Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Hello, Revisionist History listeners. Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: Revisionist History listeners. Revisionist History Listeners, Hello, Hello, Revisionist History Listeners.
Speaker 1: That didn't sound quite right, did it. It's got to
Speaker 1: be more like this. Hello, Hello, Revisionist History listeners. I'm
Speaker 1: quite grateful that our loyal fans like the sound of
Speaker 1: my voice. But why is that? My dear friend, The actress, director, writer,
Speaker 1: producer Lake Bell is obsessed with people's voices, and frankly,
Speaker 1: I'm a little obsessed with Lake. So it made sense
Speaker 1: for Lake to join Pushkin's ranks with her new audiobook,
Speaker 1: Inside Voice. The book is a deep dive into what
Speaker 1: our voices mean and what they say about us. Lake
Speaker 1: explores the psychology and social science of voice. She talks
Speaker 1: with icons like Drew Barrymore, Jeff Bloom, and Pam Greer.
Speaker 1: And when she started questioning herself, she talked to me
Speaker 1: she was struggling with how to write about the phenomenon
Speaker 1: of the sexy baby voice. How could she enjoy in
Speaker 1: respect Paris Hilton, their Kardashians, and various flavors of real
Speaker 1: housewives all sexy babies, but definitively absolutely not want her
Speaker 1: own daughter to grow up to be one. It made
Speaker 1: her feel like a judgmental jerk. So I was a
Speaker 1: shrink and Lake got on the couch and we had
Speaker 1: fun working through that one. I may even have tried
Speaker 1: to put on a little sexy baby voice myself. Enjoy
Speaker 1: this sample chapter and then go buy yourself a copy
Speaker 1: at Inside Voice, audiobook dot Com, Audible, Spotify, or anywhere
Speaker 1: audiobooks are sold. I'll be back before year's end with
Speaker 1: some bonus episodes of revisionist history. When you guys think
Speaker 1: of like a strong woman's voice, what does that sound like?
Speaker 1: Someone just like fluent and confident? Anyone come to mind?
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama Yeah, oh my god, I think just Ariana
Speaker 1: Grande because she's been very advocated for the God is
Speaker 1: a Woman thing. So I'm just like Ariana Grande, Queen Latifah,
Speaker 1: I would have to say, Michelle Obama. Kirsty Ali, I
Speaker 1: think has a very deep, powerful voice. My mom, Yeah, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: my mom, Oprah the same, Yeah, I would go, I'd
Speaker 1: agree with that one. Oprah da in the Oprah Okay.
Speaker 1: Lena Horne, Yeah, speaking voice too, yeah, Lena Horn, He's
Speaker 1: my wife. My life is stronger and I really love
Speaker 1: her and I'm proud for What about an alluring sexy
Speaker 1: female voice. Jennifer Aniston, Angelina, Jolie, Carrie Washington. Oh that
Speaker 1: was good Angelina. Jolie will be a Sirie. I think Sirie? Yeah? Maybe?
Speaker 1: Oh you could be different see voice. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just think of catwoman, but I think of a
Speaker 1: sexy woman of mine at woman Kim Gardashian. So your turn.
Speaker 1: When you think of a strong woman, what does she
Speaker 1: sound like? Does she sound like this? We want people
Speaker 1: who are redefining what it means to be strong, to
Speaker 1: be powerful, to be inspirational, to be aspirational, to be
Speaker 1: astoundingly age defying. Or does she sound like this? Kylie
Speaker 1: called to Chloe and said, Hey, I want to take
Speaker 1: over your party. Just send me the list. Three seconds later,
Speaker 1: Chloe text me, did you tell Kylie about the parties?
Speaker 1: I don't know what are you talking about? What party?
Speaker 1: Make no mistake, both of these women are powerful. Another test,
Speaker 1: when you think of a sexy woman, what does she
Speaker 1: sound like? Does she sound like this? Isn't this a coincidence?
Speaker 1: I know you the other one that doesn't like to
Speaker 1: talk about the heat too bad? I tell you about
Speaker 1: my chance or does she sound like this? I like
Speaker 1: Barnett's sexy voice and laugh a lot. I kind of
Speaker 1: like that he gave off a vibe that he was
Speaker 1: a player. One of the more questionable, nay controversial trends
Speaker 1: to come out of gen Z is the sexy baby voice.
Speaker 1: What is that you say? Let me remind you my
Speaker 1: evening's going amazing because I have a rose. I was
Speaker 1: gone for a whole week and still all we can
Speaker 1: talk about is Crystal. All we can think about is Crystal.
Speaker 1: I don't want to make this night about to honor
Speaker 1: and kick off this discussion. Here is a never before
Speaker 1: scene and heard scene from My Future in a World,
Speaker 1: a film that I wrote, directed, and starred in entirely
Speaker 1: about the voiceover industry, because, as we've already established, I'm
Speaker 1: clearly obsessed. This deleted scene depicts my character Carol, trying
Speaker 1: to coach a sexy baby into finding her true sound.
Speaker 1: Roll it so and he told you who is writing
Speaker 1: a book where you just like, holy shit, that's amaze balls?
Speaker 1: Can I do a vocal experiment on you? Why? Why not?
Speaker 1: Because that's a weird question to ask. I don't even
Speaker 1: know you I'm Carol. You were just you were just
Speaker 1: interviewing me. I'm a vocal coach, I'm a writer. Be
Speaker 1: good for the story. Fine, fine, okay, good. Um. So
Speaker 1: you're just going to count to ten. But when you
Speaker 1: get to the odd numbers, you're gonna use the lowest
Speaker 1: point in your register, and when you get to the
Speaker 1: even numbers, you're gonna use the highest point in your register.
Speaker 1: And then right after you're just gonna speak without thinking.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight nine ten. Here's my voice. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
Speaker 1: eight nine ten. Here's my voice. Oh my god. Right,
Speaker 1: that's so weird. It sounds lower, and it sounds I
Speaker 1: suppose let's make something crystal clear before we delve into
Speaker 1: the sexy baby zone, which is also a no judgment zone.
Speaker 1: This is a safe place to regard and appreciate a
Speaker 1: unique cultural phenomenon. In fact, I have long been inspired
Speaker 1: and in awe of this vocal trend and seek to
Speaker 1: focus on it through a cultural lens. What factors brought
Speaker 1: it into the American English language in the first place,
Speaker 1: and how did it evolve over time for any one
Speaker 1: person in my formative years. It was Paris Hilton. I
Speaker 1: thought she was extraordinary, hilarious, awesome, larger than life, and
Speaker 1: there was something really special there. Sure, much of the
Speaker 1: allure was the outfits and the status, but there was
Speaker 1: something unique about Paris that nobody else could quite emulate.
Speaker 1: Nobody could get to that level of her stardom. Why
Speaker 1: the voice? She captured the world with a voice that
Speaker 1: broadcasted both little girl submission and overt sexuality concurrently unfathomable
Speaker 1: feat or was it? I just have like a drive
Speaker 1: inside of me, like I love creating, I love doing
Speaker 1: what I do. I love making people happy, and I
Speaker 1: love making money. Thinks so much for being here. I appreciate.
Speaker 1: I know that he waves being crazy. It was like
Speaker 1: ninety seven degrees of it. That's hot. Did you see
Speaker 1: that Ross and Rachel might be dating in real life?
Speaker 1: That's hot? How would you pronounce Kevin Hard's last name
Speaker 1: in a British accent? That it is hot? And yet
Speaker 1: I want to admit that I struggle. Okay, there's a
Speaker 1: struggle here. If my personal cultural north star is creating
Speaker 1: space for a female vocal sound to imbue trustworthiness, all
Speaker 1: knowing electable authority, then how does the rampant trend of
Speaker 1: the sexy baby voice impact that effort? I mean, I
Speaker 1: could admit that I enjoy the wildly moorish entertainment provided
Speaker 1: by the Audies, Paris Hilton, the storm that is, the
Speaker 1: Kardashians and every Real Housewives of whatever the fuck they're
Speaker 1: all flooded with sexy babies. But here's the kicker. Do
Speaker 1: I want my daughter to grow up and speak like that?
Speaker 1: The answer is hell no? And see now I feel bad. Now,
Speaker 1: I feel like some judgmental jerk. I'm genuinely in an
Speaker 1: existential crisis on this issue. So I opted to phone
Speaker 1: a friend. But not just any friend. I needed a
Speaker 1: deep thinker who also happened to be a best selling author,
Speaker 1: a public speaker type that the whole world has stamped
Speaker 1: an authority on unpacking big and controversial ideas. So I
Speaker 1: turned to the iconic public speaker, best selling author of
Speaker 1: multiple zeitgeist making books like The Tipping Point and Outliers,
Speaker 1: among others, and of course, founder of Pushkin Industries. That's right,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm has been hearing about my deep seated
Speaker 1: sexy baby struggle four years at this point, and Frankly,
Speaker 1: he's the only person who can flip the script and
Speaker 1: interrogate me on this very issue that I myself have
Speaker 1: brought to the proverbial table. Wait wait, okay, hold on,
Speaker 1: there's been much more specific and break it down. First
Speaker 1: of all, we have these elements that you've identified. Are
Speaker 1: they all equally important or are they they all play
Speaker 1: You can't rank them. You can't say sexy baby is
Speaker 1: sixty percent. No, it's a cocktail. It's a cocktail. Okay.
Speaker 1: Number one, the vocal fright, I would say number one, pitch, pitch. Okay,
Speaker 1: I would go straight to pitch, because first you've gotta
Speaker 1: This is very hard for me to do, is to
Speaker 1: kind of dial in too, because I enjoy kind of
Speaker 1: putting all the cotail together because it's like once you
Speaker 1: have a martini, it's like you always want the mix.
Speaker 1: So if I can just get the pitch, it's so
Speaker 1: we're here, and I'm already starting to fry a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I'm trying not to so that I can just
Speaker 1: take pitch. This is pitch. So this is like if
Speaker 1: I were to be talking to you in an intellectual way,
Speaker 1: but I'm just pitched up. Okay, yes, Now, then you
Speaker 1: layer on that. Now, by the way, do you ever
Speaker 1: we're not talking about sexy Baby, We're talking about likeke Bell. Hi.
Speaker 1: Do you ever operate in that pitch? Never? Never? Okay,
Speaker 1: in a in a sexual encounter? Um, if I may,
Speaker 1: I do not find myself pitching up to that level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or because that's the only time I could think. Sorry,
Speaker 1: very revealing. When you spoke to your children when they
Speaker 1: were babies, did you go up that up? Now you did? No?
Speaker 1: I would never go this high for anything. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's athletic. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: about sexy Baby is that it's like hard to do,
Speaker 1: like you have to work hard at it. It is
Speaker 1: an athletic feat layer in the next thing. The next
Speaker 1: thing would be fry. And I'm guilty of a little
Speaker 1: fry here and there. I think we all are. We
Speaker 1: have a sprinkle of fry. You know, it's like a
Speaker 1: cultural trend. It's like skinny jeans. You know, it's in
Speaker 1: and then we all kind of adopt it and we
Speaker 1: don't even notice. So notice, no, you know, I got
Speaker 1: a little there. So when you have this and then
Speaker 1: you start adding in the fry, so teach me how
Speaker 1: to do fry. Assume I've never heard of it. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm not a professional, but I will say the fry
Speaker 1: is a croak. It's in the back of your throat,
Speaker 1: so you're going to roll it kind of like you're
Speaker 1: a frog. So closer. So so give me like a
Speaker 1: like why, like why close? Getting there? Um? The thing is,
Speaker 1: you have some you have some tick, some water, you
Speaker 1: have some you're swallowing it, so you're going, ah, you're
Speaker 1: getting stuck in a tightness in your throat versus like
Speaker 1: forward opening it up. Oh yeah, so getting in. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to form a word with that. I'm
Speaker 1: like why why why? Why? Wait? Do that? Do? Like why? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You see? So like why now you don't the fry
Speaker 1: in yuptalk? Is there a place in the sentence where
Speaker 1: those two things operate. So we're always in the upper register,
Speaker 1: so pitch is a constant, but we're not frying everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: fry is like seasoning. You can't fry all the way
Speaker 1: through or else you would just have a croake sound.
Speaker 1: So fry is really kind of like there's a dance there. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, in my normal speech, I would say, for instance,
Speaker 1: and that's a plateau. We're just like on a road
Speaker 1: going forward. For instance, is obviously a classic up talk
Speaker 1: with a little sprinkle of fry and pitch up. What
Speaker 1: work is fry doing? Is it comic? Is it for emphasis?
Speaker 1: I think it comes from a place of like sex.
Speaker 1: This is part of the like sexy flavor of spice,
Speaker 1: because I think when I've interviewed people, Hey, you know
Speaker 1: what's the most alluring sexy voice in a woman? It
Speaker 1: tends to be croakier voices. It tends to be smokier voices.
Speaker 1: And whether they're high voices or low voices, they all
Speaker 1: seem to have that element in them. And it's paradoxical
Speaker 1: because it's a smoky kind of guttural thing that's taking
Speaker 1: place at a very high Yeah. Yeah, Um. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of like men who fry, because there's a
Speaker 1: ton of men who fry as well. You know who fries?
Speaker 1: Who fries Henry Kissinger fries. Yeah, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: a kind of German fry, a German fry. Know, it's
Speaker 1: a kind of like but it is the frenchhip upset. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I will stake anything on the proposition that before the
Speaker 1: end of this year, Gorbatov wi being washing and I'll
Speaker 1: stake only a little less on the proposition that before
Speaker 1: the end of next year President Reagan will be in Moscow.
Speaker 1: Um but wait, you did something else in Sexy Baby
Speaker 1: that you haven't talked about, which is you were also
Speaker 1: running some words together. So that's them, that is quality.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a little I will say that kind
Speaker 1: of creeps into performance a little bit to help me
Speaker 1: get in there, you know, just as an actor and
Speaker 1: as a performer, for instance, with accents, I have either
Speaker 1: a hand gester or you know, a catchphrase to get
Speaker 1: you into to an accent like Irish's put bak on
Speaker 1: the boat on the boko. I don't know if I'll
Speaker 1: ever need to put anything in a bucket, but in
Speaker 1: an Irish accent probably you know what I mean. Um, So,
Speaker 1: like that's like my in there, in my experience with
Speaker 1: hearing Sexy Baby in the wild, Yes, in there, sentences
Speaker 1: without spaces, imagine typing a sense. Yeah, there's no punctuation,
Speaker 1: there's no punctuation whatsoever. It's that that irritates me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like what it really bothers me about climate change
Speaker 1: or whatever is that like we're not working together, and
Speaker 1: like if we could just like work together, like you
Speaker 1: didn't make so much more of our power together, and
Speaker 1: like that for me is just like sueim where it mean,
Speaker 1: if I was like an oil company and I wanted
Speaker 1: to really get people to be skeptical of climate change,
Speaker 1: I would just run an ad of what you just said.
Speaker 1: That's here's a deal. Drying a car like gas or
Speaker 1: whatever is like just like American. But there's so there's
Speaker 1: there's that running together, and then there's also a little
Speaker 1: bit of slurring that you're adding there's no you're right,
Speaker 1: there's like a little bit of sorry. I think that
Speaker 1: I just want to say something it's really important, which
Speaker 1: is like it doesn't mean you're not smart. The accent
Speaker 1: and the dialect. Why I have a bone to pick
Speaker 1: with it is because like I am a feminist and
Speaker 1: like I don't want to think of women as little
Speaker 1: sexy babies that can't think for themselves, and so it's
Speaker 1: really hard for me. I really think of it as
Speaker 1: a trend that's gotten out of control. You know, it
Speaker 1: was kind of cute for a beat. It was in
Speaker 1: a movie or two, you know, and there was a
Speaker 1: kind of a texture of sound that was born from
Speaker 1: the California a surfer girl community, valley esque environment. But
Speaker 1: I do think that that compounded with the history like
Speaker 1: before that, where did it come from? It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's Betty Boop, And I think that Betty Boop is
Speaker 1: a good place to start just as a reference, because
Speaker 1: it's very distinct. She is sexualized, she's not homely, the
Speaker 1: ideas that she's alluring, but there's no fry in Betty Boopoop, No,
Speaker 1: there's not. There's not. Betty Boop is kind of the
Speaker 1: original sexy baby though, if it just as a concept,
Speaker 1: that's see where the archetype comes from. Yeah, booop. But
Speaker 1: there's been a great deal of linguistic innovation, yes, between
Speaker 1: Dan and how does Marilyn Monroe fit into this evolution?
Speaker 1: That's breathiness, is it? Yeah? But she also is broadcasting
Speaker 1: a bedroom voice, so why I just don't know, and
Speaker 1: a little baby voice but you know, oh well listen, peaky.
Speaker 1: You know that's very high pitched. So you've got the
Speaker 1: grounds there for that starting place, which is we didn't
Speaker 1: really get the breathiness in the sexy baby voice, but
Speaker 1: we got that pitch you know, and that alluring, sexy
Speaker 1: nature of bedroom talk that's like outward and being exposed
Speaker 1: to everyone. I mean, that was her whole thing. So
Speaker 1: that's why I have the words sexy in it. It's
Speaker 1: super interesting because if we think of Paris Hilton and
Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian as people who are taking the intimacy of
Speaker 1: the sex tape and kind of taking it public, Marilyn
Speaker 1: Monroe's famous Happy Birthday sung to JFK when she was
Speaker 1: presumably in the middle of having an affair with is
Speaker 1: the same thing, right. I mean, she's essentially saying, I'm
Speaker 1: having an affair with this guy. Right, That's the whole
Speaker 1: point of the happy Birthday thing, is this is the
Speaker 1: way we are when we're in bed together, and I'm
Speaker 1: doing it in front of the entire country. It's like
Speaker 1: such an incredible like it's like this, fuck you first
Speaker 1: of all to Jackie. I know, I mean, it's just,
Speaker 1: but it's extraordinary. It is an extraordinary cultural moment, Happy
Speaker 1: day to happy Birthday. So Paris hill and comes along
Speaker 1: in the aughts, right, talking like this, and it becomes
Speaker 1: a kind of sensation and it proves quite culturally contagious
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering why why would the sexy baby voice
Speaker 1: come back at that moment. It boils down to sex tapes,
Speaker 1: kind of like the women that we're talking about. If
Speaker 1: we're going to bring up Paris and Kim, they both
Speaker 1: had that right. They had a sex tape that was leaked.
Speaker 1: And by the way, speaking of another classic voice and
Speaker 1: a sex tape, Pamela Anderson. Now that voice, you know,
Speaker 1: is effective, and so I feel like there's something there
Speaker 1: where It's like taking the bedroom voice and broadcasting it
Speaker 1: and allowing for that intimacy to be a part of
Speaker 1: the brand. Rhinestones. There's no such thing as too many rhinestones,
Speaker 1: because it's hot to bling as much as possible. You
Speaker 1: have complicated feelings about sexy Baby, which I want to
Speaker 1: kind of dig into a little bit. You've alluded to
Speaker 1: them here and there, but you have a sexy baby problem.
Speaker 1: I have unwelcome judgment in my views on it because
Speaker 1: even in Penning in a World, it was part of
Speaker 1: the you know, sort of joke of it was, what
Speaker 1: is this trend, this plague that is infecting our women?
Speaker 1: And it felt like regression, It felt not like progress,
Speaker 1: just on a feminist bent. It is a sound owned
Speaker 1: that parkens our ears back to a time when you
Speaker 1: are a child, when you have to ask for things,
Speaker 1: you don't have agency, And so why is that sound
Speaker 1: a submissive little girl sound somehow sexy? All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like I had a bone to pick with that, you
Speaker 1: started to see women who were in their forties have
Speaker 1: great jobs, they're lawyers, their CEO or whatever, and they
Speaker 1: started to have this sound. And that's where I got
Speaker 1: confused and upset because I thought, Okay, so you're saying,
Speaker 1: especially as a mother, society is allowing for or supporting
Speaker 1: this idea that women can sound like little girls and
Speaker 1: be leaders. And that for me was difficult because I
Speaker 1: don't want my daughter to think that that's how you're
Speaker 1: supposed to sound. I don't want my son to think
Speaker 1: that women are should sound that way. And I feel
Speaker 1: bad for feeling uncomfortable because I think that women should
Speaker 1: sound However, the damn how This is why I don't understand.
Speaker 1: I don't understand why you feel bad about being uncomfortable
Speaker 1: because I'm a woman. We feel badly for judging other women.
Speaker 1: But hold on the argument that you're making in your book,
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the way we sound is
Speaker 1: a choice. So women, a certain group of women have
Speaker 1: chosen either consciously or unconsciously, to sound this way. They
Speaker 1: don't have to sound this way, right, They have options. Yes,
Speaker 1: our voice is our own. We control the way we sound.
Speaker 1: And you're simply saying that's a bad choice or a
Speaker 1: problematic choice. You are saying that I should feel comfortable
Speaker 1: with feeling uncomfortable. Yes, well, I'm wondering why you're so
Speaker 1: conflicted about the fact that you find this voice to
Speaker 1: be an issue. Okay, So, because, for instance, I have
Speaker 1: a pal let's call her RS, and she has a
Speaker 1: very high pitched voice, naturally off the truck. Okay, So
Speaker 1: she's not putting it on. She just has that voice.
Speaker 1: I love her. She's so sweet. She's got a little
Speaker 1: fry and a little uptalk. But she's a mom of three,
Speaker 1: she works hard, and I just know her. And so
Speaker 1: it's people like that where I go. I know she's
Speaker 1: not putting it on. I also understand that she's probably
Speaker 1: not a vocally obsessed person and isn't thinking about it
Speaker 1: so much. And so when you say it's a choice,
Speaker 1: I concur that it is a choice. Once you listen
Speaker 1: to it and once you're aware of it and you're
Speaker 1: in the room with it. But I think that it's
Speaker 1: important in my research on this to allow for there
Speaker 1: to be space for that's just how they speak, but
Speaker 1: when it's something that's like plaguing someone and they're kind
Speaker 1: of using it as a tool, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to a woman of a certain age who's imbuing this
Speaker 1: sound that's of a young woman. You know, I think
Speaker 1: in our voices, let's own it. Let's own it that
Speaker 1: it's sexy to sound your age, or it's sexy to
Speaker 1: sound like a mature woman. You know. I know that's
Speaker 1: not their natural sound, especially after giving birth. Twice. Your
Speaker 1: voice changes after birth, you know it should. It's a
Speaker 1: it's an experience, but also chemically, hormonally, your voice changes,
Speaker 1: and that's a privilege. Aging is a privilege. So own it.
Speaker 1: That was an excerpt from Lech Bell's Inner Voice, which
Speaker 1: is a delight. Go get your copy today at Inside Voice,
Speaker 1: audiobook dot Com, Audible, Spotify, and everywhere audiobooks are sold.