Speaker 1: Today's quote is from Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister
Speaker 1: of Australia. Make sure that as you step along your
Speaker 1: leadership journey, you were studying the gendered bits so that
Speaker 1: you're not there thinking this is happening to me because
Speaker 1: I'm not good enough, or this is happening to me
Speaker 1: just because of some eccentric reason about me. Your understanding
Speaker 1: when there are gendered things going on and you've thought
Speaker 1: in advance what you will do in that moment, and
Speaker 1: it's one thing to call it out yourself, and that
Speaker 1: might be a great strategy from time to time, but
Speaker 1: it's another thing to have reached out to people who
Speaker 1: can assist you in that moment. I don't think we
Speaker 1: should put all of the burden on women who want
Speaker 1: to be leaders to address the sexism. I think everybody,
Speaker 1: men and women should be calling it out for them.
Speaker 1: Our voice is a reflection of our life experience, where
Speaker 1: we've been and who we've listened to. But we can
Speaker 1: also own it and even change it if we want.
Speaker 1: This is the podcast that's all about the voice, but
Speaker 1: it's also all about power. Who has it, how we
Speaker 1: get it, and how we sound when we have it.
Speaker 1: I'm Samarve. I'm a dialect coach for actors in Hollywood
Speaker 1: on projects like the upcoming Wonder Woman's sequel, and I'm
Speaker 1: also a speech coach for entrepreneurs, politicians, creatives, and women
Speaker 1: everywhere who need to use their voice to get what
Speaker 1: they want. Welcome to permission to speak. Let's do this.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, we have Dr Rena Gupta. She's a laryngologist,
Speaker 1: which means a doctor who specializes in disorders and diseases
Speaker 1: and injuries of the vocal apparatus. She's one of the
Speaker 1: world's leading experts on the voice and especially for professional
Speaker 1: singers and actors, people who rely on their voice for
Speaker 1: what they do. And she's an utter delight. She's young,
Speaker 1: she's cool. She has a nose piercing, which I asked
Speaker 1: her about in terms of its relation to vocal production.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have her on for obvious reasons, but
Speaker 1: I really relished getting to ask her specifically about some
Speaker 1: of the things that women get maligned for, like vocal fry,
Speaker 1: to find out if we're actually hurting ourselves. What my
Speaker 1: old teacher at acting school used to call with a
Speaker 1: scary sternness in his voice, bad usage or if we
Speaker 1: just seem to be hurting ourselves in that way where
Speaker 1: male dominant society tells us what's good for us, and
Speaker 1: what is it and why did we get into it
Speaker 1: in terms of the assumptions and judgments that we're all
Speaker 1: guilty of making about other women's voices. Also, listening back
Speaker 1: to this one, which we recorded before coronavirus, I was
Speaker 1: struck by our discussion about how much we injure our
Speaker 1: voices on a night out. That's the cold comfort now
Speaker 1: that we're all homebound. But I hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: chat and get some insight about your own voice and
Speaker 1: some really practical tips for keeping it healthy and free.
Speaker 1: Her book comes out in a new edition this week,
Speaker 1: so follow her on Instagram for all the details, including
Speaker 1: a new title at Rena Gupta m D. That's r. E.
Speaker 1: N A Gupta, m D. And also at Center for
Speaker 1: Vocal Health, both of which I will link to in
Speaker 1: the show notes. This is Dr Rena Gupta. It's like
Speaker 1: sports medicine for the voice, right, because vocal sports is singing,
Speaker 1: is acting, it's long form audiobook narration, it's voiceover work.
Speaker 1: This is really athletic task on that one body part.
Speaker 1: That's my best analogy sports medicine of the voice. Okay,
Speaker 1: who comes to you and what they tend to need.
Speaker 1: My practice is almost entirely singers, actors, and then I
Speaker 1: will get a smattering of teachers, lawyers when it's a
Speaker 1: rough day, a doctor, but really people who because they're
Speaker 1: using their voice in such a finesse and fine tuned way,
Speaker 1: they're noticing minute issues with their voice more than a
Speaker 1: lay person. So my actor and singer and voiceover population
Speaker 1: are people who are noticing that in my fourth hour
Speaker 1: of work, in the tippy top of my range and
Speaker 1: these little minute aberrations, they're noticing it, and they're coming
Speaker 1: in for basically helped to figure out why is it
Speaker 1: happening and what do I need to do about it?
Speaker 1: Is it medical? Is it therapeutic? Is its surgical? And
Speaker 1: that's my wheelhouse, and there's anxiety around that. There is
Speaker 1: so much emotion in my exam room. I think, and
Speaker 1: I you know, I take this really seriously because I
Speaker 1: give the analogy of like I'm a surgeon, and if
Speaker 1: I am going to a hand doctor because something's not
Speaker 1: quite right, I am going in with a lot of
Speaker 1: emotional intensity I'm panicking that the entire life that I've
Speaker 1: built is being jeopardized by this symptom that I don't
Speaker 1: know what the cause is. And my patients come to
Speaker 1: me like that, and I would say a good of
Speaker 1: them are crying by the end of an appointment, for good,
Speaker 1: bad or otherwise. It's not always bad news, truly. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they're like, I have been living in fear for months,
Speaker 1: and what a relief to know that it is something
Speaker 1: as simple as X, Y and Z. So it is
Speaker 1: extremely emotional. It's why a lot of people delay coming in.
Speaker 1: Fear is a really big motivator. Is the wrong word?
Speaker 1: What's the word? Fears? A big delayer. Fear holds people back,
Speaker 1: it does. And then when they come in, what sort
Speaker 1: of thing do you do to figure out what's happening
Speaker 1: on the inside? You know, there's there's what you're alluding to,
Speaker 1: which is looking in the inside, and that's office based.
Speaker 1: It's painless, it's really easy, and we do this, you know,
Speaker 1: ten to twenty times a day. But my forte, I think,
Speaker 1: is in assembling the story of their voice symptoms, listening
Speaker 1: to the sound of their voice and putting that together
Speaker 1: to know and I look in this is what I'm
Speaker 1: going to see because I don't like to treat the picture.
Speaker 1: I don't like to look at their vocal cords and say, ah,
Speaker 1: this is what's causing it, because then you run the
Speaker 1: risk of misattributing cause and effect, right, because there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that could be wrong on your
Speaker 1: chords that even fixing it is not going to fix
Speaker 1: the symptom that brought you in. So I have to
Speaker 1: be really attentive to what brought you here today. What
Speaker 1: are the problems you're dealing with, and how do I
Speaker 1: fix those? And do I care or not about the
Speaker 1: little bump we just found in your vocal cord. It
Speaker 1: might be of no consequence. You may have had that
Speaker 1: since you were a baby, you know, and you were
Speaker 1: sick and coughing. You never know. And when we're talking
Speaker 1: about the vocal cords, we're talking about something that's the
Speaker 1: size of a nickel. Yes, like people don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: what's in there. Yeah, And what I got from doing
Speaker 1: some research in preparation for talking with you, although it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually come up that much with the work that
Speaker 1: I do, is just what an insane like, you know,
Speaker 1: tangle of muscles and nerves is in there and around there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really, really complex design, and I think it
Speaker 1: is truly astounding that something that is the size of
Speaker 1: the diameter of a nickel can produce four octaves of
Speaker 1: musical note, can convey emotion, can It's truly it's a
Speaker 1: design that is so exquisite that no instrument that's man
Speaker 1: made can replicate it, I mean nothing, And then what
Speaker 1: do we do to funk with that? So, I mean
Speaker 1: the obvious question is about vocal fry and up speak
Speaker 1: some of the things that are associated with women. I
Speaker 1: don't think it serves us to be so pedantic about this.
Speaker 1: One thing is good or bad, except for objectively good
Speaker 1: or bad things, right like smoking is always going to
Speaker 1: negatively affect your voice, Screaming is always going to make
Speaker 1: your cords swollen. Now, there is a little bit for
Speaker 1: women that we do tend to in certain geographical areas.
Speaker 1: We might up speak more, we might settle into fry
Speaker 1: at the end of our sentences case in point. But
Speaker 1: there's reasons humanizing. Yes, exactly, I'm not perfect. How did
Speaker 1: you guess? Well? And we can also discuss a vocal
Speaker 1: fry equals imperfect. I mean, I have a lot of
Speaker 1: opinions about this as somebody who works with a lot
Speaker 1: of women on how to sound more powerful in the
Speaker 1: moments that matter. And you know a lot of us
Speaker 1: have grown up with social cues that tell us not
Speaker 1: only the vocal fry is standard and is how your
Speaker 1: friends sound and is what normal sounds like, but also
Speaker 1: it does sometimes even help us get what we want
Speaker 1: in certain scenarios because it makes us really unintimidating. And
Speaker 1: what is wrong with any of that? I actually could
Speaker 1: not say it better. I think that fry is if
Speaker 1: you over focus on it and you're trying to eliminate it,
Speaker 1: you come out unnatural. It comes off. You know this,
Speaker 1: this is how you were raised, This is what your
Speaker 1: social upbringing kind of coached you too. And if you
Speaker 1: know how to use your voice, not as vocal chords voice,
Speaker 1: but you know how to deliver voice, then it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter or those little I don't know, those little aberrations
Speaker 1: of sound, they just don't bother me. I think up speak,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this on parpen. I have a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a bone to pick with that, because
Speaker 1: I think it actually detracts from the point, and I
Speaker 1: think that is less widespread. Fry to some degree, especially
Speaker 1: for women, is a little bit uncontrollable at the end
Speaker 1: of a sentence. It has to do with the way
Speaker 1: we drop pitch, and that the chords kind of vibrate
Speaker 1: a little bit more loosely. And if we do have
Speaker 1: any little bit of injury, that's when it becomes amplified.
Speaker 1: And most of us do have little bitty bitty injuries,
Speaker 1: and so fry kind of is the sound for any rattle,
Speaker 1: is a name for any rattle at the end of
Speaker 1: a sentence, say more about those injuries. I know you
Speaker 1: said something in your book singers lead the most boring lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and by singers, obviously in this case, we can use
Speaker 1: that as a standard for anyone who uses their voice
Speaker 1: for their profession. But you use this metaphor that when
Speaker 1: we go out to party the next day, we just
Speaker 1: expect our voice going to sound raspy, and that that's
Speaker 1: sort of like an a socially acceptable you know, Oh wow,
Speaker 1: you must have partied hard. You're so cool. And if,
Speaker 1: for example, every time we went out at night, we
Speaker 1: woke up the next day and our vision was blurry,
Speaker 1: we might take that a little bit more seriously exactly,
Speaker 1: And I think the reasons we sort of excuse it
Speaker 1: is number one, the voice is pretty forgiving. It recovers, right,
Speaker 1: It recovers to the best of a lay person's test ability. Right,
Speaker 1: I can talk again. I sound like myself again. The
Speaker 1: little injuries that are happening in those moments don't affect
Speaker 1: most people because they're just not using their voices to
Speaker 1: their maximum ability. That's what professional voice users do, and
Speaker 1: so it is still a body part. It is still
Speaker 1: something that when you quote lose your voice, it is
Speaker 1: either extreme swelling of your chords or little bruises, and
Speaker 1: bruises result in injury. So I'm not as casual about it.
Speaker 1: But I also know, as somebody who has lived that
Speaker 1: life to some degree, that when I have my own
Speaker 1: vocal chords exam, I'm like, Okay, that's that's injury. Do
Speaker 1: I sound injured? No? But I trip up very easily, right,
Speaker 1: Like if I get sick, I lose my voice very quickly.
Speaker 1: I don't always have good singing voice days. You know,
Speaker 1: some days are really limited because that those little injuries
Speaker 1: from teen years they kind of get amplified as you
Speaker 1: get more and more extensive in your voice. Use are
Speaker 1: you still singing? Not as much as I want to be? Yes,
Speaker 1: Q accepted. I will, I will do, I will dive
Speaker 1: back in. I know. Yeah, you've certainly sort of publicly
Speaker 1: spoken about your history starting when you were ten, of
Speaker 1: wanting to be a professional singer, and then obviously the
Speaker 1: tables turned at some point and you became somebody who
Speaker 1: supports singers. But also obviously the fire never went out.
Speaker 1: I never died. I've always loved the singing voice. I've
Speaker 1: studied it my whole life. And you know, I'm immigrant parents, physician,
Speaker 1: immigrant Indian parents. The artistic route was not as available
Speaker 1: to me as perhaps others, or I didn't avail myself
Speaker 1: of it it because I didn't I didn't really see
Speaker 1: a path forward for myself. But it never really left
Speaker 1: my heart, like you said, and so I always pursued
Speaker 1: opportunities to sing, and I kind of it really took
Speaker 1: me until I would say, practicing laryngology to understand how
Speaker 1: those young years really do influence your focal health. And
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense, right, like a young athlete
Speaker 1: who's a track star, right if their knee starts to
Speaker 1: go in high school. You know you're going to see
Speaker 1: that in their thirties, the voice is still a body part.
Speaker 1: Do you work with people who are younger? I mean,
Speaker 1: seek out because you appreciate the value. I seek it
Speaker 1: out exactly for that reason, because I see the value
Speaker 1: and I know that if you establish it at that age,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be at a far greater advantage. But also,
Speaker 1: these days, who's making it right? Who are the people
Speaker 1: who are really making the art? It's these increasingly young people.
Speaker 1: And how do they make it? They are out there
Speaker 1: all the time, they are putting out content. It's such
Speaker 1: a high frequency, it's really taxing. I mean my niece,
Speaker 1: you know, God bless her. I think that for better
Speaker 1: for worse, she's a little bit of a mini me. Somehow,
Speaker 1: the genetics just got a little bit confused. And she
Speaker 1: loves to sing, and she's a phenomenal singer. But the
Speaker 1: demand that she's under vocally is so far beyond what
Speaker 1: I did at that age, and still for her to
Speaker 1: break through, she would have to be producing at a really,
Speaker 1: really high level, And so the injuries are more common
Speaker 1: because the demand is extreme these days. You work with
Speaker 1: a lot of really high level performers. How are the
Speaker 1: conversations different because you have this actual background in performance
Speaker 1: versus a doctor who doesn't. I think that's something that
Speaker 1: my patients have referenced almost in every visit there like
Speaker 1: we feel like you get it. And it's not just
Speaker 1: that I get it, it's that I care so much
Speaker 1: about this instrument. Half the time when my patients are crying,
Speaker 1: my eyes are tearing up because I'm like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: like I want to hear your voice that it's best.
Speaker 1: I want to know what your art is, and I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's heartbreaking. And so you know, there's just
Speaker 1: the very basic that our language is the same. I
Speaker 1: can reference register and where they are on the keyboard,
Speaker 1: and I know, for example, like what is aspirational for
Speaker 1: a tenor versus what should be in your wheelhouse. So
Speaker 1: when you say you're capping out here, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: know that that's not normal. So it creates a common
Speaker 1: language that really makes you visit much more effective. But
Speaker 1: then the empathy that I feel is not manufactured. It
Speaker 1: is so sincerely real. When I have a patient who's
Speaker 1: had surgery and they're better and they're like, I feel
Speaker 1: like I have my voice back. I mean the entire
Speaker 1: purpose of the visit, I tell them, and I gets
Speaker 1: purely selfish. I know you healed great. I want to
Speaker 1: see you back in a month because I want to
Speaker 1: hear your voice. And they're like, you're crazy, like I'm better,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I just just sing a little bit
Speaker 1: for me so that I know that this is back
Speaker 1: for you and um tears always. But that's that's like
Speaker 1: hundred percent why I went into this, and that's why
Speaker 1: everybody should do what they do right that that is
Speaker 1: something that just they can't not do it. There's an
Speaker 1: amazing then diagram meme I've seen that I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about a lot lately. In one of the circles is
Speaker 1: things about the world that break your heart, and the
Speaker 1: other circle is where your unique skill set lies, and
Speaker 1: the overlap is what you should be doing. Oh that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously a lot of people are not in
Speaker 1: a position to necessarily go after what's in the middle
Speaker 1: of then diagram, you know, overlap at any given time.
Speaker 1: But when you are able to, when you find that place,
Speaker 1: it was really meaningful. Yeah, that visual is really striking.
Speaker 1: I love that. Do you listen either, too? Singers, or
Speaker 1: to say politicians or just people you meet and kind
Speaker 1: of find yourself unable to turn off, or like, what
Speaker 1: what are you thinking about? I guess is a better
Speaker 1: question and more positive way of thinking about it. But well,
Speaker 1: as you're diagnosing, do I diagnose? Yes, I can't. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the short answer. I can't not hear it. So
Speaker 1: with politicians, because it's so shouty. It actually does conceal
Speaker 1: a lot. Shouting hides a lot, honestly, but it's exceedingly damaging,
Speaker 1: right so, because basically what shouting is is you're pressing
Speaker 1: really hard on your chords. You're just overclosing, and so
Speaker 1: what we're not hearing the natural vibration of your chords,
Speaker 1: You're just hearing pressure. Now you take that same person
Speaker 1: and just have like a regular interview and you'll start
Speaker 1: to hear. And that's why a lot of politicians voices
Speaker 1: change over the course of a campaign, because in the
Speaker 1: beginning there their true voice. Over the course of the campaign,
Speaker 1: injuries accumulating most often, and then by the end of it,
Speaker 1: you're like, okay, this is your new voice. Now you're
Speaker 1: in your position and you're probably not going to recover
Speaker 1: your pre voice, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's for
Speaker 1: the dramatically worst. It could just be a small shift.
Speaker 1: But I think that's where we a lot of the
Speaker 1: times we assume it's aging voice, but that some of
Speaker 1: that stuff is just accumulated. Injuring, you can say the
Speaker 1: same like the singers quick accelerated, like you know exactly right.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I came across this, but I
Speaker 1: came across a Hillary Clinton video from when she was
Speaker 1: first Lady, and it is worth looking up to hear
Speaker 1: the pitch of her voice. It is you would not
Speaker 1: recognize it to be Hillary Clinton. And what a lot
Speaker 1: of the times women do is we lower our pitch
Speaker 1: for several reasons. One is that a lower pitched voice
Speaker 1: tends to project a little bit better. Number two is
Speaker 1: that there's this sort of socialization that booming male voice
Speaker 1: is more authoritative, and so if you sound to light,
Speaker 1: you sound trivial, you sound dismissible, right, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of women that's another reason a lot of us
Speaker 1: end up in fry because fry is the lowest pitch
Speaker 1: of our natural voice, and so it's sort of a
Speaker 1: byproduct of Okay, if normally I'm up here, right. This
Speaker 1: is my normal speaking pitch, but I kind of decide
Speaker 1: I want to be authoritative, so I'm gonna be here
Speaker 1: by the end of my sentence. I'm definitely ending up
Speaker 1: in fry because is the natural tendency is to drop
Speaker 1: pitch as we end a sentence, right, so you hear
Speaker 1: the fry creeping in, whereas if I go with my resonant,
Speaker 1: normal speaking voice, you might not hear it as much
Speaker 1: at the end of a sentence. I have many follow
Speaker 1: up questions to that, and we're going to get to
Speaker 1: it in just a second. We are back with Dr
Speaker 1: Rina gifta who knows all the things. That's all the things.
Speaker 1: Can I also just say the only person host of
Speaker 1: a podcast, TV show, colleague friend who has ever made
Speaker 1: an effort to learn how to pronounce my last name.
Speaker 1: So I would like to give you props for that. Why,
Speaker 1: thank you? Thank you? Okay, so we're talking about pitch.
Speaker 1: This makes me think of when you take a yoga
Speaker 1: class or get a massage, your voice starts to feel
Speaker 1: a little bit lower. Right in the theater world, we
Speaker 1: would call us dropped in yeah, or in the basement
Speaker 1: right yeah, phone sex voice in the basement. Sorry, little
Speaker 1: people sound, it's it's easy with voice to go to
Speaker 1: that place. Well, but that is a question, like when
Speaker 1: we're talking about how much range and how much ownership
Speaker 1: we can have over our sound. I've read some statistics
Speaker 1: that women, certainly more than men, know quote unquote how
Speaker 1: to turn our voices sexy. Yeah, so that is true,
Speaker 1: but that to be a little bit like gender e
Speaker 1: about that that. I think it is because women have
Speaker 1: always had to be sexy, right to create this normal
Speaker 1: version of you, and then what makes you sexy? Right?
Speaker 1: Heals the voice, the hair that versus like men's existence
Speaker 1: was sort of deemed to be sexy or not right,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't like I mean that said, there is
Speaker 1: a sexy mail voice. But you know, how often are
Speaker 1: women calling for phone sex compared to men? Right? My
Speaker 1: guess is if I were to just hypothesize that it
Speaker 1: is more men calling for women, and so that we
Speaker 1: have had to kind of find that version within ourselves
Speaker 1: versus mental like, this is my voice, and it is
Speaker 1: what it is, and you can find it sexy or not,
Speaker 1: but not needing to like create a version of themselves
Speaker 1: that is sexier for sure. What is a powerful voice
Speaker 1: sound like to you is really my question as both
Speaker 1: a professional and person. Okay, so here's where the person
Speaker 1: and me and I love that you said you love
Speaker 1: the English language. I'm a passionate English language lover as
Speaker 1: well and a language lover. So that I find that
Speaker 1: voice and the words, it's a mish mash. It's really
Speaker 1: hard to discern. Do I love this person because I
Speaker 1: love what they're saying or how they're saying it, or
Speaker 1: the tone of their voice or their body language, like
Speaker 1: it's voicing the art of speaking is so multidimensional that
Speaker 1: when someone is clicking with you, you're not just saying
Speaker 1: I love their literal tone, right, I love the tone
Speaker 1: of the prosody of their speech. There's so much more
Speaker 1: that will resonate with you as a human because voice
Speaker 1: is the essential way that we connect, right, It is
Speaker 1: the way we communicate. And so when I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: like people who are admirable that I admire what they say,
Speaker 1: I might still not be able to ever watch them
Speaker 1: speak because I find their voice off putting or I
Speaker 1: find their body language off putting. Let's say I'm preparing
Speaker 1: for this and I'm like, okay, let me try to
Speaker 1: like find some speakers that I can give an example of,
Speaker 1: as I love these women's speakers, or these people any
Speaker 1: woman that I was like, I really admire this woman's words.
Speaker 1: When I would watch them speak, I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: like their voice though, right, So it was it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting So this I don't like women's voice thing though,
Speaker 1: is such a I mean it's having a cultural moment. Yes,
Speaker 1: what do you think about that? And especially about as
Speaker 1: you're feeling it coming up in you? Right? I mean,
Speaker 1: well that was. It was really troubling because I even asked.
Speaker 1: I asked my sister in law and like, give me
Speaker 1: your like go women, and I wouldn't. She would send
Speaker 1: me them. I'm I go, I love these women, you know,
Speaker 1: I love what they say. And then I would listen
Speaker 1: to them. I'm like, WHOA. I would not have expected
Speaker 1: it to come from that voice. And so you're right,
Speaker 1: I am having to sort of reconcile this for myself.
Speaker 1: But I think that women have the unfortunate need to
Speaker 1: balance being sort of powerful, which we tend to lower
Speaker 1: our pitch to being passionate, because if you're not passionate
Speaker 1: as a woman, then you seem unrelatable and cold because
Speaker 1: women are supposed to we don't trust you exactly with
Speaker 1: not seeming flighty and flippant because you're too happy and
Speaker 1: too high pitched. Right, It's really it's almost a lose lose, lose,
Speaker 1: lose lose. And I remember I pulled up this one clip.
Speaker 1: It was Meet the Press, and it's a female host,
Speaker 1: a female guest, and two male guests, and as she
Speaker 1: introduced everybody around the table, she's smiling at the opener,
Speaker 1: female guest is smiling at the opener, and both men
Speaker 1: are completely stone faced. And it was just to me
Speaker 1: as I'm watching this episod, so it unroll. The two
Speaker 1: women are keeping their smile going. The two men are
Speaker 1: not ever really smiling, and I already know why that's happening, right,
Speaker 1: The men don't feel any need to do this, and
Speaker 1: the women are like, if I don't smile, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be told that I look cold rite later when
Speaker 1: I review this tape. And so catching those own biases
Speaker 1: within ourselves, I think is a really important way to
Speaker 1: change that going forward and just say, you know, really
Speaker 1: be more attentive to the words, but know that look
Speaker 1: somebody like Burne Brown you really connect with her and
Speaker 1: the way she speaks, and she's not really putting on
Speaker 1: a lower voice. I think what we're starting to try
Speaker 1: to shoot for is more it's an overused word, but
Speaker 1: more authenticity. Do I really believe that this is who
Speaker 1: you are? Or do I think you need to be
Speaker 1: this for this purpose? And that's a turn off. And
Speaker 1: I think women are still a little bit more uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with owning where we are at and that who I
Speaker 1: am is okay? Partly because of that, you know, as
Speaker 1: you said, lose, lose, lose. I think the official term
Speaker 1: is double bind, right, that there is just you know,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're trying to seem both powerful and
Speaker 1: also extremely likable, that's a hard package to also be
Speaker 1: trying to communicate real thoughts. And isn't it funny that,
Speaker 1: as a woman that I find myself doing the very
Speaker 1: thing that is so cumbersome to women? You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's the point of this podcast, quite honestly, that is it,
Speaker 1: because we have to a work on what our own
Speaker 1: authentic voice might be, not just in private scenarios, but
Speaker 1: in more and more public as we perhaps have more
Speaker 1: and more opportunities no matter what we're doing in our
Speaker 1: career or in our activism, or in our you know,
Speaker 1: whatever destiny. But also we have to think about us
Speaker 1: as listeners. What do you want to hear? I mean,
Speaker 1: I have the story that happened about a year and
Speaker 1: a half ago that I think was the initial spark
Speaker 1: for what ended up becoming this podcast, which is that
Speaker 1: I went to hear Alexandro Costio Cortez when she came
Speaker 1: through l A. She had just won the primary, which
Speaker 1: was a huge deal, but hadn't yet won the general.
Speaker 1: And I told my mom. As I was driving over,
Speaker 1: I called her and I said I was on my
Speaker 1: way to this and she said, oh good, she needs you.
Speaker 1: And I was like, my you know, extremely feminist, fulbright scholar,
Speaker 1: you know, kept her maiden name. Mom says this, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I think she's doing just fun, but thank you,
Speaker 1: but I think she's just amazing. And she said, you know,
Speaker 1: I just can't take her seriously with that voice that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Might be generational. I mean, there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: an okay boomer in that, for sure, but also you're
Speaker 1: you know, admitting very vulnerably and bravely that you have
Speaker 1: these same feelings when you listen to voices and it
Speaker 1: sounds like it's not just from a medical standpoint, and
Speaker 1: it's actually not at all from that now that you
Speaker 1: mentioned it. It's not about pitch timber or you know,
Speaker 1: oh I hear injury. I think it truly, which does
Speaker 1: also happen, Like I hear singers and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to see those chords. But I think that
Speaker 1: what I'm starting to observe is because we are consuming
Speaker 1: so much more media, it's such a spectrum of speakers,
Speaker 1: you do start to find that, Okay, there isn't a
Speaker 1: group of people that are resonating with me, and why
Speaker 1: And the people who I find I really click with
Speaker 1: it's not a commonality of their voice, or their age
Speaker 1: or their race. It truly is like I believe you.
Speaker 1: I believe that you mean what you're saying. And I
Speaker 1: think that sincerity is sort of a a skill, you know,
Speaker 1: just saying I am so comfortable that with what I'm
Speaker 1: saying that I'm okay, just putting it out there. And
Speaker 1: from that, I think tone comes from that. I think
Speaker 1: eye contact comes from that. I think you're the strength
Speaker 1: of the words. You're not umming as much. You're not
Speaker 1: stumbling as much because you're like, this is just quite
Speaker 1: literally who I am and what I think. But maybe
Speaker 1: that is harder for women because maybe our natural selves
Speaker 1: are not people that we feel have been easily accepted.
Speaker 1: So partly what I'm hearing is the anatomical stuff is
Speaker 1: connected to the psychological stuff. When you say anatomical, tell
Speaker 1: me what you mean. What I really mean is it
Speaker 1: sounds like this is about mindset as much as it's
Speaker 1: about anything else. I mean, I'm a big fan if
Speaker 1: we can't solve something like persistent vocal fry that feels
Speaker 1: like it's undermining ourselves by thinking stop vocal frying, but
Speaker 1: we can maybe do it by thinking what do I
Speaker 1: care about? And who am I talking to? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: am I comfortable with that? Right? Because I actually did
Speaker 1: have to fight that myself. I still remember as a fellow,
Speaker 1: I had to work with a speech pathologist that was
Speaker 1: in the office I was training in. He was like,
Speaker 1: and you stop pressing your voice so low, And I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: But the medical industry and I'm as you know, I
Speaker 1: trained as a surgeon, that is not a very female
Speaker 1: friendly world, and so certainly over those years, completely subconsciously,
Speaker 1: I found myself in that basement, and you know, having
Speaker 1: to sort of now bring awareness a metaphorical basement, a
Speaker 1: metaphor at this point, Um, but I yeah, I have
Speaker 1: to sort of say, Okay, this higher voice that is
Speaker 1: natural to me does not detract from my authority. And
Speaker 1: I feel like I only truly own that recently, maybe
Speaker 1: like in the past four to five years, but that
Speaker 1: is probably not Coincidentally along the time when I really
Speaker 1: started to feel like I know what I'm talking about professionally,
Speaker 1: like I know what I'm doing. I'm really damn good
Speaker 1: at what I do. Right, So now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, there's not this sort of hiding behind a
Speaker 1: vocal artifice. I love all of that. How old were
Speaker 1: you when you went to that speech pathologist. I was
Speaker 1: twenty eight. I was in training. Yeah, because I had
Speaker 1: an extremely similar experience when I was twenty four. I
Speaker 1: was in the middle of an m fane acting singing
Speaker 1: a lot, acting a lot, and I lost my voice.
Speaker 1: Every day. I'd be back in the morning. I had
Speaker 1: to go on vocal rest. I found an e n T.
Speaker 1: I did the camera up the nose well, I mean,
Speaker 1: losing your voice is um often physical and often emotional.
Speaker 1: But it was completely about optimum pitch, not funny. An
Speaker 1: optimum pitch for listeners is the well you should actually
Speaker 1: tell me if this is right. But my understanding of
Speaker 1: it is that everybody's physical vocal cords have a pitch
Speaker 1: that that should be sort of where we generally hang
Speaker 1: out in. We can go a little higher and a
Speaker 1: little lower, and we should for emphasis, but we have
Speaker 1: a sort of I mean, we have an optimum and
Speaker 1: then for all kinds of social reasons, we might be
Speaker 1: speaking lower because we want more authority, or higher because
Speaker 1: we want to come across as unintimidating. Absolutely, Actually, one
Speaker 1: of the speech path tricks is to kind of launch
Speaker 1: off of a more offhanded pitch, so like, as you're
Speaker 1: talking me and is where you're supposed tomb this very well?
Speaker 1: And that sort of blew my mind because I don't,
Speaker 1: you know, but I would find myself down there and
Speaker 1: so it you know, it's a little trick, and it
Speaker 1: obviously takes some practice to not launch into not need
Speaker 1: that you know, as you're finding your pitch, but to
Speaker 1: catch yourself when you're not speaking where you remember she
Speaker 1: made a recording of my and then of my answering
Speaker 1: real questions and they did not match at all. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh
Speaker 1: my god, Like what is what is you know, the
Speaker 1: patriarchy done to me? Well, yeah, but then in your twenties,
Speaker 1: you're like, I don't know who I am anyway, right,
Speaker 1: Like you're like you're still really figuring out your internal
Speaker 1: kind of like this is someone with whom I'm comfortable.
Speaker 1: So like a lot of my female artists, like they'll
Speaker 1: say they're sitting at the table with this, like with
Speaker 1: these management they place their voices really low so they
Speaker 1: can be heard. And like sometimes I have like these
Speaker 1: rock women and I'm like, why don't you just put
Speaker 1: it instead of like down here, like just like this
Speaker 1: is really strenuous, just put it here. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: did you hear a difference? So like barely. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's all we need. We just need you to bring
Speaker 1: you out of the basement. But they're like, but then
Speaker 1: they're going to treat me like a little girl. So
Speaker 1: they attribute that little bit to like Disney Princess, and right, yeah, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I mean Elizabeth Holmes got a lot of people to
Speaker 1: invest in her be before she didn't. Yep, I hate
Speaker 1: to say it. I mean it comes from something, right,
Speaker 1: it does like we slowly kind of land here and
Speaker 1: then somebody has to kind of be like, all right,
Speaker 1: let me consciously put my voice right. It is sort
Speaker 1: of the trick and is way easier to do. It
Speaker 1: feels better. But women are afraid of that because we
Speaker 1: are worried about sounding Let's see, did see? And then
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the answer is that above that is
Speaker 1: where we get into danger zone. But that you and
Speaker 1: I are on like an educational campaign here to say
Speaker 1: that that little bit up higher where we're actually just
Speaker 1: in our optimum pitch in our and our body is
Speaker 1: not going to fight us. Uh, is not going to
Speaker 1: undo the benefits that a lower voice might have done
Speaker 1: for m now. And that higher one also is going
Speaker 1: to feel unnatural, mind you like, so both directions feel unnatural,
Speaker 1: So just go with what feels natural, and it's going
Speaker 1: to actually sound better. And some of it really is
Speaker 1: just the way we talk to ourselves on the inside.
Speaker 1: You know, Whether or not are that that little pitch
Speaker 1: difference affects the way that people treat us may actually
Speaker 1: have less to do with the pitch and more to
Speaker 1: do with how have I reconciled that voice in my
Speaker 1: head that says I sound dizzy? And if we've reconciled
Speaker 1: it and we've said ha ha, I hear you, you know,
Speaker 1: mean critic in my head, you don't get to come
Speaker 1: out today. I love my voice. Boy, is that a
Speaker 1: hard thing to say into us? I graduated out of
Speaker 1: basement voice like probably two years after becoming a real
Speaker 1: real doctor, like all through training, all through fellowship, I
Speaker 1: was all the way first two years of like being
Speaker 1: a real doctor, I was down here and it wasn't
Speaker 1: until like I kind of felt like I knew what
Speaker 1: I was doing that so I'm like, oh it can
Speaker 1: be up here, s all right, Like it's easier, and
Speaker 1: it just happened. It wasn't a conscious decision, but it's
Speaker 1: just like that's what your brain does to you that
Speaker 1: you've kind of back you have anything. Also, look what
Speaker 1: I do. I hope I notice it has to have
Speaker 1: some insight. Guys's doctor. After all, it's proven now and
Speaker 1: I want to ask you some advice. First of all,
Speaker 1: do you work with breath? And how should people think
Speaker 1: about breath? For me, it is mostly is it a
Speaker 1: medical issue or not? And then I'll punt to somebody
Speaker 1: like you or to a singing vocal coach and just say,
Speaker 1: the body works, it's yours to do with what you will.
Speaker 1: I find that the things that I'm treating as it
Speaker 1: pertains to breath are going to be, like I said,
Speaker 1: medical asthma, allergy, congestion, because you know, especially here we
Speaker 1: are in l A, the air quality is suboptimal. I'll
Speaker 1: talk about the nose too, because I learned from your
Speaker 1: book that that's way more important than we think it
Speaker 1: is and knows is like my passion project. You also,
Speaker 1: by the way, have a nose, so I would like
Speaker 1: to know how that plays him. It just adds cool points. Um,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I don't know. I've always wanted one,
Speaker 1: and I got one when I was a grown up
Speaker 1: to say like, I am going to take ownership with
Speaker 1: my own identity. Yeah, my authority does not require that
Speaker 1: I have no piercing. Yeah, I don't need to fit
Speaker 1: your paradigm of a doctor. So revolutionary, right, So it
Speaker 1: didn't feel that revolutionary at the revolutionary Okay, sure, so
Speaker 1: knows we're talking about l A. Air poor quality. What
Speaker 1: will happen, and it often happens gradually to those of
Speaker 1: us who are not like Frankly allergic, is you just
Speaker 1: get this slow congestion in your voice and you lose
Speaker 1: nasal resonance, You lose that deliciousness that comes as your
Speaker 1: sound bounces through your nose. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: times i'm addressing that, I'm addressing lung health because your
Speaker 1: voice is powered by your breath, and the more effectively
Speaker 1: you can access your lung capacity, the more power you have.
Speaker 1: You don't have to use it all the time. Especially
Speaker 1: as we speak, we don't use a lot of our
Speaker 1: lung capacity because it's short, quick breaths between phrases. I've
Speaker 1: been told the way that it works in an ideal
Speaker 1: sort of functional system is that we have a thought,
Speaker 1: we dip down for just the right amount of breath
Speaker 1: for the thought it comes out of our mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that would be true if we had this
Speaker 1: ability to kind of predict the duration of our thought.
Speaker 1: But I mean that's what the reserves are for, and
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of fry comes from. Is Like,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a miscalculation. I thought i'd be done. Well,
Speaker 1: what I'm always interested in is like, when we're in
Speaker 1: low stakes scenarios where we're really comfortable, I think that
Speaker 1: system works really well. And then as soon as the
Speaker 1: stakes get higher and the thoughts get more complicated, not
Speaker 1: just because they're more complicated thoughts, but because we're suddenly
Speaker 1: also dealing with all this extra stimulus of like people
Speaker 1: looking at me, yeah, I have imposter syndrome, whatever is
Speaker 1: coming up. Then all of a sudden, the breath brain
Speaker 1: connection gets a little That was one of my notes too.
Speaker 1: It's like, how does voice and also like speech pattern
Speaker 1: change from those kinds of things, right Like, I think
Speaker 1: women again, we sort of fixate on this a little bit,
Speaker 1: like all the self apologizing, all the hey, sorry, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to let you know that rather than just
Speaker 1: letting you know the damn thing, right like, And I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of those you know, I try
Speaker 1: to take out words like just like I'm just writing
Speaker 1: to let you know, I don't just here's what it is.
Speaker 1: Right But the I think that is tied to imposters syndrome,
Speaker 1: and that what we're really trying to do is give
Speaker 1: ourselves permission to be in that space because we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily feel like we're welcome there, were perceived to belong there.
Speaker 1: And I think that pitch comes from that. The volume
Speaker 1: at which you speak comes from that, and then fry
Speaker 1: and all those other things come from that too. If
Speaker 1: I'm not feeling quite right, like I have an eight
Speaker 1: year old daughter and she does a lot of this
Speaker 1: up speak and it makes me nuts. But I understand
Speaker 1: I'm raising a female child in Los Angeles. I did
Speaker 1: want to ask you about this because I know you
Speaker 1: have kids and a boy and a girl, so it
Speaker 1: feels like there might be like an experiment going exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'll break you. I'll let you do what
Speaker 1: nature and see what happens. Who wins hunger games? That's
Speaker 1: such a sign. And the firstborn, right, the poor firstborns?
Speaker 1: And it is my daughter. Yeah, so she will say,
Speaker 1: you know, she did literally this morning. She's like, I
Speaker 1: know we don't have a lot of time, but can
Speaker 1: you put my hair up? And I'm like, why don't
Speaker 1: you just ask me to put your hair up? You know,
Speaker 1: you don't need to make an excuse around this thing,
Speaker 1: but she ls as she said, I know we don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of time, but I was wondering, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's built into that, and I'm like, oh, you're learning,
Speaker 1: and you know, look, I'm sure I did something to
Speaker 1: like I said, break her and make that happen, but
Speaker 1: you're learning to need to kind of excuse yourself. And
Speaker 1: I think up speak is a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: I think it is. I'm not entirely I don't want
Speaker 1: to sound too assertive. I'm pretty sure I know this
Speaker 1: is okay, but I'm not sure. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you come in guns a blazing, like we don't ever
Speaker 1: want to be wrong or proven wrong or you know,
Speaker 1: disagreed with. And so I think those speech patterns kind
Speaker 1: of come from that. I'll fix her, don't worry, She'll
Speaker 1: be okay. I mean, you know, a lot of clients
Speaker 1: that I work with are at an age or like
Speaker 1: era in their life, regardless of age, when they are
Speaker 1: realizing that their old tricks aren't working anymore, and it
Speaker 1: is stuff that did work when we were little. I mean,
Speaker 1: not everybody has a mom who says, you know, conscious
Speaker 1: of this stuff as you are, but you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of reason why young gre roles or women
Speaker 1: do that up speak and that hedging and that hemming
Speaker 1: because it feels like it helps us get what we
Speaker 1: want in a world that's made for us to take
Speaker 1: up a certain amount of space and no more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you tell anybody about warmups? I know that actually,
Speaker 1: like vocal coaches help singers with warmups, but anything in
Speaker 1: terms of relaxation of the larynx or anything like that
Speaker 1: that you suggest before people speak. I don't make the
Speaker 1: suggestion as to what to do, but I do suggest
Speaker 1: doing something. And it is not that not so simple
Speaker 1: as like the chords are a muscle, because they're not
Speaker 1: that simple either, But it's this idea that, yes, I
Speaker 1: want to kind of clue my body into leveraging my breath.
Speaker 1: This is where my attention needs to be for the
Speaker 1: next period of time. And I want to make sure
Speaker 1: I sound good. I want to find out how I'm
Speaker 1: going to sound before I need to sound that way. Right, So,
Speaker 1: as you're driving in your car, what does my voice
Speaker 1: sound and feel like today? Don't find out when you're
Speaker 1: behind the mic, you know, find out on So what
Speaker 1: do you suggest doing while you're driving to your thing?
Speaker 1: I actually don't do anything. Why are we doing this topic? Um?
Speaker 1: But I would say, like a true professional should probably
Speaker 1: cultivate a warm up that works for them. I have
Speaker 1: some people who just sing along, and again it's sort
Speaker 1: of don't let your voice take you by surprise, just
Speaker 1: know where you're at in the morning. And then some
Speaker 1: people actually don't like to sing because it makes them
Speaker 1: feel very vulnerable, and so they will read along to something.
Speaker 1: And some people will just do like really trite stuff
Speaker 1: like me, me, me, me me, whatever it is, just
Speaker 1: to sort of feel like, Okay, my attention is being
Speaker 1: brought to this body part. Now, okay, voice health tips.
Speaker 1: I know drinking water and I know people say tea,
Speaker 1: but I also know there's a bit of a myth
Speaker 1: that anything passes through your vocal cords because it does
Speaker 1: not correct. Nothing you eat or drink touches those cords.
Speaker 1: So those lozenges are not effective. This is a message
Speaker 1: from our sponsor, Looting. I thought it was. I was
Speaker 1: trying to find another way to say I appreciate that
Speaker 1: we were you were here so that you can tell
Speaker 1: us truth. Yeah, we don't want to be lied to anymore.
Speaker 1: I like me a good placebo too, right, So let
Speaker 1: us not downplay the placebo effect is real. And if
Speaker 1: that is part of your ritual, like wearing you know,
Speaker 1: a certain pair of socks because we what we said, right,
Speaker 1: Your voice is tied to your emotion. If your emotional
Speaker 1: health is attended to, you will sound better because everything
Speaker 1: is connected the way you want it to be. So
Speaker 1: if that lozenge does it for you, rock and roll. Now,
Speaker 1: what I don't want is for us to be relying
Speaker 1: on that when things aren't working right. So if things
Speaker 1: are not sounding good, don't pop a lozenge or have tea.
Speaker 1: But if it is, something like this is part of
Speaker 1: my routine rock and roll. Yes, treatment, No, exactly now,
Speaker 1: sort of? You know hydration, yes, people ask about hot cold?
Speaker 1: You know something in between whatever floats your boat. Your
Speaker 1: body's job, your mouth's job, and your upper throats job
Speaker 1: is to get the temperature to what your body wants
Speaker 1: it to be. Right. That's why when you're drinking something
Speaker 1: too hot, what do you do? You sip it because
Speaker 1: that lowers the temperature. Right, You're bringing a lot of
Speaker 1: air in with it. If it's too cold, A lot
Speaker 1: of us leave it in our mouths a little bit
Speaker 1: longer because it's uncomfortable when you swallow something too cold. Regardless,
Speaker 1: that's why room tempature is obviously the best what you're
Speaker 1: here to correct. I just noticed you do that as well.
Speaker 1: All the best people humidifier I like them, especially out here. Now,
Speaker 1: do I want it to be a rule of law,
Speaker 1: like if you don't have a humidifier, your voice is
Speaker 1: going to go into the drain. No, but I think
Speaker 1: it feels good. I think it feels good to both
Speaker 1: have it in your room when you're sleeping, but also
Speaker 1: the handheld ones. I am a big fan of um
Speaker 1: and there's a gazillion versions of it. Again, it could
Speaker 1: just be a little bit of a ritual, but it
Speaker 1: does feel good to have that moisture in your throat
Speaker 1: and vocal tract pot or something like that. I love
Speaker 1: the sinus friends it is, I mean, because I love
Speaker 1: nasal hell. But essentially what I tell people is, look
Speaker 1: at your car. This is l A. So I can
Speaker 1: reference this in New York people be like, your what,
Speaker 1: but look, we have New Yorkers listening. Yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: invited into the room as well. Look at the parked
Speaker 1: cars on the side, look at traffic, and all the
Speaker 1: grime that's on the car is in your nose because
Speaker 1: it's all landing from the air. Oh my god, right,
Speaker 1: you know that's why we have nose hairs. It's your filter, right,
Speaker 1: This is a filter to your air conditioner. But where
Speaker 1: is it staying now? It's staying in your nose, so
Speaker 1: wash it out once a day. This is also brought
Speaker 1: to you. But Neil med, what do we do if
Speaker 1: we were a cold? If you have a cold and
Speaker 1: it has not yet gotten to your voice, then, as
Speaker 1: you were, most cold start in your nose, So treat
Speaker 1: your nose theme rense, decongestus. If you need it. Nasal sprays,
Speaker 1: go to a doctor, but generally, because they start in
Speaker 1: your nose, if you can keep it up there, you're
Speaker 1: going to be spared the vocal injury risk that comes
Speaker 1: with that post nasal drip. I've lost my voice on
Speaker 1: horse now because I'm sick. So my target with my
Speaker 1: vocal patients is always trying to keep the cold up
Speaker 1: in your nose. And that just means really aggressively treating
Speaker 1: your nose before it lands into your throat and chest.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the Nose Show. I mean truly,
Speaker 1: you thought I as a voice doctor, that the reality.
Speaker 1: But one thing that I'm hearing over and over in
Speaker 1: different beautiful ways. Is that we are a holistic system. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I mean I love what you said about our
Speaker 1: mental health is related to our vocal health. This is
Speaker 1: my other passion project in addition to nasal health, is
Speaker 1: mental health. In all seriousness. I think I see a
Speaker 1: lot of mental health issues in my patients, and I
Speaker 1: think it is underappreciated, undertreated, and then poorly treated when
Speaker 1: it is treated. I think societally we are not great
Speaker 1: at it, and it is absolutely affecting people's ability to
Speaker 1: function in their artistic world. Another sort of offshoot of
Speaker 1: the various charitable things I want to take on in
Speaker 1: this next life that's coming up is tending to artist's
Speaker 1: mental health. I think it's really maybe becoming worse as well,
Speaker 1: with all the increased and anxiety and depression we're seeing
Speaker 1: related to media and social media and all those things.
Speaker 1: But there's no question that I see it. Even over
Speaker 1: the ten years I've been practicing, it has absolutely been
Speaker 1: increasing and younger and younger people. There's also such such
Speaker 1: a stereotype that doctors, you know, treat the one thing
Speaker 1: in front of them and not the whole person. And
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that that's not your philosophy, I will say.
Speaker 1: I mean, my staff makes fun of me. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's going to be in there for another hour, if
Speaker 1: you know, because I do. I sit with them. But
Speaker 1: it's so rarely as simple as your chords look like this,
Speaker 1: you know, it's almost always the environment of the whole
Speaker 1: body that you find the answer in something that appears remote,
Speaker 1: but every other system is connected. Why would we think
Speaker 1: this is different? And the voice is complex and we
Speaker 1: are complex. Yeah, okay, quick break, and then we're going
Speaker 1: to find out who you brought in for us to hear.
Speaker 1: We are back with Dr Rina Gupta and I'd love
Speaker 1: to know, Brina, and who have you chosen to bring in?
Speaker 1: I brought in AOC and it was a loaded moment.
Speaker 1: You take somebody like her who does a ton of talking, right,
Speaker 1: and so her voice will naturally get more and more
Speaker 1: hoarse over the course of a political career. And so
Speaker 1: as a voice doctor, I listen and I'm like, oh, like,
Speaker 1: I want her to get better vocally because that's gonna
Speaker 1: hurt her. It's gonna she's gonna sound rougher and rougher
Speaker 1: over time, right, So I think it's like I hear
Speaker 1: that happening, and I want to rein it in for
Speaker 1: her because I want her to like have the voice
Speaker 1: she's supposed to have. But then she's also a woman
Speaker 1: in leadership, so I don't know how much is what
Speaker 1: like it's really hard to pull out well. And I
Speaker 1: wonder what this voice is that she could have had otherwise,
Speaker 1: because you know, a big tenant of this type of
Speaker 1: stuff I talk about is that our voice is the
Speaker 1: product of our life experience. Let's listen to her. Let's
Speaker 1: play a lightning round game. I'm going to be the
Speaker 1: bad guy, which I'm sure half the room would agree
Speaker 1: with anyway. And um, and I want to get away
Speaker 1: with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich
Speaker 1: myself and advance my interest, even if that means putting
Speaker 1: putting my interest ahead of the American people. So Mrs
Speaker 1: Hobert Flynn. Oh and by the way, I have enlisted
Speaker 1: all of you as my co conspirators, so you're going
Speaker 1: to help me legally get away with all of this.
Speaker 1: She ends every almost every one of those seen. It's
Speaker 1: a great example of vocal fry. It's a great example
Speaker 1: of what you talked about earlier. That when you go
Speaker 1: down you inevitably end up in vocal fry, not necessarily
Speaker 1: because you don't believe what you're saying, but rather because
Speaker 1: you're literally trying to keep your voice from going too high.
Speaker 1: And Friday it bothers me less, although I think it's
Speaker 1: when it's consistent, like throughout a phrase, then it's really aggravating.
Speaker 1: But like, I think that what we saw her in
Speaker 1: that clip that bothers me less. I'm the ones who
Speaker 1: are kind of like, well, you know, like you're always
Speaker 1: down here and it's just a dominant pitch. That's more
Speaker 1: of an issue for me. For her, it feels whiny,
Speaker 1: Like her voice feels whiny to me, and I hate
Speaker 1: even saying those words like it just it makes me
Speaker 1: mad at myself. Does it bother you because you think
Speaker 1: she's hurting herself? That would be better, right, it would
Speaker 1: be better? I'm giving you. Oh gosh, No, I think
Speaker 1: there's just some voices I don't like, But I think
Speaker 1: her messaging is so strong, And for me, I will
Speaker 1: give myself credit for saying her messaging does not feel
Speaker 1: less strong. For her voice, like it doesn't distract me
Speaker 1: from believing in her message and believing in her and
Speaker 1: wanting to listen to her. It just I wish it
Speaker 1: was otherwise. I mean, but what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: if she could tap into a stronger, more authentic, quote
Speaker 1: unquote version of herself, that it would actually enhance her message.
Speaker 1: I have to believe for me, I mean, so my
Speaker 1: you know, my instinctual pushback is that how she talks
Speaker 1: is such a product of her upbringing. The stuff that
Speaker 1: feels like it's whiney. One could also say, is how
Speaker 1: that area of New York tends to sound. And you
Speaker 1: could say that the pitch and the vocal fry and
Speaker 1: the nationality are all ways of existing in a culture
Speaker 1: that says if I come across as cute, I can
Speaker 1: get away with more. I don't disagree with you that
Speaker 1: that is a product of, in part where she comes.
Speaker 1: I'm from New York, so I have heard it. Do
Speaker 1: you love what she says, I'm going to be the
Speaker 1: bad guy? That's a delightful accent moment. Yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: and that you pick up on. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: when you lead, you also said my name right, and
Speaker 1: so all the deliciousness that you do I hear. I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. I just think that you know, so people say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're from New York. I never would have guessed you
Speaker 1: don't have a New York accent, right, And I didn't
Speaker 1: deliberately get rid of it. And there's some words you'll
Speaker 1: always hear it when I speak, When I say water like,
Speaker 1: you'll always hear it. But I think that people have
Speaker 1: some comfort in neutrality to some degree, and you don't
Speaker 1: have to do it deliberately. But somebody like her, when
Speaker 1: you're trying to have approachability maybe or you're not maybe approachability,
Speaker 1: but you're trying to have universality of message, you're trying
Speaker 1: to bring people together, than maybe being a little bit
Speaker 1: more accessible in that way might help her meet her
Speaker 1: goal more effectively, Like I wonder if it could be
Speaker 1: seen as a means to an end rather than a
Speaker 1: changing who I am. The counter argument is that she's
Speaker 1: done so well and connected with people so well, and
Speaker 1: part of what I admire about her and would sort
Speaker 1: of hope that she wouldn't feel like she had to
Speaker 1: sort of coach her way out of is that she
Speaker 1: is showing us a new kind of powerful voice. If
Speaker 1: the interest I have in this podcast is for each
Speaker 1: of us in our own lives to feel like how
Speaker 1: we sound could be the future of power if we
Speaker 1: all just collectively agree that that's possible. She is a
Speaker 1: shining example of that, and the fact that she's been
Speaker 1: given power or earned it or you know, fought for it,
Speaker 1: and then continues to have moments like that one, which
Speaker 1: is not just like, you know, since I'm here, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll do some work, but rather I'm going to
Speaker 1: grab the narrative and make it what I want it
Speaker 1: to be. You know, she has these like Mr Smith
Speaker 1: goes to Washington moments while still being that girl who
Speaker 1: talks like that, and maybe that's doubly powerful, you know,
Speaker 1: where it's like, look at what I've done and I
Speaker 1: have that, you know, it's it's definitely it's almost like
Speaker 1: the new voice of power then becomes undefined. It can
Speaker 1: become than anybody. CA's the dream because the opposite, which
Speaker 1: you referenced is a more generic sound, and by generic,
Speaker 1: what we actually mean is the agreed upon standard, which
Speaker 1: is educated, white male, you know, privileged, etcetera. And many
Speaker 1: of us, because of our you know, the delightful education
Speaker 1: we've had in privileges we've found our way into or
Speaker 1: that we were born with, have been able to put
Speaker 1: on that generic voice when we want it to get
Speaker 1: what we want in certain scenarios. But it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it should continue forevermore to be the only way
Speaker 1: the power should sound. I mean, that is the heart
Speaker 1: of this podcast is to say, dare we question that?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a really fascinating question. The idea of
Speaker 1: a politician, I think the initial idea initial like an
Speaker 1: ancient rome first and maybe continuing through now, the idea
Speaker 1: of a politician is that they are supposed to be
Speaker 1: a representative of the people. M H. If they can
Speaker 1: represent us not just in terms of our interests, which
Speaker 1: by the way, a lot of politicians don't, but among
Speaker 1: the ones, we're great. If they can represent us not
Speaker 1: only in terms of our interests, but also in terms
Speaker 1: of being a flection of the demographic of who they represent.
Speaker 1: That to me feels like one of the most like
Speaker 1: hierarchy busting ideas out there, and I actually totally agree
Speaker 1: with that. And so then where I would say she
Speaker 1: is killing it is in representing her people right like
Speaker 1: that area from which she comes. And my dream for
Speaker 1: her is to have wider appeal because I want everyone
Speaker 1: to feel as connected with her as people like us
Speaker 1: to write, because that then allows somebody like her to
Speaker 1: trickle through and change that dialogue, and that would be great.
Speaker 1: And I guess where I worry is that can people
Speaker 1: do that? Yeah? I mean, and the question is also
Speaker 1: what is that tribe? Because when you said that, I
Speaker 1: think you met New Yorkers. But also I'm not a
Speaker 1: New Yorker. I mean, I've spent years there, but I
Speaker 1: do not consider, you know, I allow allow people who
Speaker 1: are actually born and raised there to carry that mantle.
Speaker 1: But you know, when we talked about what tribe she
Speaker 1: represents or what the ven diagram overlap is of people
Speaker 1: who feel like she's she's mine, I get to claim her.
Speaker 1: They could be a generational thing, for sure. It could
Speaker 1: be a gender thing for sure. It can be a
Speaker 1: class thing for sure. And then it becomes who does
Speaker 1: that not include? Oh, the old white grumpy men who
Speaker 1: are rich and who might be dying out. You brought
Speaker 1: that around nicely. I mean, it's my dream and I
Speaker 1: sound like a big old optimist, but you know, I
Speaker 1: kind of have to be. I also want to just say,
Speaker 1: technically speaking, something that she does. That's super cool if
Speaker 1: you want to go back and listen to it. Is
Speaker 1: operative words. This is the term that we use when
Speaker 1: we're talking about Shakespeare, but also about contemporary speech, when
Speaker 1: we're talking about long and complicated thoughts. What is the
Speaker 1: word that gets the lift or the punch or the
Speaker 1: operative is literally the word around which the entire thought operates.
Speaker 1: So in the phrase but I don't want to want
Speaker 1: is that and it references back to something else that's implicit.
Speaker 1: We can tell from it, but I don't want to that.
Speaker 1: We're saying like, but you should. You know, there's implicit things,
Speaker 1: and we all talk like this. And what she says
Speaker 1: in that is putting my interests ahead of the American people.
Speaker 1: It is possible to have memorized that line or to
Speaker 1: be pre here to say that and say putting my
Speaker 1: interests ahead of the American people. Where you choose no
Speaker 1: operative word, she does it again with legally get away
Speaker 1: with it. When you lift those words, it's connecting to
Speaker 1: the way we are, all of us when we're talking
Speaker 1: about something we care about and feeling really comfortable, and
Speaker 1: to be able to translate that onto a larger scale
Speaker 1: is gorgeous and an oratory style that you know, it's
Speaker 1: something we can learn from her. That's really I would
Speaker 1: have to listen to it again because I feel like
Speaker 1: it's not something I would consciously pick up on if
Speaker 1: I'm listening to somebody, but it might just trickle through
Speaker 1: into my subconscious totally subconscious, right, it's not an audience
Speaker 1: When when somebody doesn't do that kind of a lifting
Speaker 1: thing and doesn't sort of hold your hand and say
Speaker 1: this is the thing that matters, the audience's reaction will
Speaker 1: be either I didn't quite get that thought, I'm bored
Speaker 1: by it and disconnected, or you don't really seem like
Speaker 1: a person interesting. So for anybody listening who is thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, a presentation that you're about to give, can
Speaker 1: you figure out what the operative word is? It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be an intellectual game. You can actually like
Speaker 1: try doing a little punch on each of the words
Speaker 1: and being like that that didn't feel right. You know,
Speaker 1: if she had said putting my interests ahead of the
Speaker 1: American people, suddenly you're like, what we're not talking about
Speaker 1: far another country. If you're saying putting my interests ahead
Speaker 1: of the American people, it's like compared to what right,
Speaker 1: but putting my interests ahead of the American people. Suddenly
Speaker 1: you're saying, you know, this thing should be behind and
Speaker 1: instead it's ahead. Right, that's the unspoken part. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think that it almost to me, it feels
Speaker 1: like it goes without saying, like, why wouldn't you emphasize
Speaker 1: the most important element of your answer is when we're
Speaker 1: in public, we start to get more generic, the more
Speaker 1: scared we are. And that's either better accent and that
Speaker 1: stuff so that we were already talking about, or it's
Speaker 1: that our pitch gets real flat. And when your pitch
Speaker 1: gets flat, you stopped connecting to the thought in a
Speaker 1: way where people can pick up on stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. I'm gonna have to pay attention anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming in, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me, and thank you for being honest about, you know,
Speaker 1: the ways in which you're grappling with a woman who
Speaker 1: you nonetheless admire. Because I think in a way you
Speaker 1: are all of us, you know, we're all dealing with that.
Speaker 1: I have to believe I'm not alone in this, I mean,
Speaker 1: because I do. I feel like I'm trying to filter
Speaker 1: out the bias and yet still there it is. I
Speaker 1: mean you, thank you. Thank you to Dr Rina Gupta
Speaker 1: for coming in. You can find out more about her
Speaker 1: in the show notes or on our website Permission to
Speaker 1: Speak pod dot com. You can also go there, by
Speaker 1: the way, if you have any thoughts about this episode,
Speaker 1: anything you disagree with, anything you tried out in your
Speaker 1: own life that is or isn't working, anything that is
Speaker 1: coming up for you with zoom conferencing or with uh
Speaker 1: Instagram Live, or anything you're trying to do that is
Speaker 1: working out differently. In this bizarro new era that we're in,
Speaker 1: we obviously are having more difficulty having guests into our
Speaker 1: studio space while keeping things healthy for the near future.
Speaker 1: So I am going to do and ask me anything
Speaker 1: episode very soon and I would so love your questions.
Speaker 1: If you go to Permission to Speak pod dot com,
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Speaker 1: to you. Thanks as well to Sophie Lichterman and the
Speaker 1: team at I Heart Radio to Megan read, to my
Speaker 1: family and cohort, and to all of you. We're recording
Speaker 1: this podcast in the I Heart Radio studios in Hollywood
Speaker 1: on land that used to belong to the Tongva indigenous tribe,
Speaker 1: and you can visit U S d A C dot
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Speaker 1: Speak is a production of I Heart Radio and Double Vision,
Speaker 1: executive produced by Katherine Burke Canton and Mark Canton. For
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