shrill.

And I remember other podcasters here we had in the past, other women who had podcasts, would get just lots of email detailing the quality of their voice. And we don't really get those much occasionally, I guess. No, you want to have some fun? Go on iTunes, find a podcast that is hosted by women, and read the reviews.

Then go read the reviews for a podcast that's hosted by men. It's pretty obvious. It is. And when somebody like Bob Garfield from NPR calls vocal fry repulsive, that's a really good point for everyone else to stand back and be like, what's this guy's real problem? Because repulsive is not a correct word

to use to describe vocal fry. It's wrong. It's like he's pointing at something else, but he thinks he's pointing at the vocal fry. Who knows what's going on? But yes, on its face, it's a misogynistic argument that's being carried out. Just put it out there right now.

I don't plan on dancing around it at all. We're not dancing. No. And it is all very ironic considering that vocal fry can be traced back to British men in the 1960s. Yeah, I mean, think about Sean Connery. OK, I'm thinking about him. OK.

That was it. Had nothing to do with vocal fry. I just wanted to see if I could get you to think about Sean Connery. Well, apparently they traced it back to 1964 when British men, the mid-60s, used it to denote superior social standing. And I think I'm trying to imagine my head, and I think it's like, you know, you shall not question me.

Oh, that's good. Like that kind of thing. Yeah. Like it masculinity and into a statement by lowering your voice to fry. That sounded like William Randolph Hearst, by the way. It sounded a lot like that. But it makes sense also.

It basically, when you hear vocal fry, it is, and we'll tell you exactly what it is in a second, but you know what it is. Sure. When you hear vocal fry, it denotes that you can't be bothered to be enthusiastic about it. OK. Or in the case of British, another way to put it is,

it's a very dry way of speaking. Speaking British. Yeah, kind of, you know. And they say they linguists vocal fry in its current use among younger girls or millennials in general is a way to indicate like I'm over it or I am not to be bothered with this any longer. Or in some cases, it makes them seem authoritative.

We'll get more into that. So in other words, it doesn't mean they're dumb and don't know how to talk correctly. They're actually trying to accomplish something. But speaking in a certain way, like every other human on earth. Exactly. I just did it again. This is really going to make me look at myself, I think.

I think. I think. Well, actually, let's talk about upspeak. This is going to be all, this is vocal fry. It's upspeak. It's using the word like. All these vocal mannerisms and tics maybe that people have these days, right?

Because language changes and evolves. We don't talk like we did 60 years ago. No, like, for example, the Mid-Atlantic accent is gone. What was that? That was the radio announcer. Oh, yeah. That was kind of, no, not really. I think that was the antithesis of it.

It was more like George Plimpton. Right. Frasier Crane, Mr. Burns. It's like the difference is split between British and Eastern American. I thought you were just naming old white dudes. Kind of, but it was the language of the aristocracy in the first half of the 20th century, right?

It is gone now. And they think that it was basically run out by guys like Jimmy Cagney. Yeah, Edward G. Robinson. Yeah, and Marlon Brando. And that the way that they talked was not like that. And they made their style of talking, which is how we talk now.

We're like Super Brando now. Is a result of Mid-Atlantic going away, being replaced by this. Well, it's not really my theory. I'm sure there are a lot of people that agree. I think that language does evolve, and that the people, the Garfields of the world, the Bob Garfields, not the Cat Garfields. It's like, don't drag Garfields in.

The ones who rail against it so much, I think, are like, see? And say like a lot too. But people call me out on it. Well, yeah, we also say, I get called out for saying, I get it, it's fine. I think though, go ahead. So I think those people are just, they're feeling like they're not relevant any longer.

And no one wants to be a dinosaur. Yes. And so I don't understand the language these young women are speaking, which is BS, because a lot of younger people, men and women, speak that way. It's just called the way the younger generation speaks. And it's not like, you old man.

Right, so just go off to pasture to some cudd. Which is not the case, I don't think anybody's trying to make the older middle-aged white man feel irrelevant. We haven't, we're on our way there anyway. Sure, and I feel irrelevant, but it has nothing to do with upspeak or vocal fry. No, it's the music these kids are listening to these days.

But I think you have nailed it on the head though, like it is a form of contempt for being replaced by something new, something that's different. And as we'll see, especially when it comes to linguistics, younger girls tend to be at the bleeding edge of linguistic changes. So perhaps, and this is all, we want to just make sure you guys understand that we understand this,

total pop psychology on our part, but it's also, it's intuitive, it makes a lot of sense. But the idea that older middle-aged white men who are threatened by vocal fry or find it repulsive or repugnant or whatever, they are projecting their sense of being replaced, of being irrelevant, being put out to pasture. I agree wholeheartedly, I think that's exactly what they're

doing. It's not enough to control the free world for since the beginning of time. Right, which the fact that they do is still, says that's the reason why we're even having this conversation. That's the reason why some women find the need to go to speech therapists to get rid of their vocal fry, which is something that some even podcasters have done.

All right, so let's talk up talk real quick. Up talk or valley girl speak is when you end a sentence as if you're asking a question, like that. And that has been a thing for a long time. There was a, first of all too, we should point out that most of the studies we're gonna put in here are terrible. Social psychology studies, funk, almost all of them. Well, because they just, they never do it right.

You could do some decent studies on this I think. But for instance, this one at California San Diego, they did a close acoustical analysis of 23 Southern Californians. Perfect, great sample size. Yeah, two didn't show up. From very diverse backgrounds apparently, I don't know how diverse you can get among 23 people.

But they said, here you have two tasks. Give directions with a map, and then describe a sitcom clip. And they found that women did use up talk twice as often as men, but in making declarative statements like my appointment is at nine o'clock, men and women use rises the same. So like basically men did the same thing

with that kind of statement. And then the other one that makes sense to me is when giving directions, a lot of people use up talk because it's, you're sort of asking a question, like, you know, go up to the McDonald's, a memorial drive, it's basically saying, do you understand what I'm saying? Right.

Are you following me? Yeah, it's almost, it's funny, I wondered this Chuck about up talk in particular. Is it like a way of kind of inadvertently mocking your listener? Like men trail off very frequently when women start talking. So have women evolved to basically keep men engaged

at the end of each sentence? Like, yeah, are you still with me? Do I have to keep leaving you along by the hand in this conversation? It would not surprise me. I wonder, you know, if that's where it originally came from. Place holding or floor holding is another reason. They found that women use up talk

because they want to give the listener the idea that they're not done talking yet, don't interrupt me, and it might make sense maybe women are interrupted more than men. Well, I would say that's a distinct possibility. Yeah. There's been a bit of a linguistic trace to this whole thing, to up speak in particular.

Vocal fry I couldn't find, you know, where they think the origin of it was. But with up speak, there was a, I believe she was a linguist named Cynthia Macklemore back in 1991 at University of Texas in Austin. She studied a sorority house on campus there and was the first person to detect up speak, which became known as, or which was already,

I guess, known as Valley Girl. Right. But she didn't coin the term up speak, but she was the first to think to really study it. And then a guy named James Gorman coined the term up speak in like two years later. But Macklemore traced in this sorority house the origin of the up speak

to the very popular girls from LA. Okay, I thought you were gonna say to one sorority sister. No, I'm wondering though, if there is like a patient zero of this in the United States. Back in LA, there's the Valley Girl talk that is clearly related to up speak, right? Yeah, and that movie was huge.

Right. So back in the 60s, they traced it back to Australia or New Zealand. So it is possible, this is my own pet theory here, that some very popular girl moved from Australia or New Zealand to Los Angeles, wowed her friends. She's so excited. We started emulating the way she talked,

which is up speak, and it spread from there. You know now that think of the Australian accent, it is sort of up speaky, isn't it? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, they're like, because there's like basically like you're getting, like hitting the ribs with their elbow, just from the way they're talking.

Like, yeah, are you following along? Yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting. So let's take a break, man. Take a break, man? Yes. Okay. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher

and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

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as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

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So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, we're back. This stuff fascinates me, by the way. I could, I could be a linguist, ticker. I could study linguistics and be a linguistics researcher

and specialist linguist linguist. Yeah, they kept it simple. I like linguist, ticker, linguist, ticker. Yeah, sure. If you were a 13-year-old girl, that would be a widespread word 20 years from now. Right, and people like Bob Garfield would say, well, remember when we called it linguistics?

All right, so specifically, let's just talk about what vocal fry actually is in the throat. Glottalization is probably the more scientific term. And what it is, it's a vibration when your voice falls and your vocal cords flutter very slowly because they can't make a tone any longer at that register. Right, it's called chaotic flapping, right? Chaotic glottal flapping.

I like it. Yeah, and it sounds like it would hurt, but it actually doesn't. Except, although I think most ear, nose, and throat guys will tell you that if you did this in a sustained manner, yelling for a while, yeah, you could damage your vocal cords. Can you yell a vocal fry? I guess.

You almost tried. I did, and I was like, I'm not doing that. Yeah, because I associate it with falling off of a sentence and not being loud, you know? Which is where it's usually placed these days. Right. But the author of this article on Husta Furks, Oisin Curran, who's become the grabster of late.

Oh, yeah? Yeah, the modern times grabster. Oh, boy. Don't let him hear that. Well, no, grabster's still a legend. Yeah, OK. The same person has stepped in to fill in the void a little bit.

Well, let me say too quickly that I'm doing nothing but listening to my voice right now, and I can't imagine what it's like to constantly be worried about that. Because usually we come in here and it's our safe haven. I don't think twice about how I sound. They sound how I sound. But to put yourself under the microscope like that,

which is, I think, a lot of women in broadcasting probably suffer from that. I just said like five times. Yeah. But I don't care. Who cares, your man? You're a white male age 18 to 49. Yeah, still under 49.

Yeah. Is that the cutoff point? Then I'll become Bob Garfield. Oh, man, Garfield's going to hate us for this. So Garfield's not the only one. There are plenty of women out there calling out younger women saying it's a disempowering act to speak like this.

Naomi Wolfe is one of them. She wrote an article that I read. And she said it projects uncertainty and weakness and low intelligence. I doubt if she thinks it's the same when men do it, which is therein is black and white as you can be. What's the difference? Well, yeah, I think that that's ultimately the thing.

I think that argument misses the point. And it pops up a lot. People who defend girls and women's right to vocal fry or upspeak or say like or just as another one. I'm not very guilty of that. It's like hedging your actions. Like I was just saying, not like I'm saying, like this is what I'm saying, I was just saying,

like I'm going to tone it down a little bit. Yeah, well, it's the same thing with women feeling like they need to apologize all the time. Sure, using sorry a lot. With vocal fry in particular, though, it doesn't really denote anything like what the people who are saying it. It does, does like it doesn't necessarily denote

that you don't have any confidence in what you're saying. I could see something like hedging things with just a lot or saying sorry a lot, maybe so. But the idea that women have to be given advice on how to speak to keep up in this male dominated world. Again, I feel like it misses the point. I think that the better argument is to basically say, hey, what's the name of the mirror you're looking into there,

buddy? What's your problem? Right. Like really honestly, what is your problem? Not why, yes, let's get on the bandwagon and rail against girls and women who do this and totally ignore men that do. But what's the real problem?

And I think ultimately the real problem is these men have, whether they realize it or not, identified girls as significant agents of change that are bringing along a different world than these men grew up and were accustomed to. Sure, they're threatened. Right. And they're right in a lot of ways.

There's actually studies that point to women, and especially young girls, as the agents of change when it comes to grammar, vocabulary, and speech patterns in the Western world for hundreds of years now. Yeah. Did you read a little bit about that study? Which one? So there was one in, I believe, 2009.

And get this, these two Finnish researchers poured over 6,000 letters. 6,000 letters. And they were from 1417 to 1681. And they found from these letters. Yeah, they found from these letters in the Western world that women tended to adopt new words faster, discard old words faster, and just change their grammar and speech patterns

or writing patterns much quicker than men did. And then other studies have shown that men tend to pick up on this about 10 to 20 years later. No shock. So I think what's going on when you're saying, well, men do it too, it's like, yeah, men didn't do it at first. Men are starting to do it now. So if you take all this as fact and correct scientifically,

then what we're seeing now is the widespread adoption of a change in speech pattern that began 20 years ago. With younger women. Right, in the valley. And has spread to the rest of culture and is being adopted. And this change to the rules of grammar, there are rules to how you talk and address people. That's what's being railed against the change.

But really, ultimately, again, speaking from a pop psychology standpoint, the world is changing. And these guys feel threatened by it because they don't know what's going to come after this. Nothing. That's the answer. People getting all worked up about the way people talk is just, it's folly to me.

It's nothing. It's language. It changes. Nothing bad is going to happen. They're going to wake up tomorrow and the world's going to be exactly the same. Right. They're just not going to like it the way some people talk.

I think also it's deeper than that, that it's like they do have something to fear. They do have their nest egg to be lost in the stock market when it drops automatically. The valley girls are going to come take their money. Yeah, exactly. You know, we're not being able to be employable, but still needing a job at age 70.

You know, like I think there is a lot to fear, and I think it's being projected onto girls who vocal fry. Yeah, agreed. OK, I'm all over the place. Let's take a break. I need to regain my composure. OK. All right.

So you're talking about why people vocal fry? Why fry, yes. Right, and there's some pretty good answers to it that have been studied. In addition to like upspeak where you were it's a placeholder sure where you saying don't interrupt me There's more to come Or are you following this because I'm really trying to keep you engaged here? You know like when you hear someone when you hear an interrogative at the end of a statement

You're immediately like oh, I'm I'm expected to respond right so I better be paying attention So this is almost like tricking people into paying attention. That's another way to do it Yeah, it sounds like a pretty good move to me right on the other side again There's the idea that it says that women are unsure of their opinion or anybody who uses upspeak unsure of their opinion By by keeping it a question it it suggests that you can easily back off of it Yeah, and I like you're not committing to your statement that much exactly Yeah, sure, and I actually saw something it was a 2001 article in the Guardian about upspeak in particular Mm-hmm, and they were saying

that Some people believe that upspeak became prevalent as a result of PC like the political correctness movement Yeah, the where it gives you the chance to be like, but I don't really agree with that right right now Depending on the micro expressions of the yeah, like have I just attended you in exactly yeah And that would actually that one kind of holds water in in a sense because we've definitely entered a Second phase of like the PC movement It's definitely been a surgeon it about the same time as this surgeon upspeak or what with it becoming widespread It's possibility again. No one has any idea at this point, right?

But those are kind of the two sides for upspeak with vocal fry It is the the critics of it say that it suggests that you are you sound it unenthusiastic And on the other side. Yeah, that's actually one of the tools that it it is Yeah, maybe they're unenthusiastic about what they're saying, but you also said that it's it's been found to be employed Especially by younger girls when they're trying to sound authoritative. Yeah, I mean, that's what some linguists have said right Here's another terrible study for you and this one got a lot of press I know when it came out that you will have a harder time getting a job if you use vocal fry and upspeak and for this one

they Had two different courting recordings. They played to 400 men and 400 women From a range of groups asked them to rate the speakers and who you might hire and no one wanted to hire the vocal fryers and What they came out with later was oh by the way, we didn't just use regular people who happened to vocal fry We got people to Vocal fry on purpose like to act it out right and to do an accent right which is Just throw the whole study out the window then we'll see in there in their defense. I'm sure this was all in the study But the people in the media who reported on it didn't bother to read the study

They read the abstract and then that's where all the headlines and then the Tour through the news cycle came from right so the idea that these people who were Who were trained as part of the study to speak in vocal fry? Yeah, we're not native vocal fry speakers Yeah, the idea is that that they came off sounding like robotic and stilted in that. Yeah, it really has nothing to do with vocal fry It's like you wouldn't hire somebody who's doing a bad mock British accent like me Doing what I don't know like if they hired me to do a study on like what British people thought of their accents And they're like, let's get Chuck to do it. So do it. Well, no, of course not Yeah, that would be terrible, mate. It would be kind of funny actually. I'm a chimney sweep. Right. A lot of our colleagues

I mean, we're kind of getting on this late. A lot of our colleagues have already covered this Ira Glass did a segment on vocal fry And he said that listeners always complained about young women reporting on our show They used to complain about like and upspeak, but now it's vocal fry And he said I am a vocal fryer self-admitted. Oh, yeah, no one ever writes me about that. All right That's how Ira Glass sounds. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and then our buddy Roman Mars. Yeah, the great 99% invisible His producer Katie Mingle at one point they were getting so many emails about it. She She got a

An auto reply, right? They set up an auto reply that would basically scan your email To look for keywords and it would determine that you were complaining about her voice. Yeah, this is what you got Yeah, it said you've written in to voice your dislike of one of our female reporters voices You're not alone. We have a filter set up that automatically since these types of emails into a folder labeled zero priority We'll review this folder and consider the complaints within well never Amazingly, we don't even have a folder for complaints about the male voices on our show because we've never gotten one Isn't that strange? We think so. Anyway, I hope you can continue to enjoy our free podcast somehow Love that one. Yeah, and if you can't there are plenty of shows that don't feature women's voices at all

Boom, I know that's one of the great all-time auto replies. Yeah, that's pretty great guys So Roman and Katie good for you. Yeah, I love it. Yeah Uh, but you talked earlier about some of our colleagues also have gone to training in linguists to reduce their vocal fry. Yeah, and Which one was it? Yeah, uh, Jessica gross who does a slate podcast? Or did I'm not sure she's still doing it called double X gab fest, right? She actually went to a voice coach after receiving complaints and People like penny Eckert who is a linguist are saying No, don't do that. Like you're an agent of change. Yeah is what you are, right? And that's um The weird thing is is that would place if if we are

Watching the evolution of Western speech, especially here in the United States right now, right? Yeah And men are starting to vocal fry more and more men are starting to use up speak more and more Which suggests that these things are gonna become increasingly widespread as the years go by then the women who are doing it now are in a like a really terrible position because they they grew up talking like this Yeah, and now they're being forced to change and Emulate the they'll say the predominant white male version of talking while the men are Adopting it more and more and then eventually down the road the women will be able to take it on again Yeah, once enough men do and that nuts it is nuts

But that's probably where things are going but in the meantime people like Jessica Gross have to go to speech therapists to learn To talk right right as far as her listeners go and she was really worried that her career was being affected by this Yeah, and yeah, like you said penny Eckert the linguist who's quoted beneath her in this MPR article is saying like yeah This is ridiculous. You can't tell people how to talk like I can't imagine a better way to just Off-handedly and casually trip somebody up and make them totally self-conscious than saying by the way your voice annoys Everybody do something about it. Yeah, I can't imagine forget that Gross also points out that MPR article is great. They did an interview with a few a few women Linguist and podcasters and she points out about it's not just with the voice

It's with clothes. They wear and she'd use Silicon Valley as an example Mark Zuckerberg wears a t-shirt and a hoodie to work every day and All of a sudden women who work in Silicon Valley if you dress up and try and look nice It's it goes against you. Yeah, you must be a dragon lady. Yeah, I like what's wrong with you Why you what's are you not smart? Why you trying to you trying to distract me with your good looks and your nice skirt Right. Where's something dumpy? So now of course the culture there is you go to work in Silicon Valley with your stupid hoodie and t-shirt on to fit in So I also saw another example. There's a New York magazine

Article from I'm not entirely certain when but it was called Can we just like get over the way women talk by Anne Friedman? Man, that was a good one. It was from July and she interviews a Think a feminist professor. Yeah, who's basically saying like Women are damned one way or another. Yeah, right? Like if they talk like men They come off as overly aggressive and assertive sure if they talk like women they come off as dumb and Unable to to stand behind what they're saying to have any conviction about what they're saying. Yeah, it's like which one do you want? Yeah, well in that case, it's like well if you're the agent of change

I'd just go with that one The one that's changing the one right that that you feel comfortable talking don't play ball. Yeah agreed I read a cool article from the Guardian to that That showed that at Oxford University young women get five to ten percent fewer first-class degrees in English even though the exams are graded blindly and professors there say it's because He observes female students and women saying like letting the men speak first and second and third Before they even jump in right so they're not even getting a chance to like shine

Because they're just so used to deferring to the right in the group and I think that that's probably something it's not necessarily just gender-based, but I think that That's just a lack of confidence That's displaying a lack of confidence and I think it comes from just being treated that way your whole life. Yeah Agreed. Here's another one from Amy Giddon is the director of corporate leadership at Barnard's College Athena Center for Leadership Studies that's a long one and She said the deal though is there's a it's not that these women aren't confident

There's a disconnect going on because she interviewed these ladies and they are self advocates and they feel like they're confident in their abilities and their smarts and ability to get things done, but They can't speak well about those things according to men in the room So it's it's not a lack of confidence. They have the confidence. It's just I think her point was that Men pay attention to what men say and how we say things right not necessarily what they're saying right Which is just stupid. Yeah, and not fair plus also. I think if you like if you Are around somebody that you don't like you're probably going to focus more on their Perceived flaws and if it's something like vocal fry or something like

Upspeak, you're going to You're gonna you're gonna zero in on that basically. Yeah, so I wonder like how much of it is just massage any two Oh, man, and this one this is a great quote This is stuff is just one more way of telling powerful women to shut up No, yeah, that kind of nails it on the head Yeah, like I read that quote and that that crystallized it for me. Yeah, it's like you said it's disguised Not so like heavily disguised sexism, I think yeah It's repulsive

It is see You got anything else I got nothing else except just to you know be yourself. Yeah be an agent of change. Yeah, don't listen to Bob Garfield Shoot it. You know what I hope this gets to him If you oh Man, it really might yeah play more with Bob Garfield if you that'll be our second this year It was the other oh the Australian jerk. Yeah. Yeah, if you want to learn more about vocal fry You can step out on the street and prick up your ears

You can also go to house tough works comm and type those words in the search bar and since I said Perk, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this cult V programming Guys who grew up in a cultish environment. It wasn't like Jim Jones crew However, the group made a clear distinction between us and them and getting out was difficult I was only able to get free a couple of years ago at the age of 24 and because of most of my current friends are still involved I haven't had the courage to tell them. I'm still not out yet I attended an independent fundamental Baptist church Baptist churches in general aren't cults. In fact, I still attended Baptist church

But the IFB churches are a thing into themselves. They stand opposed to modern music alcohol and all Bible translations except the King James version Some take it further and add movie theaters pants on women beards on men Swimming and mixed company and anything else you can imagine to the list of the foreboding These ideas problematic as they are not why I consider my previous environment to be cultish rather was the attitude with which they viewed descent Modern Bible versions are not simply inferior than King James. They're part of the conspiracy To introduce error into God's word and poison believers faith modern music even contemporary worship music Channels demons in feeds the flesh. It even kills plants

Huh, he didn't follow up on that Asking why we should believe these things is welcome since it gives the leaders an opportunity to allow I'm sorry offer canned answers that we can regurgitate to liberal contemporary crowd In quote, huh? So basically you're not questioning the interpretation you're questioning God himself So he says now I am happily a member of a more contemporary Baptist church

The while still fairly conservative in its beliefs and practices is much more open-minded Keep up the awesome work that is from anonymous Because I feel will hunt him down Thanks anonymous appreciate that yeah, he was like totally read it he or she that is yeah Did you give it away? Yeah, but take my name off of it. Yeah, he or she said that yep They did if you want to supplement an episode that we have Recorded you can get in touch with us by tweeting to us at sysk podcast You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff. You should know you can send us an email to

Stuff podcast at how stuff works calm and as always join us at our home on the web stuff You should know You For more on this and thousands of other topics visit how stuff works dot com On the podcast hey dude the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey, dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey, dude as our jumping-off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s

We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it Listen to hey, dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boybander Each week to guide you through life tell everybody yeah Everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts