Hi Jon, 
It has been a while since any development work has been done on Blather. The codebase was ported to newer versions of Python, Gtk, Qt, and Pocketsphinx in 2017. Unfortunately, it would appear that every Linux distro is missing *something* that is required for the "new" version, and my primary Blather machine (Debian 11) still runs the old version of Blather with all of the old libraries installed.  It is a depressing situation. harumph