Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vocabam, and today's episode is another classic from
Speaker 1: our erstwhile host, Christian Sager. He's here to explain why
Speaker 1: we're all weirded out by the sound of our own voice. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Christian Sager and welcome to brain Stuff. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard a recording of yourself played back and thought?
Speaker 1: Why do I sound like that? It happens to me
Speaker 1: every time I listen to this podcast. It is weird, right,
Speaker 1: Usually our voices sound deeper, but when played back the
Speaker 1: way everyone else hears them, they're higher and tenure. Why
Speaker 1: does it sound so different and why do we hate
Speaker 1: it so much? Well, the sound of your voice reaches
Speaker 1: your inner ear in two different ways. The vocal folds
Speaker 1: in your throat vibrate, creating sound waves that travel through
Speaker 1: the air, But those sound vibrations also conduct through your body,
Speaker 1: particularly through your skull and bones. Our skulls lower the
Speaker 1: frequency of these later vibrations as they bounce around inside
Speaker 1: our throat, mouth, and neck before reaching the ears cochlea
Speaker 1: through the fleshy tissue in our heads. The surrounding bones
Speaker 1: spread out the vibrations lower their pitch and enhance the
Speaker 1: lower frequency vibrations, so your voice sounds fuller and deeper.
Speaker 1: When we hear our voice played back on a recording,
Speaker 1: we don't get it filtered through flesh and bone. What
Speaker 1: we're hearing, then, is only the air conducted sound of
Speaker 1: our voice as waves of pressure. These vibrations are caught
Speaker 1: by our outer ears and then transmitted through our ear drums,
Speaker 1: where they vibrate three bony ousticles before reaching the cochlea.
Speaker 1: In both cases, the cochlea converts these vibrations into impulses
Speaker 1: that are sent to the brain. But with the elimination
Speaker 1: of the bone conducted sound, we end up hearing our
Speaker 1: voice the way everyone else hears it. Most of us
Speaker 1: have had this experience, and we hate it. We're used
Speaker 1: to the combination of the air conducted and bone conducted
Speaker 1: sounds of our voice. It's what we've lived with all
Speaker 1: of our lives, so of course it's unsettling to hear
Speaker 1: something so different than what we're used to. But remember this,
Speaker 1: This is how your friends have been hearing you your
Speaker 1: whole life. To them, it is normal. So just relax
Speaker 1: and rest easy, knowing that everyone cringes at the sound
Speaker 1: of their own voice, even Morgan Freeman, well, everyone except
Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman. Today's episode was written by Christian and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler. Playing for more wellness and lots of other
Speaker 1: topics that will shake you to the bone, visit our
Speaker 1: home planet, how stuff works dot com.