Dear friends,

Let me start by saying that I appreciate and applaud you for the time, effort and research you put into these podcasts. The more I listen to various people like yourselves, who so willingly share knowledge and ideas, the more motivated I become to get involved. I did not, however, think that my involvement would involve a criticism, but there is a rather delicate issue that I feel I must bring up. Please take this as constructive criticism from a friend, because it is in no way meant as a personal attack.

Approximately 9 minutes into episode 32, Robin Marie pronounced the word ‘especially’ as eck-specially. The word is commonly mispronounced; I would put it in the top 10 category including:
chim’-a-nee, prob’-lee, “so don’t I”, irregardless instead of either regardless or irrespective,and believe it or not, I have a friend who uses the term, “weren’t-int ! ” as in, “We weren’t-int even there.”

I think it would be funny if you corrected each other, “on air.” Or maybe if you catch each other using a word inappropriately, that person would have to look up and define a commonly used skeptic term the following week. That way it would be fun, self correcting, and the listeners could become familiarized with some of the less understood skeptic terms ….just a thought.

Keep up the good work and thank you again!

Dave Z

It’s awfully funny to us you should bring that up. Off-air, Tom has lamented to Robin over some of her pronunciations. You’re right - I should have simply left them in the edit!

Dave Z - keep listening, and you will discover that there are a plethora of words I chronically mispronounce. This includes words that I have no reason not be familiar with, for example, I often mispronounce Sarah Palin as Sarah Pal - in (as in, you are my pal).

The reason for this tendency of mine has been speculated on by all my close friends and relatives, and suffice to say we have no idea. Luckily I endear to get better nonetheless and appreciate the close attention you’ve paid to the English language, which despite my best efforts, I will continue to occasionally butcher .

And look, I made a grammatical error there: should be, “These include words…”