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by AdmiralAsshat 3723 days ago
While we're at it, some kind of "Does not interrupt the speaker" tag would be great. It absolutely drives me nuts, listening to stuff like This American Life or Radio Lab, where the person being interviewed never gets more than half a sentence out before the narrator overdubs themselves correcting or summarizing what the speaker is trying to say.

I find it incredibly obnoxious. You brought this person on to tell a story: let them tell their story, goddammit!

3 comments

I feel the opposite. With those two shows the primary focus is telling a story. They aren't really conventional interview shows. It seems to me like a lot of the time, a narrator dubbing over the interviewee can help maintain the pace and focus of the show.
By commenting here, I do not want to be that guy that just comes up to say "I second this", but, in a way, this is what I am doing. I also find it terribly obnoxious, and, in some sense, completely paternalistic.

While on a broad reaching medium, like TV, when can accept that the presenter is trying to reach the least capable person out there in terms of understanding the message, on podcasts, being as they are so specific and targeted, doing the same just does not feel right (to me, at least).

If the presenter breaks the rhythm of a guest to explain what the guest is saying is like rubbing in your face and saying "I'm sorry you can't understand this, but I'll translate it to you". If we reached the podcast, we probably CAN understand what the other person is saying.

Thank you for pointing that out. It really gets to my nerves sometimes.

That or cases where you have several people debating and you always have a "joker" who tries his/her best to interrupt someone else with lame jokes.