by Chris Harris
One of the more unexpected consequences of starting a podcast is that you eventually have to listen to yourself. At first, that sounds rather exciting because you’ve finally managed to record something, upload it successfully and put it out into the world. Friends and family say encouraging things, a few people listen, and for a brief period you can convince yourself that you’re beginning to get the hang of this podcasting business. Then you listen back.
That was the moment I discovered just how many times I say “um” and “er” and “erm.”
Not the occasional one that slips out when you’re searching for a word. Not the odd hesitation during a complicated explanation. I mean constantly. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop hearing it. Every few sentences there it was again, quietly inserting itself into the conversation like an unwanted guest who simply refused to leave.
The strange thing is that I had absolutely no idea I was doing it. When you’re speaking, particularly when you’re trying to hold a conversation, explain an idea or tell a story, your attention is focused entirely on what you’re trying to say rather than the mechanics of how you’re saying it. Listening back to that first podcast was rather like hearing your own recorded voice for the first time. Suddenly you become aware of habits that nobody has ever pointed out to you and which, until that moment, you never realised existed.
Some of those habits are mildly irritating. Others are surprisingly annoying. A few make you wonder how anybody managed to stay with the episode until the end.
As Louise and I moved on to recording podcasts two, three, four and five, I became increasingly conscious of the problem and decided it was something worth addressing. As usual, we asked ChatGPT for advice, fully expecting a detailed explanation involving breathing exercises, voice coaching techniques, confidence building, public speaking strategies and perhaps a recommendation to enrol on some expensive communications course.
Instead, the advice was remarkably simple.
Whenever you reach the end of a sentence and need a moment to think about what comes next, don’t say “um”. Don’t say “er”. Simply stop talking for a second.
What made the advice more interesting was the explanation behind it. According to speech researchers, words such as “um”, “er” and “ah” are not really words at all. They are what linguists refer to as filled pauses, little verbal placeholders that appear when the brain is still processing information but doesn’t want the listener to think the speaker has finished. In effect, your mouth is buying time while your brain catches up.
Once I understood that, the habit suddenly made much more sense. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know what I wanted to say. The problem was that my brain occasionally needed a second or two to organise the next thought, and instead of allowing a brief silence, I was filling the gap with unnecessary noise.
What surprised me was learning that a short pause often sounds far better than a filler word. A moment of silence tends to make somebody sound thoughtful and considered, whereas a constant stream of “ums” and “ers” can make even a knowledgeable speaker sound uncertain. Both serve the same purpose, but one sounds deliberate and the other sounds accidental.
Interestingly, I had never really noticed Louise using verbal fillers very much at all. Whether that was a result of her educational background, years of teaching, natural confidence or some combination of all three, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, she seemed remarkably calm about the whole thing.
I, on the other hand, became slightly obsessed. Throughout the recordings I found myself running two conversations simultaneously. One was the actual podcast discussion. The other was taking place entirely inside my own head, where a small internal voice was constantly shouting instructions such as “Don’t say um. Don’t say er. You’re about to say um. Stop. Pause. Think. Now carry on.”
I still said it. Then I noticed I’d said it and became annoyed with myself. Then I concentrated even harder on avoiding it, which probably meant I was spending more mental energy monitoring my speech than thinking about the subject we were supposed to be discussing. At one point I suspect I was more focused on avoiding the word “um” than on the actual content of the podcast itself.
Fortunately, something interesting began to happen over time. By the fourth and fifth recordings, the number of fillers had dropped quite noticeably. They hadn’t disappeared completely, and I am certainly not claiming to have transformed overnight into a polished Radio 4 presenter, but there was a clear improvement compared with those first episodes. If I had to guess, I would say the number of “ums” and “ers” had probably reduced by at least half.
The whole experience has also changed the way I listen to other people over the last few days. Once you become aware of verbal fillers, you start hearing them everywhere. Politicians do it during interviews. Television presenters do it when speaking live. Lecturers do it while explaining complicated ideas. Even some of the world’s most successful podcasters and broadcasters rely on them far more than you might imagine.
When you think about it, it’s hardly surprising that the occasional verbal filler escapes. If there is one lesson I have learned from this particular stage of the podcasting journey, it is that silence is not something to fear. Most people rush to fill every tiny gap in conversation because they assume a pause sounds awkward, but in reality that brief silence is usually far less noticeable than they imagine. More often than not, it actually makes the speaker sound calmer, more thoughtful and more authoritative.
So if you happen to listen to one of our future podcasts and notice a slightly longer pause than usual, there is no need to worry that the recording has frozen or that the technology has failed.
It is simply my brain catching up with my mouth.
