Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wasn't the stuff to blow your mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie. Can't get
Speaker 1: a nun? You love Douglas? Yeah? Are you? Are you
Speaker 1: a frog? I'm Berry White. Oh okay, I was getting
Speaker 1: a little more cartoon frog than Verry White. But man,
Speaker 1: this place, I'm telling you how stuff works. You try
Speaker 1: to bust out an accent here or any sort of
Speaker 1: vocal nuance, and you have a bunch of experts chining in.
Speaker 1: But no, it's good to you went for Verry White,
Speaker 1: because today we're talking about the very wide effect. We're
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about Barry White, a little bit
Speaker 1: about Marilyn Monroe, throwing in some koalas here and there.
Speaker 1: But but first, let let's just talk very briefly about
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe and Barry White from sort of a cultural standpoint,
Speaker 1: like both of these are icons of sex appeal that
Speaker 1: really may not hold up as we were discussing earlier,
Speaker 1: to uh to, to modern pop culture standards, and certainly
Speaker 1: to any individual out there, you might not think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Verry Wide is the the be all of
Speaker 1: male sexuality or you might you might not have Marilyn
Speaker 1: Monroe posters all over your dorm room. Um, but they
Speaker 1: still have this sort of iconic um power to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do. They are just brimming with sexuality. And some
Speaker 1: of that is because of the type of music that
Speaker 1: very White created. It was very much like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put the player on and we're gonna get down right now.
Speaker 1: He wasn't doing historical ballads about you know, about the
Speaker 1: battles in in history or anything. He was very much
Speaker 1: get down to business. And in terms of Marylyn Row,
Speaker 1: I mean she is sort of like a female through
Speaker 1: the cultural lens completely, you know, um, characaturist, sort of
Speaker 1: the Betty boot living Betty boop. Yeah, and she does
Speaker 1: for the roles she played. I don't recall ever having
Speaker 1: seen Marilyn Monroe movie where she threw a karate chop
Speaker 1: or um, you know, or fought an alien on a
Speaker 1: space ship. It was it was very much Marilyn on
Speaker 1: her as Marilyn Monroe. Um, you know, copy and paste,
Speaker 1: repeat right. That was her purview, right. She wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to put forward this idea of a balanced idea of
Speaker 1: what a woman could be or should be. So here
Speaker 1: we have these big iconic presences and we have a
Speaker 1: couple of studies to actually relate to them. And at
Speaker 1: the bottom of all this, there's this idea that we
Speaker 1: might actually have a voice prejudice. We might hear certain
Speaker 1: voices and gravitate toward them. And we're going to explore
Speaker 1: this idea. Yeah, and and and that end of itself
Speaker 1: when we can all relate to that there are certain
Speaker 1: voices that are going to annoy us in our lives,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna have certain uh taste that revolve around
Speaker 1: other voices. Like it's like some people are gonna be
Speaker 1: really annoyed by a high nasal voice or or even
Speaker 1: a really deep voice. I could say that as being annoying.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many like everything that we've discussed
Speaker 1: concerning where the human condition meets uh Darwinian evolution. There's
Speaker 1: there's what we have evolved to be, and then there's
Speaker 1: the complications that have arisen from the ascension of human
Speaker 1: consciousness and the layers of culture we put over everything well,
Speaker 1: and one of the ways that we try to cut
Speaker 1: through all of that and try to figure out whether
Speaker 1: or not there's some sort of baseline two voices, and
Speaker 1: the way that we react to them is we look
Speaker 1: to the animal world, specifically residents, frequencies, and animals. So
Speaker 1: we've seen studies of animals and birds that reveal that
Speaker 1: listeners can figure out body size and what the intent
Speaker 1: of the collar is based our frequency, voice quality, and
Speaker 1: format spacing. So this format spacing is really important because
Speaker 1: as we're going to go on and talk about these
Speaker 1: lower pitches, those are really are at the heart of
Speaker 1: what makes something very low pitched. So essentially, lower pitched
Speaker 1: vocalizations are less space between something called formats okay, and
Speaker 1: these formats uh, These frequencies are emphasized frequencies within vocalizations
Speaker 1: and humans, formats are essential to speech and they help
Speaker 1: us to distinguish between vowels. So, in effect, an animals
Speaker 1: roar or vocal communication of its choice is going to
Speaker 1: be a key to its size. The lower, more baritone
Speaker 1: sounds are going to say hey, I'm a big animal,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the higher ones that would say hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a smaller animal. Yeah. I mean, there's this idea
Speaker 1: that pure tone like sounds are more likely to suggest
Speaker 1: a smaller size, submissiveness and fear that sounds yeah like that. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Now one particular study, because because you want specific examples
Speaker 1: of this, I'm sure we would looked at a two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven study publishing the Journal of Experimental Biology,
Speaker 1: and they looked at koala bears. Now, koala bears, if
Speaker 1: you don't know anything about up them, you might think
Speaker 1: of them as purely a sexual creatures that live only
Speaker 1: on you know, tree limbs or in baby cribs. You know,
Speaker 1: they're Steph quala airs. I mean, they're very adorable looking,
Speaker 1: but of course, like any animal, they engaged and rather
Speaker 1: raucous sexual life all their own. UM. We've we've discussed
Speaker 1: in the past lesbian qualas that will push one another
Speaker 1: up against plants and and have their way, and so
Speaker 1: you know, the kualas are a decent place to look
Speaker 1: for examples of of this kind of vocal frequency. UM
Speaker 1: is used as a kind of mating signature. And indeed
Speaker 1: they found it by um that the that the male
Speaker 1: qualas advertise their size by changing the residents of their
Speaker 1: calls lower resonance. Again called formats have a more baritone quality,
Speaker 1: and that just just telling the lady quala is out
Speaker 1: there Hey, I'm big. I'm a big kuala and the
Speaker 1: the underlying theme here is that I'm a big koala
Speaker 1: that can fight off other koalas. So if you, if
Speaker 1: you hear me, guys, know that I am a rather
Speaker 1: sizeable opponent, you know, on a mess with me, and ladies,
Speaker 1: I am a preferred nate because as a large koala,
Speaker 1: I'm more likely to give you large koala offspring who
Speaker 1: will in turn have mating success in their lives. So
Speaker 1: there's a very you know, hardcore Darwinian message here. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, it all comes down to the passing of
Speaker 1: jeans one generation to the next and trying to gain
Speaker 1: the next generation for success. Yeah, and uh this actually
Speaker 1: points to the research of a group of twenty male
Speaker 1: kualas during the kuala breeding season at Lone Pine Koala
Speaker 1: Sanctuary in Australia. And usually these guys, these little cute marsupials,
Speaker 1: are pretty quiet this the year, but when it is
Speaker 1: mating season they do have that deep, choppy growl. And so,
Speaker 1: as you say, the promise here and the research that
Speaker 1: was born out here is again there's a larger body
Speaker 1: size headsize that's correlated with the lower frequencies and this
Speaker 1: idea of hey, I'm going to create more competitive offspring
Speaker 1: for you. And in the case of something like a
Speaker 1: foul dear, a low frequency growl that's heard off in
Speaker 1: the distance might discourage another would be suitors to a
Speaker 1: fellow dough, let's say, to retreat from the area. So
Speaker 1: it's not just like hey, I'm gonna give you some
Speaker 1: really sturdy young n's, but it could also be something
Speaker 1: of a play that's kind of like, hey, you better
Speaker 1: step off because I'm in the area. All right. So this,
Speaker 1: i'll leads to the inevitable question what about humans? Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it the same with us? What about Barry White?
Speaker 1: And indeed had his very white factor because Barry White,
Speaker 1: just to to to remind everyone, was a very big man.
Speaker 1: I mean he he struggled with obesity, you know, most
Speaker 1: of his adult life, but he's also six four. He
Speaker 1: was a big dude, an imposing figure, but also one
Speaker 1: that that again became iconic because he had this uh
Speaker 1: this kind of soft, uh teddy bear kind of quality
Speaker 1: to him as well, like you never doubted that he
Speaker 1: could he could stand up for himself and he could
Speaker 1: put a new place. But he was a approachable he was.
Speaker 1: He had this lovable charm and charisma about him. Well,
Speaker 1: there is a study that was published in Plos one
Speaker 1: called human vocal attractiveness as Signaled by body size projection,
Speaker 1: and this looks at both high frequency and low frequency
Speaker 1: and it found, let's look at the males first, that
Speaker 1: male listeners preferred female voices with high pitch, breathy voice
Speaker 1: in wide format spacing because it correlated with a smaller
Speaker 1: body size. Does this sound like anyone you've ever known? President?
Speaker 1: I think that was that was pretty spot on. It's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to do. Um. Now, a breathy voice
Speaker 1: is indicative of the higher pitches that you would see
Speaker 1: in younger, thinner vocal cords. So there's this idea that
Speaker 1: it is suggesting that it's a youthful person. Um. And
Speaker 1: then it is achieved by increasing the amount of air
Speaker 1: passing through vocal chords, giving it an aspirated quality. For
Speaker 1: female listeners, of course, they they prefer that deep, husky
Speaker 1: male voice. But again, not only doesn't need to be
Speaker 1: a deep voice, it needs to be that breathy voice.
Speaker 1: And again think of Barry White. Uh, the breathiness to it.
Speaker 1: It has this kind of calmness too, is saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a big I'm a big guy, but I'm not
Speaker 1: a dangerous guy. I'm an approachable guy. I'm a lovable guy. Uh.
Speaker 1: For instance, John Goodman's voice we're discussing earlier generally does
Speaker 1: not come up as possessing very wide qualities, even though
Speaker 1: John Goodman is UH is of course a big man
Speaker 1: with a very deep, very deep voice. But in most
Speaker 1: of the most like interviews I've seen with him, and
Speaker 1: and certainly in any of his film roles, he tends
Speaker 1: to have a very abrasive quality and and it's kind
Speaker 1: of a fast talker much of the time, and kind
Speaker 1: of a grumbling nature to everything he says that. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't have that breath equality. It doesn't. He doesn't
Speaker 1: have that teddy bear quality that you get with Barry White,
Speaker 1: and that, as this study reveals, that's what UH female
Speaker 1: listeners are supposedly going for. Yeah, the idea is that
Speaker 1: that breathiness kind of mitigates any sort of aggressivity that
Speaker 1: might be perceived in the voice. So you go, oh,
Speaker 1: what a gentle giant. So you'll see information all throughout
Speaker 1: scientific literature that a deep voice is part and parcel
Speaker 1: of sexual selection and that men with low frequency short
Speaker 1: space formats have more sexual hookups. You'll see this in literature.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a paper by the name of voice
Speaker 1: Pitch Predicts Reprotective Success and Male Hunter Gathers, and it
Speaker 1: bears out the fact that the men of the Hodza
Speaker 1: people are a Tanzanian hunter gathers assired far more children
Speaker 1: than their higher pitched counterparts. That's important to note that
Speaker 1: they went to a secluded community like this to conduct
Speaker 1: this study, because once you start factoring in things like
Speaker 1: birth control, that just kind of excused the whole human
Speaker 1: mating platform. Now, one of the things that excuse this
Speaker 1: idea of lower pitch voices as part and parcel of
Speaker 1: sexual selection. K evolution is a paper published by Lee
Speaker 1: Simmons at All in the December twenty eleven issue of
Speaker 1: p l O S One, and it says, hey, men
Speaker 1: with deeper attractive voices may have lower sperm quality than
Speaker 1: then with less attractive voices. And this was determined by
Speaker 1: seamen analysis which revealed that men with deeper voices have
Speaker 1: lower scores on seven motility parameters. Now we're talking about
Speaker 1: fifty four male participants from the University of Western Australia.
Speaker 1: They were recruited for this and this is just one study,
Speaker 1: but I think it gives you the idea that it's
Speaker 1: not quite as cut and dried as some of the
Speaker 1: literature in the past would put out there. And researchers
Speaker 1: believe that the lower sperm quality reflects a trade off
Speaker 1: that comes with having to compete for mats. Okay, because
Speaker 1: if you were a say this the squirrelier uh mail
Speaker 1: with a higher voice or the sort of annoying voice,
Speaker 1: you you may not get that many shots at the prize.
Speaker 1: So when you do, it's got to count. But if
Speaker 1: you are the very wide of the Kuala world world,
Speaker 1: you know you've got numerous opportunities to at the bullside.
Speaker 1: Alright'm gonna take a quick break and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about something else that actually maked Trump the Verry
Speaker 1: White and Maryland Monroe voice, and it has to do
Speaker 1: with our own voices. All Right, we are back and
Speaker 1: during the break, um Noel, our producer, myself and Robert
Speaker 1: had this quick little discussion of who could actually take
Speaker 1: on the mantle of Barry White these days, Who is
Speaker 1: the modern Berry White, who can deliver all that sultry fuzziness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, like I was thinking, okay, John Goodman, No,
Speaker 1: that didn't work. And I was like running through all
Speaker 1: these different names of like sort of big or deep voiced,
Speaker 1: you know, male actors or celebrities, and none of them
Speaker 1: were really clicking. Like all of them just seemed a
Speaker 1: little off. But Noel nailed it. He said, I got it,
Speaker 1: And he said Scarlett Johanson. Yeah, because Scarlett Johnson has
Speaker 1: this wonderful, like husky female voice that I I ventured
Speaker 1: to say a lot of people find attractive. It's great.
Speaker 1: And what I love about it is is this little
Speaker 1: gender twist, because really it's sort of if you took
Speaker 1: all of the best aspects of Marilyn and Rose voice
Speaker 1: and Barry Whites and put it together, and man, I
Speaker 1: would love to have her voice. That would be great.
Speaker 1: It is. It is a really good voice. I've admired
Speaker 1: it since uh was it a ghost World back in
Speaker 1: the day. Yeah, well admired. Well done, Scarlett. All Right,
Speaker 1: So we we may love all the huskiness, the breathiness,
Speaker 1: but it turns out that ultimately we just love to
Speaker 1: hear ourselves in others. That trumps everything. Else. Yeah. A
Speaker 1: new University of British Columbia study finds that we prefer
Speaker 1: voices that are similar to our own. And the reason
Speaker 1: here is because they convey These voices convey a soothing
Speaker 1: sense of community and social belongingness. It's the known quantity
Speaker 1: right right, So we automatically be connect and we begin
Speaker 1: to empathize with some anounce if they sound like us.
Speaker 1: And Molly Babbel great last name, by the way, a
Speaker 1: professor in the Department of Linguistics and her colleagues at
Speaker 1: the University of California, Santa Cruz asked college age participants
Speaker 1: in California to rate the attractiveness of thirty male voices
Speaker 1: and thirty female voices reading isolated words. And these sixty
Speaker 1: voices represent a geographical areas west of the Mississippi River. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that stood out is that the
Speaker 1: California folks, the participants had a really strong preference for
Speaker 1: female voices that pronounced the the oo vowel, the double
Speaker 1: o vowel sound from a word like goose further forward
Speaker 1: in the mouth, as opposed to the um sound that
Speaker 1: someone in Fargo, North Dakota might make when saying gorse.
Speaker 1: In that case, the word is originating deeper back in
Speaker 1: the mouth. Yeah, this was This was fascinating because on
Speaker 1: one hand, you have to sort of realize that at
Speaker 1: the end of the day when you're when you're thinking
Speaker 1: about what's attracted and what's not attractive and another human being. Uh,
Speaker 1: You're you're getting down to are these people I want
Speaker 1: to spend time with? Or in the in the case
Speaker 1: of potential mate, is this someone I want to to
Speaker 1: spend an examinant amount of time with? And uh and
Speaker 1: and so you're going to want somebody or you're gonna
Speaker 1: want people that you have things in common with, that
Speaker 1: you share some sort of sense of community. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then this, you know, this goes back through thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of years of human history. You know, you want
Speaker 1: people need to belong They need to belong to a
Speaker 1: group in order to survive. There's a survival advantage in
Speaker 1: being able to to to sync with those around you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's it's interesting that that is
Speaker 1: more powerful than this sort of veiled idea that breathy voice,
Speaker 1: husky voice is going to deliver on on sex um
Speaker 1: essentially as what we're thinking, right we're thinking about marily
Speaker 1: Monroe or Barry White. Um, and that it really does.
Speaker 1: The sense of community trumps that promise, that suggestion. And
Speaker 1: the only thing that kind of gets in the way
Speaker 1: of this idea of community and familiarity is the foreign
Speaker 1: language paradox. Yes. And I kept thinking about this myself
Speaker 1: when I was reading a lot of this initial stuff,
Speaker 1: because I was thinking, Okay, what are the voices that
Speaker 1: I would say, I, you know, objectively find uh attractive.
Speaker 1: I would say that like a like in male voices,
Speaker 1: like a British accent, and in and in among the ladies,
Speaker 1: a German accent. Really, yeah, like the German accent. I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's something like strong and commanding about a
Speaker 1: German accent. Anyway, Well that's the said even real German,
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, that's rapid, my friend. Well but it did.
Speaker 1: I know, you didn't put your heart into it whole
Speaker 1: and far. See Okay, but you're that's okay, So that's
Speaker 1: not a good example. But um, but still are you
Speaker 1: running it for me? But see, so that's what I
Speaker 1: would say if someone had asked me. But of course,
Speaker 1: in reality, I did not marry anyone with a with
Speaker 1: a German accent or a British accent and uh and
Speaker 1: and so I end up sort of defaulting to the
Speaker 1: argument that you end up mirring someone who are choosing
Speaker 1: a partner. It sounds more like you somebody who is
Speaker 1: uh in my case, someone who was raised in the
Speaker 1: South but has like less of the Southern accent. Uh.
Speaker 1: My Michigan people to your right. Now, I wasn't raised
Speaker 1: in the South, okay, but I have been here long
Speaker 1: enough that I've taken on the twang, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Professor Babbel again, she says that once you're outside of
Speaker 1: a certain range of familiarity, novel and exotic sounding voices
Speaker 1: might become more attractive. She says, we all have to
Speaker 1: keep in mind that we find some accents more preferable
Speaker 1: than others because of social stereotypes that are associated with them.
Speaker 1: And I thought, you know what, I think she's right.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a sucker for that, because I'm a
Speaker 1: sucker for a British accent, because I think that it it,
Speaker 1: you know, is endowed with a bunch of different things
Speaker 1: for me, like worldliness and wit. Now, of course, both
Speaker 1: of us when we're talking about British accents. We're probably
Speaker 1: talking about very specific British accents. We're thinking thinking more
Speaker 1: about like Ben king Lee and like Tom Hudleston, that
Speaker 1: kind of accent, rather than like a strong Birmingham, England.
Speaker 1: And I'm not thinking Cockney and I'm not thinking Downton
Speaker 1: Abbey either. That the Cockney accent is kind of sexy
Speaker 1: in its own right, you know, I suppose it can
Speaker 1: be yes, but again, the the idea that of an
Speaker 1: exotic voice is a void, and it's a voice that
Speaker 1: is uh, that is new, it's novel and maybe a
Speaker 1: little dangerous, and that does appeal to the novelty seeking
Speaker 1: aspects of an individual. You know, we want new experiences,
Speaker 1: we want new ideas, and we've we've podcasted on this before,
Speaker 1: so you could definitely see where you would gravitate towards
Speaker 1: individuals with those qualities, and you're projecting your fantasies onto that,
Speaker 1: right and and it's kind of so we end up
Speaker 1: seeing the situation where there's there the voices that sound
Speaker 1: like our own, and those are cherished, and then there's
Speaker 1: the voices far away that sound nothing like our own,
Speaker 1: and those are cherished. It's that gulf in between that
Speaker 1: just turns us off, you know, like they're saying they're
Speaker 1: they're there, their vowe, their vowels are coming out just
Speaker 1: a little weird, and I don't like it. It's the other, right,
Speaker 1: it's a and we always have a fear of the other.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to see it played out like that.
Speaker 1: All right. So that's pretty much an overview of your
Speaker 1: Barry White, your mail women rose out there. Also, I
Speaker 1: have a video on this topic, and in it, I'm
Speaker 1: going to reveal the real reason why Marilyn Monroe spoke
Speaker 1: like a di ide then and revoiced gal. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't reveal it here. You gotta go to uh
Speaker 1: YouTube mind stuff show. Check out also stuff to Alow
Speaker 1: your mind dot com that of course is the mothership.
Speaker 1: You'll find links out to all of our stuff. There.
Speaker 1: You'll find links to our Facebook, our Twitter, our tumbler page,
Speaker 1: or Google Plus, uh you name it. We probably signed
Speaker 1: up for a one point or another, and as well
Speaker 1: as all of our our podcast episodes going all the
Speaker 1: way back through our history. You'll find all of our
Speaker 1: blog posts. Stuff to blow your mind dot com check
Speaker 1: it out, throw some traffic. We love it when you
Speaker 1: do so If you guys have some thoughts on this,
Speaker 1: You see that Marilyn Monroe video and you have some questions,
Speaker 1: or you you've got a qualm there about some Marilynon
Speaker 1: Row stuff, or you have some ideas about Barry White
Speaker 1: and the reasons why we were attracted to certain voices.
Speaker 1: You can email us at blow the Mind at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other
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