This was a press box thing. The saying went something like, “He has a face made for radio.”

Meaning that a person might have been an expert on some topic, maybe interesting enough to get a gig on TV — except for that mug.

And then the second part of it, and maybe I invented it (or just repeated it), goes like this: “And a voice made for print.” Meaning that writer’s voice is tinny or annoying, or perhaps the accent is cloying. But a voice you do not want to hear. A voice that repulses the listener.

Many of us do not have the voices we would prefer. Which is somehow harder to take than a face we don’t love. We usually accept what we look like, eventually, because we have the visual evidence to consider, day after day. The world has a lot of mirrors.

But we actually sound like that? Inside our own heads, our voices generally are not awful. However, what others hear is, almost uniformly, less flattering than we hoped.

It is instructive, then, to listen to your own voice, from time to time, played back to you via some recording device. Often, it is an unpleasant surprise but, hey, at least you know.

Which is a lengthy set-up to a podcast I did for The National. My sports colleague Chitrabhanu Kadalayil is a fan of radio, and he has taken it upon himself to post sports podcasts on our website, and he has done a very good job of tapping the expertise in the newsroom.

And here is my podcast, further refined/embellished with photos relating to topics being mentioned at that moment of the conversation. It’s like a Ken Burns “Civil War” effect — the images almost make it like television!

The trigger for this was a look back at 2013 that CB (as he is known in the newsroom) wanted to investigate, as well as something of a look ahead to 2014, in UAE sports.

The link, above, is a shorter version of our conversation, but it is jammed with photos. Value-added! Thus, while listening to our not-so-dulcet tones you also can get an idea of what sports in the UAE look like. A big range there, from professional tennis to local soccer, golf, etc.

The complete conversation, which runs for about 12:30, can be found here. More topics, no pictures.

And for those who may not remember/know, Ken Burns is a historian and documentarian who managed to bring “life” to still photos by panning in or out on them, or tracking left or right, and having that person’s “voice” laid over the video.

I am very impressed at the effort made (and result delivered) on the earlier link, to attach all those photos to the file. That must have been CB, or the head of our multimedia editor Deepthi Unnikrishnan.

Good work.