The May 2025 episode is the first to tackle the red-hot topic of artificial intelligence, or AI. Paul’s guests are speech-to-text specialist Michael McAuliffe and dialect coach Tanera Marshall. Paul, Michael, and Tanera, along with podcast co-producer Cameron Meier, discuss AI in the context of human speech in general but especially acting and singing.
Michael, a linguist, brings AI knowledge to the conversation, while Tanera, by virtue of her being the dialect coach for The Brutalist, lends a unique perspective. It was The Brutalist that generated controversy by using AI to tweak the Hungarian-language dialogue of its actors. For more perspective on the film, see Cameron’s review and the videos toward the bottom of this page.
Among the issues discussed are the definitions of AI, the technological achievements and current limitations of computer “intelligence” to alter the human voice, the future of dialect coaching and acting itself, the legal and financial issues involved with using actors’ voices to train AI models, the moral and practical differences between AI and older cinematic technological illusions (editing, looping, rear projection, green screen, CGI, motion capture, de-aging, etc.), and the use of AI in music. To demonstrate the latter, the episode includes a portion of a song that was recently created in AI. To hear that entire song, visit Suno. (Thanks to Filmapalooza, Duane Trammell, and Jahil Nelson for use of the song.)
Michael McAuliffe is an adjunct professor in the Linguistics Department at McGill University, focused on creating and improving computational models to enable phonetic analysis of speech. He is the maintainer for the Montreal Forced Aligner, a tool that segments audio files into speech sounds based on a text transcript. His other research interests lie in how listeners adapt to novel speakers and accents, and phonetic analysis of dialects of English as part of the SPeech Across Dialects of English (SPADE) project. Also see the Montreal Forced Aligner.
In addition to her previously mentioned achievements, Tanera Marshall is a senior editor of the International Dialects of English Archive, or IDEA. She is a voice and accent specialist in theatre, TV, and film, and an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Theatre and Music. Her current and upcoming productions include The Brutalist, Train Dreams, Oh.What.Fun., Ann Lee, The Morning Show (season four), The Bear, and Chicago Fire. Recent credits include Hunger Games (2024), Asteroid City, Widows, Queen & Slim, Dungeons & Dragons, Fargo (season four), Station Eleven, Army of the Dead, Public Enemies, The Immigrant, and the Divergent series. Stage credits include Broadway tours of Hamilton, Billy Elliot, and Dirty Dancing, as well as productions at Steppenwolf, Court, and Timeline theatres in Chicago. For more information on Tanera, go here. And don’t forget to visit her page on IDEA.
For a demonstration of the real-time accent modification mentioned in this episode, visit Krisp. Also check out Natural Reader, a company that uses AI to turn text into speech for films and audiobooks. Notta and ElevenLabs provide similar services.
Related content:
For more perspective on Adrien Brody’s performance in The Brutalist, check out this interview on TikTok.
Finally, see what our old friends Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher have to say about AI:
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) is courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
For April 2025, Paul is going solo, discussing one of his favorite topics: rhoticity, or how the letter R is pronounced in words. He addresses many aspects of how the letter is used in several accents and dialects but focuses mostly on how R is sounded before and after a vowel. And he compares rhotic with non-rhotic speech.
Spencer helmed the team that recreated the iconic puppets from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (starring Tom Hanks) and was the lead puppeteer. Additional film credits include Hoodie (Palm Springs Shorts Fest), The Relationtrip (SXSW) and Clifford the Big Red Dog. Spencer co-wrote and directed the short puppet film Melvin the Birder, which was included in Heather Henson’s Handmade Puppet Dreams film series and received the 2014 PDN Photo Annual Award.
Jeremy and Gillyanne previously appeared on 
For more information on Come from Away, visit 
Barrie has a unique take on the dialect, as she has just released The Queen of Fourteenth Street, an audiobook celebrating the life of actress Eva Le Gallienne, who spoke in a dialect similar to Transatlantic. And Cameron’s movie background adds another dimension to the conversation, as the three discuss the accent in the context of older Hollywood movies.
For the April 2024 podcast, Paul explores loudness, or the lack thereof. Just as he examined extremes of the human voice’s pitch and speed in past episodes, this month Paul discusses the extremes of volume, specifically looking at world records for loudness while reflecting on the rarity of true silence.
Betsy’s research concentrates on perceptual dialectology and draws heavily on perceptions and attitudes to language variation with an aim to explore how language variation relates to the function of language in marking identity, status, group solidarity, and cultural values. She is also director of the Folk Linguistics Online Mapping (FLOM) project, which works on developing a free, open-source, online tool for conducting perceptual dialect research. She is a co-founder of the Linguistic Bias Working group at the University of Washington and the executive director of the American Dialect Society.
The July 2023 episode of 
After hearing his sister’s name mispronounced at her college graduation, Praveen says he was compelled to create the initial Namecoach product while finishing his Ph.D. at Stanford. Prior to building Namecoach, he pursued studies in biochemistry, physics, history, and philosophy, and holds degrees from Harvard (B.A.), Columbia (M.A.), Cambridge (MPhil), and Stanford (Ph.D).
Before moving into lexicography, Dr. Sangster headed the BBC Pronunciation Unit and completed a D.Phil. in sociophonetics. Catherine’s linguistic research interests include accents and dialects, Germanic languages, the phonology of conlangs, language and gender/sexuality, and Latin and its Anglicization.
He was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2019, the highest accolade in UK Higher Education, and is a principal fellow of the Higher Education Authority. He was appointed to the Department for Communities’ Irish Language Strategy Expert Advisory Panel in 2021 was a member of the Irish Government’s Review Board of the Official Irish Language Standard (2016). He was editor of An tUltach (2008-2010). His research includes modern Irish pedagogy, the O’Neill dynasty, and Irish language theatre; and he is lead investigator (Northern Ireland) in the c.€4million Shared Island social capital research initiative with NUI Galway, University of Limerick and Atlantic Technological University. He is a board member of the Derry Chamber of Commerce and a director on the Governing Body of North West Regional College. For more information on Professor O’Neill, 
He was founder-editor of the Journal of Child Language (1973-85), Child Language Teaching and Therapy (1985-96), and Linguistics Abstracts (1985-96), and associate editor of the Journal of Linguistics (1970-73). In addition, he has been a consultant, contributor, or presenter on several radio and television programs and series. David is currently patron of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) and the Association for Language Learning (ALL); president of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, the UK National Literacy Association, and the Johnson Society of London; and an honorary vice president of the Institute of Linguists and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.
