Speaker 1: I am Scott and I'm Then and we're from car Stuff.
Speaker 1: We're the podcast that covers everything that floats, flies, swims,
Speaker 1: or drives, adventures, thrills, chills literally, planes, trains and automobiles.
Speaker 1: That's right, And you can find all of our episodes
Speaker 1: on Google Play, Spotify, iTunes, and really anywhere else you
Speaker 1: get your podcast. Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Christian Sager and welcome to brain Stuff. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of 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 owned, we end up hearing
Speaker 1: our voice the way everyone else hears it. Most of
Speaker 1: us have had this experience, and we hate it. We're
Speaker 1: used to the combination of the air conducted and bone
Speaker 1: conducted sounds of our voice. It's what we've lived with
Speaker 1: all of our lives, so of course it's unsettling to
Speaker 1: hear something so different than what we're used to. But
Speaker 1: remember this, this is how your friends have been hearing
Speaker 1: you your whole life. To them, it is normal. So
Speaker 1: just relax and rest easy knowing that everyone cringes at
Speaker 1: the sound of their own voice, even Morgan Freeman, well
Speaker 1: everyone except Morgan Freeman. Check out the brain stuff channel
Speaker 1: on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.