WEBVTT - Why Do Men Have Deeper Voices? 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:02.400 I am Scott and I'm Ben and we're from car Stuff. 0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:05.720 We're the podcast that covers everything that floats, flies, swims, 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:10.800 or drives, adventures, thrills, chills literally, planes, trains and automobiles. 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:13.320 That's right. And you can find all of our episodes 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:17.200 on Google Play, Spotify, iTunes, and really anywhere else you 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:21.800 get your podcast. Hey everybody, if you're listening to brain Stuff, 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.720 you know that we love new ways to learn, and 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.560 that's why we love the Great Courses Plus video learning service. 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:31.600 Not only can you learn about any topic that interests 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:35.160 you there, you can also learn new skills or expand 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:37.920 on your hobbies. 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Hello brain Stuff. 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.800 I'm Christian Saga, and today we're going to talk about 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.400 the human voice. You might have noticed that if you're 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.240 talking to a group of five year old boys and girls, 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.880 let's say you're asking them for advice about your investment portfolio, 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:58.960 there's not a big difference between the pitch of the 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:02.520 girl's voices and the pitch of the boy's voices. Yet, 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.240 if you talk to a group of thirty five year 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.440 old men and women, you notice that the men's voices 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:12.080 are on average a good bit deeper than the women's voices. 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:15.560 So why is that and how does it happen? Well, 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.880 first off, let's acknowledge that everyone is a special and 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:22.120 unique butterfly. And there's no rule about how men and 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:27.359 women's voices should sound, But on average, adult men's voices 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:32.040 have what's known as a lower fundamental frequency than adult 0:02:32.160 --> 0:02:36.880 women's voices. The fundamental frequency is simply the scientific term 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:41.359 for how high or low a person's natural speaking voice sounds. 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:45.040 Sound frequency is measured in hurts, which is a measure 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.359 of how many times something happens in a second. So 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.560 a sound wave that vibrates a hundred times per second 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.880 produces a tone of a hundred hurts. The more cycles 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.040 per second, the higher the pitch. According to the National 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:01.400 Center for Voice and Speech, bay bees usually cry at 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:05.960 a frequency of around five hundred hurts. Children have speaking 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.400 frequencies in the range of two hundred and fifty to 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:12.000 four hundred hurts. By the time of adulthood. However, men 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.320 have an average fundamental frequency of about one hundred and 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:20.240 twenty five hurts and women about two hundred hurts. What 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:24.320 happened here? What why the big difference? Okay, to understand 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:27.120 why men's voices end up lower than women's voices, we 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:29.680 need to look at how the body produces sounds. So 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:33.120 let's take a magical journey to the inside of your neck. 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:36.560 Leading from your lungs to the cavity behind your mouth 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:39.480 and nose is a pipeline called the tray chia. You 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:41.600 use it to breathe. At the top of the tray 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:44.400 chia is a hollow organ called the larynx, or in 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:49.200 common parlance, the voice box. The larynx is amazing. For example, 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:51.400 when you swallow food. It is a part of the 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.880 larynx called the epiglottis that closes off your tra chea 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.000 and keeps you from getting gummy bears in your lungs. 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.040 The larynx is also what allows us to make sound 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.720 for talking or singing. To do this, you use your 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:06.280 lungs to push a column of air through the larynx 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:09.960 while using your laryngeal muscles to press together a pair 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:14.160 of membranes called the vocal folds, or more commonly, your 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:17.920 vocal chords. When you close the vocal folds like this, 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:21.680 the air you push out through them makes them vibrate, 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.880 and this vibration leads to sound. So the next time 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.240 you're just shrieking and shrieking until the cashier finally accepts 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:33.800 your expired coupon, thank your larynx. There are several factors 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:36.880 that can all have some effect on the fundamental frequency 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:39.760 of a person's voice, like the size of the larynx 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:43.359 and the differential development of facial bones and muscles. But 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.159 the most important factor to talk about is the length 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:50.560 of the vocal folds. If you pluck a string, the 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:53.479 length of the string affects the frequency of the note 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.479 that plays. Think about a guitar. When you press a 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.440 string down to a higher fret. On a guitar, you 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:01.600 shorten the length of the part of the string that 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:05.159 vibrates when you pluck it, and this produces a higher note. 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:08.400 The same thing happens inside your larynx. The longer the 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:12.440 vocal fold, the lower the note. During puberty, both boys 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.719 and girls experience growth of the vocal folds, leading to 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:20.680 lower voices, but the male hormone testosserone, which is released 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:25.200 by the testicles during puberty, typically causes boys vocal folds 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:29.440 to grow longer and thicker than girls. On average, adult 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:32.920 women have vocal folds somewhere around ten millimeters long, while 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:38.040 adult men have vocal folds in the neighborhood of sixteen millimeters. Consequently, 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.960 women are up there on the upper frets soloing into 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.440 oblivion like a high school kid who just learned how 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:48.119 to play eruption by Van Halen, and men are letting 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:51.720 the open strings ring like the intro of Nothing Else 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:55.200 Matters by Metallica. Now here's some bonus information for you. 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:58.640 Everyone knows what happens when you inhale some helium from 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.240 a party balloon or you know, straight from an industrial 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:05.640 helium transport truck. Your voice pitch gets higher. This is 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:08.880 because helium is less dense than air. But did you 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:12.239 know you can reverse the effect and give yourself a deep, 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.960 booming bridge troll voice by breathing a gas with a 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:21.440 higher density than your air, like zenon or sulfur hexafluoride. 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.680 But remember, your body needs air to live, and breathing 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.720 anything other than air can be dangerous, so don't try 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:35.240 this at home. Check out the brain stuff channel on YouTube, 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:37.479 and for more on this and thousands of other topics, 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:52.960 visit how stuff works dot com.