Voice

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Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 All right.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 All right.

Speaker 7 You are listening

Speaker 7 to Radiolab.

Speaker 8 Lab. Radio Lab.
From

Speaker 10 WNYC.

Speaker 8 Okay. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 12 This is Radiolab.

Speaker 13 I'm Lula Miller. I'm here with valiant producers Matt Kilty and Annie McEwen.

Speaker 14 Hello.

Speaker 8 Hello. Hi.

Speaker 15 All right. Okay.

Speaker 12 Why are we here?

Speaker 16 What are we doing? Okay, so today what we're doing is

Speaker 8 this.

Speaker 17 This thing right here.

Speaker 8 That's right. This.

Speaker 7 Here. What? Well,

Speaker 18 this thing right under our noses, where our mouths are, that emits this

Speaker 18 signal that is layered like lasagna, that is carrying information, that is making us judge people's wealth and income and education level, but it's also conveying all this emotional information, hostility, love,

Speaker 21 lust, anger, jealousy, all these physical operations, this respiratory, articulatory feat of symphonic timed movements that we use to make the air vibrate in interesting ways.

Speaker 21 It's the voice, Lulu.

Speaker 22 That's what we're doing. The

Speaker 23 voice.

Speaker 15 La voi.

Speaker 9 That's right.

Speaker 24 That is a thing we use a fair amount here in the audio arts. Sure.

Speaker 16 And so I'm just going to stick with the layer of lasagna analogy, but today we are bringing you three different layers of this thing, this important thing, the voice.

Speaker 17 One, where it comes from.

Speaker 7 Two, the power it holds over you.

Speaker 20 And three, the power it can give you

Speaker 26 so where it comes from

Speaker 28 i should put these on this is actually a story that came to us from the sky oh that's turned down let's see let me turn the headphones up john wait wait wait you need to introduce yourself oh yeah my name is john colapinto i was a longtime contributing editor at rolling stone longtime staff writer at the new yorker and a few years back john wrote this book about the voice i did it's called this is the voice great book What a title, too.

Speaker 28 Isn't that grabby?

Speaker 17 Which kind of set us off in this whole episode because in it is this really gripping chapter about the very, very beginning. The very, very beginning of voice.

Speaker 18 Which emerges first with a particular species of fish. And you say, fish, you got to be kidding, but no, I'm not.

Speaker 29 You got to be kidding. You got to kidding.

Speaker 8 You got to kill me. You're not kidding.
Get out of here. John.
Stop pulling your leg, John.

Speaker 18 About 400 million years ago.

Speaker 17 Before there were humans, before there were mammals, before there were dinosaurs.

Speaker 16 it was the age of fishes.

Speaker 3 The age of fishes.

Speaker 32 Who named that?

Speaker 17 Darwin's four-year-old?

Speaker 33 There were a lot of fish.

Speaker 21 A lot of different species, and the particular one was living in sort of swampy areas.

Speaker 16 These areas where there wasn't a lot of water.

Speaker 17 It was pretty shallow.

Speaker 21 And they found themselves, these poor fish,

Speaker 21 in periods of drought.

Speaker 14 Suddenly. Completely landlocked.
Doomed.

Speaker 18 They only can breathe underwater. They don't have a means for extracting oxygen from the air.

Speaker 17 And so these fish, they would flop, they would gasp, they would die.

Speaker 16 I'm just picturing to see a fish, like

Speaker 27 yes, it's horrible to witness them suffocate to death, which is literally what's happening to them.

Speaker 18 But, and as Darwin pointed out, you know, all species evolve from random genetic mutations.

Speaker 18 I mean, it's so hard to wrap your mind around the randomness of it all, but that's the way it was.

Speaker 17 So you've got a fish who one day has a random mutation that creates this little pouch in its throat. So what happens is the next time there's a drought, this fish can open its mouth

Speaker 17 and that air goes down its throat into this hole, into this pouch.

Speaker 18 That would literally permit oxygen to pass through it into the bloodstream of the fish and keep it alive.

Speaker 6 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 16 It's what we've come to think of as the first lung.

Speaker 22 Why didn't you give a little...

Speaker 7 The universe is first lung.

Speaker 16 Well, because it seems like you have a fish that mostly prefers to be in the water, right?

Speaker 14 100%.

Speaker 16 But now it has this hole in its throat that leads to this sack.

Speaker 36 Yep.

Speaker 33 It's like whole, whole, good, bad, bad hole.

Speaker 4 You got it.

Speaker 8 You have got it.

Speaker 27 Because

Speaker 18 when this poor creature goes back into the water, it's now in danger of drowning.

Speaker 16 Right, because like if the pouch fills with water, you're dead.

Speaker 14 Exactly.

Speaker 11 So that hole, it's really like a slit, a valve, that it can open and close.

Speaker 8 Like a little tiny mouth.

Speaker 11 Yeah, like a little mouth, and it opens to pull the oxygen in.

Speaker 16 And then closes to keep the water out.

Speaker 14 Exactly. Okay.

Speaker 11 Now that's critically important. And again, the thing that just made me go, oh, I got to write this book, was that slit, that valve, that became our vocal cords.
And our vocal cords remain a valve.

Speaker 18 I mean, I never knew this because we call them vocal cords. We think of them as being like strings like on a violin or piano strings that are struck and vibrate to create sound.

Speaker 18 That's not how we make our voices.

Speaker 20 That's not how we produce sound with our voices.

Speaker 16 John explained that literally all that a voice is when I go

Speaker 16 is you are closing that valve and you are pushing the air from your lungs up through this closed valve. The valve starts to vibrate and you get

Speaker 7 a voice.

Speaker 41 Huh, so wait, okay, if we're pushing air through a valve to talk and this fish hundreds of millions of years ago had a maybe similar valve, does that mean it had a voice?

Speaker 16 Well, that's the thing, Lulu.

Speaker 42 It did.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Even though that exact fish has long since been extinct, we can give you an approximation of what it sounded like.

Speaker 18 Which is the following.

Speaker 8 Oh.

Speaker 43 Shockingly underwhelming.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 11 It's hard to do.

Speaker 17 It's a like a horse. I'm not doing it.

Speaker 6 Well, yes, like a horse.

Speaker 18 There, Annie's doing it so well there. Thank you.

Speaker 7 Oh, what about me? No, Matt.

Speaker 27 So that I'm sure you did it well, too.

Speaker 8 I I was listening to Annie.

Speaker 18 So

Speaker 20 it would make various sounds that sound like air being driven through a tight aperture, which also happens in another part of the human body.

Speaker 16 I was going to say, it sounds like we're talking farts here, John.

Speaker 18 I'm talking about a fart sound.

Speaker 20 That's exactly what I'm talking about because that's exactly what our anus is.

Speaker 18 It's also a sphincter because that valve that I mentioned that opened, it's actually a sphincter muscle.

Speaker 20 So the first sounds heard on Earth were very fart-like.

Speaker 21 I mean,

Speaker 18 you have bottom line. It's great.

Speaker 28 No pun intended.

Speaker 26 Can't escape it with you too.

Speaker 27 That's right.

Speaker 16 All farts all the time.

Speaker 44 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Anyway, Lulu is not going to be farts forever.

Speaker 17 Unfortunately, because

Speaker 17 that fish, it crawled out of the water.

Speaker 16 Evolution kept going.

Speaker 8 Taken along.

Speaker 16 And over time, this fish, its fins

Speaker 16 evolved in little feet, little limbs.

Speaker 21 And suddenly you've got a mobile creature with four legs living on land scurrying around.

Speaker 16 And because it's now on land, breathing air, its lung starts to evolve and that one lung becomes two, two paired lungs, so more air.

Speaker 17 And then the lungs are surrounded by this new thing called a rib cage, which can expand and contract the lungs.

Speaker 20 They can suddenly squeeze the air out of their lungs through that valve.

Speaker 16 And so by the time you get to reptiles like

Speaker 8 lizards or crocodiles and

Speaker 17 alligators, they are able to make not just farts, but also squeaks and squawks and hisses and rumbles. The voice is becoming more controlled.

Speaker 11 Refined.

Speaker 36 But

Speaker 16 John points out most of these animals are actually quite quiet.

Speaker 11 Incredibly quiet.

Speaker 16 Like reptiles just don't make that much noise.

Speaker 18 Oh, and it's believed that dinosaurs, which are huge overgrown reptiles, were also pretty silent. So those Spielberg movies where you've got Tyrannosaurus Rex doing those amazing roars.

Speaker 14 It's believed now that they were actually kind of wusses.

Speaker 27 I mean, they were really...

Speaker 16 Just imagine the movie is just like T-Rex being like, ooh, and then devouring people.

Speaker 17 But John says that's a thing. Like, if you're only using your rib cage to make sounds.

Speaker 16 There's only so much air that you're like pushing out.

Speaker 17 Exactly. So what you have back then is just this relative silence.

Speaker 33 It's a quiet world.

Speaker 45 But that all changes.

Speaker 11 When

Speaker 16 a huge asteroid hits the earth, almost everything dies. But crawling up from underground were the earliest mammals.

Speaker 14 They were tiny. They were like little mice.

Speaker 16 Some of which had spent most of their lives climbing up trees, running from dinosaurs, burning up oxygen at an incredible rate.

Speaker 17 And so they had evolved this really powerful muscle called the diaphragm

Speaker 17 that sits below the lungs that allowed them to take in air and push it out.

Speaker 6 Rapidly and powerfully.

Speaker 17 This would kind of change everything.

Speaker 16 Because even though you had these tiny little itty-bitty mammals that had their tiny squeaks, over time, as they evolved into bigger mammals with bigger lungs and bigger, more powerful diaphragms, you'd get bigger sounds, more air.

Speaker 17 And John says, at the same time, that valve, that slit in the throat.

Speaker 21 All of a sudden, it's being refined.

Speaker 17 Little bits of cartilage appear on it, and so do these folds.

Speaker 18 Which now enable through a complex like twisting and moving back and forth of those cartilages, you can stretch the vocal folds to create a higher pitched sound.

Speaker 14 You can loosen and slacken it for lower sounds.

Speaker 6 You can actually tense it for growling sounds.

Speaker 21 You can sort of make the vocal cords stiff for this popping air through the vocal folds.

Speaker 17 John says all of this means that the voice is becoming more and more of a tool.

Speaker 21 For those things that drive evolution.

Speaker 16 Like asserting dominance, fighting off rivals, showing affection, wooing mates. The voice starts communicating basic emotions.

Speaker 17 And the other thing is that mammals, the way that their young feed is on mammary glands, a breast.

Speaker 18 That's new with mammals.

Speaker 18 So the action of affixing lips to a nipple and then coaxing milk from that nipple with very specific rhythmic lip movements, but then also coordinating the tongue to sort of get out of the way, to let the milk come in, but then rippling the tongue in complex ways in order to make the milk pass down into our stomach is an amazing system of muscles in the mammalian face and throat and tongue.

Speaker 16 And so if you're an animal with a big complex brain, John says you can start doing things like hitting the tongue against the back of the teeth for tuh and duh, popping the lips for p

Speaker 6 or holding them closed for a mm.

Speaker 16 Or you can start making ha he.

Speaker 31 Vowel sounds.

Speaker 18 It's literally the posture and shape of the tongue.

Speaker 16 It's over 400 million years.

Speaker 18 From diaphragm to lungs to that valve.

Speaker 21 That open and closable slit with all its little folds.

Speaker 18 To facial muscles and so on. This whole system from your gut to the tip of your tongue that we would eventually recruit for the act that i'm now performing these symphonic time movements to speak

Speaker 16 and that's what i love 400 million years of evolution to all these parts of your body that eventually allow you to escape your own body You can project yourself out in the world.

Speaker 16 You can convey thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions, and all of it is distinct to to you,

Speaker 16 to your physical body. Like your voice is you.

Speaker 17 Yeah, your sonic fingerprint.

Speaker 16 Yeah, like a sort of face.

Speaker 17 A face shooting out of your mouth.

Speaker 16 Little rosy cheeks flying in the wind. Um,

Speaker 16 from a fish

Speaker 27 all the way.

Speaker 16 Thank you so much.

Speaker 5 The voice is just

Speaker 7 everywhere.

Speaker 5 Like, we hear it from the second we wake up. If you live with anyone, and even if you don't, you know, everything's talking to us.

Speaker 5 And we just get so acclimated and adjusted to kind of a constant onslaught of voices in our life that you can sort of forget that they're meaningful and why they're important.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 16 When we come back, this voice that you just heard is going to take us on a little journey to a very important voice that you probably have some feelings about.

Speaker 29 In just a minute.

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Speaker 17 Radiolab, Lulu, Matt, Annie. Okay, back from break.

Speaker 40 Took a little break. Took a break.

Speaker 16 Now we're back. And we're continuing on with

Speaker 16 voice. And number two, the power it holds over you.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 16 Which we'll start with this guy.

Speaker 5 Daniel Abrams, clinical associate professor here at Stanford University.

Speaker 17 Where he studies the brain. Yep.
Okay.

Speaker 17 But he kind of has like a weird career trajectory.

Speaker 5 Yes. Out of college I was what's called an acoustical engineer.

Speaker 17 One of those people that like when you build a building.

Speaker 5 Sit around and stare at drawings of buildings and you know the HVAC components of buildings.

Speaker 17 You basically do some math to make sure that the air conditioning is like not like just too loud in parts of the building.

Speaker 8 Yep.

Speaker 17 And that wasn't enough for you.

Speaker 5 No, no, it sounds super sexy work.

Speaker 17 Something about it didn't click for him.

Speaker 5 I realized I wasn't cut out to be an engineer.

Speaker 17 But he did like spend a lot of time thinking about sound.

Speaker 5 And not just kind of any old sound, but the sounds that are that are really important to us as human beings. And in particular, how does the brain make sense of the sounds that our ears detect?

Speaker 14 Sounds such as a voice.

Speaker 5 And in particular, a very special voice. Mom's voice.

Speaker 16 Mother's voice.

Speaker 17 Okay, that sounds icky.

Speaker 5 Well, it's certainly a loaded term, right?

Speaker 16 But Daniel's basically like, a mother's voice is one of the first voices that you hear in your life.

Speaker 5 And studies have shown that children are actually able to recognize their mother's voice before they're even born.

Speaker 16 So like in the womb, right around 18 weeks, ears poke out of the side of the head of a fetus.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 16 researchers have done studies showing that when the fetus hears the voice of the person who's carrying it, its heart rate starts going way faster.

Speaker 16 And it's kind of inferred that the fetus can recognize what we're calling mother's voice.

Speaker 5 From other voices.

Speaker 8 Huh. And what is the beating heartbeat?

Speaker 17 Sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry.
I just,

Speaker 17 why, why would a heartbeat faster?

Speaker 5 You know, I mean, I guess anxiety.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, truly,

Speaker 17 the truth is that no one really knows because it's a fetus.

Speaker 16 But it was clear to Daniel that this mother's voice was powerful.

Speaker 17 And so, what Daniel wanted to know is: okay, what is this powerful voice actually doing in, say, the brain of a kid?

Speaker 17 So, at this point, daniel's at stanford and basically what he and his team do is they get these kids kids at a range of ages between seven and twelve and then they had the mothers of these children come in for a voice recording okay and daniel would hand them a piece of paper with some words on it oh my god wait what am i saying and tell them to read the words as if

Speaker 17 their child comes up to them at a museum and says

Speaker 17 mom what's that weird thingy over there and you would say should I say the whole, should I say that?

Speaker 16 Yeah, I think just, yeah, the whole phrase. Okay.

Speaker 5 Jimmy, whatever your child's name is.

Speaker 44 Oh, that's a kibaraischalt.

Speaker 28 Kibaraschal.

Speaker 24 Kibarai Schultz. Kibuda Schultz.

Speaker 17 Kibudai Schultz.

Speaker 15 Kibarashalt.

Speaker 17 Kibarashalt. There are these nonsense words.

Speaker 7 From k.

Speaker 15 Kibudai Schultz. To pie butt eyeschalt.
To tuh. Tibudai Schultz.

Speaker 28 There we go, good.

Speaker 17 Because they didn't want it to be something like airplane.

Speaker 5 Because we would be measuring more than the voice. We would be measuring some association with an airplane, in this case, possibly a negative one, and maybe in other kids, they love airplanes.

Speaker 17 And so they have these words that truly meant nothing.

Speaker 16 And then they had these other moms come in.

Speaker 5 Who did not have kids in the group? But they were mothers. They were mothers, though.

Speaker 16 They had this sort of je ne céque v mom vibes.

Speaker 43 Yeah, like mom vibes.

Speaker 8 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 16 Mom vibes. So they had them record the words as well.
And then Daniel and his team would bring in a kid, have them lie on their back inside of an fMRI machine, and they would play them

Speaker 16 the voice of somebody who is not their mom, and then take a picture of their brain play them another voice

Speaker 16 of not mom take a picture then

Speaker 5 threw a couple of kitty cat meows in there to make sure that they were awake and attending to sounds and then they just keep going through this

Speaker 6 not mom picture

Speaker 15 not mom picture and then

Speaker 42 mom wait is that my mom

Speaker 58 Is that actually?

Speaker 27 Here, I'll play it again.

Speaker 8 That's my mom.

Speaker 40 It is your mom. That's totally my mom.

Speaker 32 How did you get my mom?

Speaker 17 Why did it feel to hear your mom?

Speaker 8 Well, whatever.

Speaker 16 Should we get to it? Yeah, let's wait.

Speaker 32 I can't believe you got my mom.

Speaker 8 Sorry, I'm still, I'm still.

Speaker 43 Okay, keep going.

Speaker 16 Yeah, we're gonna get back to that. But let's just get to what they found.

Speaker 17 Yeah, tell us what you found.

Speaker 16 What we found was that when a kid heard the voice of a stranger, their brain was essentially quiet.

Speaker 5 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 16 Not a lot of activity.

Speaker 17 But then the moment he buttish shot, the kid's mom spoke.

Speaker 14 all these regions in the kid's brain that are associated with all kinds of rewards in our life would start firing like crazy.

Speaker 5 So if you love chocolate, I could show you a picture of chocolate.

Speaker 17 And these exact same regions in your brain would start going.

Speaker 5 And when you hear music that you love,

Speaker 16 the hammer of the gods thundering in your ears.

Speaker 5 Yes. This part of the brain becomes active.

Speaker 15 Or

Speaker 17 when you're doing drugs. Wait.

Speaker 16 That's right, Lulu, hardcore drugs.

Speaker 17 Or when you're thinking about sex.

Speaker 16 What? Same parts of your brain are lighting up.

Speaker 5 It's the sex, drugs, and rock and roll part of your brain.

Speaker 6 And mom.

Speaker 23 And mom is just playing it out.

Speaker 8 And she's like, again, he's got a sniff.

Speaker 22 He's just like at the concert, like on the table, like doing live.

Speaker 10 Yeah, she's right there with you.

Speaker 34 Wait, what?

Speaker 61 I know.

Speaker 53 That is so wild.

Speaker 5 But, you know, it makes sense because voices are rewarding, you know?

Speaker 17 Well, why? Actually, I'm curious why that's a given.

Speaker 5 Well, the way I think about it is that during development, you know, mother's voice is paired with

Speaker 5 tender, loving care.

Speaker 7 Sylvie's my

Speaker 7 breath.

Speaker 7 Right?

Speaker 5 Nourishment, touch, love,

Speaker 5 all forms of kind of parental

Speaker 11 care.

Speaker 16 Mother's voice is just Pavlov's bells.

Speaker 27 It's just a ringing bell.

Speaker 5 It's kind of a coarse way of thinking about it, but you know, there's probably far more to it than that, obviously.

Speaker 5 But if you're looking for a scientific explanation as to how a voice becomes rewarding,

Speaker 5 this seems like a fairly non-controversial kind of connection there.

Speaker 62 Yeah, I can see that.

Speaker 39 It's like this, you know, the picture of this little baby brain totally lost.

Speaker 12 All these things whizzing around.

Speaker 46 It can't tell like a butterfly from its own foot.

Speaker 40 And then there's this disembodied voice that it can like grab onto to survive.

Speaker 16 Yeah, it's almost like this little rope you can hang on to.

Speaker 5 But wait, and I'll take you down a little side route. We thought the study was so cool.
We were like, I mean, again, we were totally floored by it.

Speaker 16 So after the study, Daniel and his collaborator put our heads together and decided, oh, well, let's do the same thing in adolescents.

Speaker 5 Teenagers.

Speaker 18 13 to 16. Yeah.

Speaker 17 Why did you think that?

Speaker 5 Well, we just thought there was going to be something interesting there.

Speaker 16 So they do the whole study again with these teens.

Speaker 5 The exact same thing for each kid. We brought their mom in and we recorded their voice, the mom's voice, and we played to them while they hear kitty cat meows and other stuff.

Speaker 16 They look at the brains of these teens, and what do they see? I don't know. In the reward center, strangers' voices.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 16 Everything flipped.

Speaker 5 Unfamiliar voices became more rewarding than mom's voices.

Speaker 15 Oh, no. That's so sad.

Speaker 28 I know.

Speaker 64 Well, as a mother, I think it validates something I experienced in my life, you know?

Speaker 16 So we did talk to our moms. Are you taking notes?

Speaker 25 Yeah, she's taking little tips.

Speaker 8 What are you doing?

Speaker 43 I'm pretty corporate.

Speaker 16 My mom, Nancy Kilty.

Speaker 56 Yeah, I know. This is nice.
I can see Matt.

Speaker 17 You don't need to see me. And my mom, Beth McEwen.

Speaker 16 So just going to ask them, what do you make of this?

Speaker 17 Yeah, like, how does it make you feel?

Speaker 56 Well, at the childhood part, I mean, I can relate just love.

Speaker 16 It's heaven.

Speaker 56 It's honey and butter.

Speaker 17 It's awesome if everything's going right.

Speaker 65 And then, you know, to reach a point where anytime you say something, you get this negative kind of reaction.

Speaker 16 Right. Everything becomes this big internal eye roll.

Speaker 33 Oh, there's external eye rolls for sure.

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 13 And it's hard, I think, as a parent.

Speaker 5 I know. It's a little painful.
But, you know, the way we think about it is that, you know, adolescence is this important time of life where you're starting to shift to your friends and peers.

Speaker 5 And this is an important part of development for kind of charting a path and an independent life.

Speaker 16 And this was something both our moms acknowledged.

Speaker 65 It was hard when I saw you pulling away, but it was healthy, right? You know, that's what a mother wants.

Speaker 56 You don't want a clingy kid that's going to be right beside you forever.

Speaker 16 You want a kid who will turn away from you and go, wow, look at that stuff.

Speaker 56 The world is big and huge and wonderful.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's like your mom's voice is your whole world when you're a little kid.

Speaker 17 And then you, it's like your job to turn away from that and start building the world that you will step into with all these other voices somehow.

Speaker 17 Like you're, I don't know, the rejection of the mom's voice is a beginning of finding your own. Right.

Speaker 16 Like I remember being in eighth grade and the quote unquote other voices around me were like skater kids. And that's what I was trying to become.

Speaker 17 Yeah. And you're trying to, like, it's funny.
When you were trying to be a skater kid, I was probably pretending to be a horse.

Speaker 8 So I'm not sure what

Speaker 68 that says.

Speaker 62 Nothing good.

Speaker 8 Nothing good, guys. Nothing good.

Speaker 17 But yeah, it's the same thing of like, bye, mom but it swings back around to the parent the mom eventually right like when when my kid's 40 no

Speaker 5 like they're gonna just be so happy to hear from me that's what i've been told that they do circle back really yeah come on this is this is what i've been told

Speaker 16 okay you just did that hasn't been confirmed by science it's just anecdotal yeah but daniel says when they did do that study with the teens oh yeah no no no the results showed that mom's voice is still in that pleasure center.

Speaker 5 Yes, mom doesn't get completely kicked out of that part of the brain.

Speaker 10 It's just now that she's a little bit quieter.

Speaker 48 It's interesting because, like, when I heard my mom's voice, when you guys played it, I felt like preternaturally comforted.

Speaker 62 But it's like, I don't, these days, I don't, you know, gab on the phone that much with her about stuff.

Speaker 8 And, you know, but just hearing the voice and the rhythms and like the little, like the articulations, like tiba yasha in this way that is so her.

Speaker 61 That's like

Speaker 62 comforting in a way that's kind of like

Speaker 50 re-encountering

Speaker 40 like a primal lullaby,

Speaker 69 Jimmy Gogala, Bochin Edemies Valami on

Speaker 69 Bochini, Jimmy Go Gala, Bochin enemies fell me on

Speaker 37 Boching Beach

Speaker 69 Bochin Yosak Bochin Boy

Speaker 69 Boching Enemy Bochin Jock Bochin John Tock Bochin Edamis Felamiang

Speaker 69 Bachin Enemy Jimmy Gotti Boching enemies fell a meam

Speaker 69 Bachin enemy Jimmy Gotti Bochin enemies Velemiam

Speaker 37 Bochin me joking your soul body

Speaker 37 boy of watching enemy watching Joking John Dog Bochin enemies Velemium

Speaker 37 Bochin

Speaker 27 Okay

Speaker 16 when When we come back, what the voice gives back to you.

Speaker 16 Back in a second.

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Speaker 48 All right, so I'm Lulu Miller back with Arming of Protein Bar.

Speaker 12 Producers Matt Kilty and

Speaker 16 Annie McEwen. Two different people, two different worlds.

Speaker 67 Back with our episode on voice.

Speaker 42 Okay.

Speaker 35 So

Speaker 16 final story about what the voice gives you. Maybe also kind of like what the voice takes.

Speaker 16 And Lulu, we're going to start with you.

Speaker 12 Yeah. I mean, I guess so this begins with

Speaker 12 one of my favorite voices out there.

Speaker 71 The Godfather.

Speaker 50 Funny woman, punk.

Speaker 62 The MacArthur Award-winning activist and writer.

Speaker 6 Welcome, Alice. Alice Wong.

Speaker 4 How are you doing, Alice?

Speaker 72 I'm a live tomorrow. How about you?

Speaker 59 And years ago, we sort of became

Speaker 22 friends. Hi.

Speaker 34 Started a book club of two.

Speaker 42 I know. Oh, my God.

Speaker 56 Collaborate on work together.

Speaker 31 Why don't I go through a voice and then give you anticipates?

Speaker 41 She performed this essay for us about how she has muscular dystrophy, how she uses a ventilator to breathe.

Speaker 71 Yeah, and I want to get to the point.

Speaker 38 Which has given her this very distinct voice,

Speaker 56 which she uses to fight for disability rights and to shine light on disabled writers and artists, inventors.

Speaker 31 The world is ours.

Speaker 31 This is for all of us.

Speaker 8 Anyway, so that's Alice.

Speaker 12 And then in the summer of 2022, I saw that she had posted this photo of herself online.

Speaker 46 She was in a hospital bed with all kinds of tubes and wires coming out of her, and she did not look well.

Speaker 9 She had a caption about how she was in the ICU, and then she just went dark.

Speaker 53 And it wasn't until a few months later

Speaker 70 that I finally heard from her.

Speaker 8 Oh, Alice, it is so good to see your face.

Speaker 7 How are you doing?

Speaker 11 Like, are you hurting right now?

Speaker 74 I had some opioids earlier, but fun fact, they cause constipation, so I quit them and take Tylenol only when necessary. I missed the fentanyl I had in the hospital, which was delightful.

Speaker 74 Utterly delightful. I called Fentonil, Fenty, and I said he was my boyfriend.
I miss Fenty Fenty very much.

Speaker 24 It turned out she had had to have a tracheostomy.

Speaker 50 Basically, she'd had a lung infection that was so serious to allow her to breathe, they had to cut straight into her windpipe and insert a tube.

Speaker 16 Right, where you're like on a ventilator.

Speaker 50 Yeah, and she's on a ventilator, and you know, that saved her life.

Speaker 41 But it took her speaking voice.

Speaker 74 It's been a lot.

Speaker 39 And obviously, you can totally still hear Alice's voice.

Speaker 53 It's just now coming through this computer voice.

Speaker 76 I also have a range of voices that I can select from, and honestly, I hate all of them.

Speaker 67 She played me some of them.

Speaker 77 Hi, my name is Darius, and I'm the first male African-American English speech synthesis voice from Necapella.

Speaker 43 There's also.

Speaker 76 Hello, my name is Ella.

Speaker 67 A tiny child. Hi, I'm Karen.

Speaker 62 There's Karen, which Alice was like, no way.

Speaker 8 Hi.

Speaker 48 And then. I'm Heather.

Speaker 76 There's Heather. Efficient, fast, and a very high quality.
Why not try me out with your own own words? So, Heather is just the one I hate least.

Speaker 57 It is robotic, clinical, and white.

Speaker 78 Alice is Chinese American.

Speaker 76 I just tolerate her, and I bet she tolerates me.

Speaker 66 Ha ha ha.

Speaker 76 Oh, see what I did there? I typed ha ha ha to simulate actual laughter, and while it works to some extent, it feels robotic and hollow to me.

Speaker 76 I miss laughing, and all the sounds I can make that make people laugh.

Speaker 11 Shit, can you.

Speaker 15 You can't guffa.

Speaker 43 You can't laugh.

Speaker 15 Oh, you just made a uh-uh.

Speaker 8 Mixed laugh and paint, like, oh, with your mouth.

Speaker 23 Like, oh.

Speaker 22 Does it feel different, though, without the sound?

Speaker 59 Like, does it detract from the experience of savoring the humor?

Speaker 74 I wish I could laugh because isn't that also a collective experience? I think that's the heart of it. Being able to join with others and sharing an emotion the same way.

Speaker 74 Is...

Speaker 59 Is your speaking voice lost forever?

Speaker 74 There is a device I could attach to my ventilator where it will potentially allow me to speak called the Passium Ur valve.

Speaker 41 And in a way, that's what this story is really about.

Speaker 56 This tiny piece of plastic with odd existential potential that would come to have a profound and

Speaker 31 kind of unexpected effect on Alice's life.

Speaker 52 So flash forward.

Speaker 44 In early 2025, Alice is

Speaker 73 in a hospital. Hi, Dr.

Speaker 76 Rosen. Happy New Year.

Speaker 45 Happy New Year to you. Good to see you.

Speaker 68 Where she lives in San Francisco.

Speaker 42 Things going okay?

Speaker 8 To get this

Speaker 63 valve.

Speaker 22 Wow, it's big.

Speaker 34 Which she showed me.

Speaker 75 It almost looks like a shampoo cap, bottle cap, or something.

Speaker 22 And then does that go?

Speaker 53 Do you know how it would go in?

Speaker 76 Yes, that's in my next and the young one.

Speaker 43 Okay.

Speaker 24 Alice explained this valve attaches to a person's trach tube right where it goes into their neck.

Speaker 76 And redirects airflow through the vocal cords and nasal passages so a person can speak.

Speaker 12 Oh, that's an elegant design.

Speaker 22 And the cherry on top for Alice was that this valve, this sleekly designed little contraption, I was excited that he was a disabled inventor.

Speaker 12 Was invented by a disabled guy.

Speaker 76 He was a quadriplegic due to Duchenne's muscular dystrophy.

Speaker 78 Muscular dystrophy?

Speaker 76 Like me.

Speaker 12 His name was David Mirror, Passy Mirror Valve.

Speaker 76 I felt a kinship with him in that regard.

Speaker 41 So back at the hospital. Are you ready?

Speaker 61 Okay.

Speaker 41 A doctor and a nurse took this valve,

Speaker 46 attached it to a new trach tube.

Speaker 16 Alright, Alice, I'm going to hold your head here.

Speaker 42 Pulled her old one out

Speaker 73 of her neck. Show me.

Speaker 42 That looks okay.

Speaker 12 Took the new one with the valve.

Speaker 63 Coming down.

Speaker 78 Pushed that into her neck.

Speaker 42 You're all set

Speaker 26 to go conquer the world, right?

Speaker 12 Then made sure she could breathe.

Speaker 67 And then had her try to speak.

Speaker 60 Try that passing mirror.

Speaker 67 But it doesn't work.

Speaker 26 Her vocal flows were moving.

Speaker 61 She's definitely.

Speaker 60 It just wasn't enough to.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 76 So I guess my muscular dystrophy has made my diaphragm weaker, probably, especially these past few years.

Speaker 16 Unfortunately,

Speaker 23 I suspect that is

Speaker 26 the case.

Speaker 66 Let's still try again.

Speaker 58 Okay.

Speaker 60 Suction.

Speaker 32 So they try again.

Speaker 42 Big inhale.

Speaker 50 And again.

Speaker 78 She can't get any sound to come out.

Speaker 60 It's just not enough of that push.

Speaker 57 And so,

Speaker 73 she gave it one last big push.

Speaker 26 You ready?

Speaker 42 Oh, wait, lose it.

Speaker 66 Let's go with feeling.

Speaker 42 Love it. Love it.

Speaker 45 Here we go. With feeling.
Okay.

Speaker 27 Cuff is down.

Speaker 32 But again.

Speaker 76 One more big one.

Speaker 60 Yeah.

Speaker 73 Nothing.

Speaker 35 How you feel?

Speaker 42 Pooped.

Speaker 38 So we were able to record that day.

Speaker 9 This was actually Alice's fifth attempt to use the valve since she went into the ICU in 2022.

Speaker 40 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 24 Yeah, five different times of trying this thing that promised to give her her voice back and failed to give her her voice back.

Speaker 8 And she said that over these years, she's had this thing with her in her apartment, just kind of sitting there on the shelf, unused, not working.

Speaker 67 And over time, she grew to resent it.

Speaker 41 And she said that one day...

Speaker 76 I went to their website and did some digging. And she found some writings by its inventor, this guy, David Muir, talking about the value of this valve.

Speaker 44 Writing about the power this valve holds, how it can really give people their life back.

Speaker 76 What it can do as if it's some miracle solution.

Speaker 67 And that the mission, the whole point of this valve was...

Speaker 7 Quote,

Speaker 76 dignity through speech.

Speaker 19 Dignity through speech.

Speaker 76 The phrase dignity through speech gave me pause.

Speaker 73 And Alice ended up publishing this open letter addressed to David, who she learned had died back in 1990.

Speaker 76 David, isn't there dignity in silence too?

Speaker 76 Silence does not mean a person is voiceless, as there are millions of non-speaking people who use gestures, signed language, writing, technology, and other means to communicate with the world.

Speaker 76 I live in a world of silence that is not lesser or devoid of richness. My reality is just different.

Speaker 44 And she said, going through that process of writing to him, imagining him, also left her with all these questions about him.

Speaker 76 I'm so curious if he had disabled friends friends or was connected to community.

Speaker 68 Of how the two of them could be so similar and yet so different.

Speaker 76 David Muir is a mystery to me.

Speaker 9 There's almost nothing about David out there.

Speaker 41 He's sort of this forgotten disabled inventor.

Speaker 46 And so I told Alice, well, maybe we could unravel this mystery.

Speaker 40 Maybe we could go report it out and figure out who he was and how he came to these ideas about voice and the concept of dignity.

Speaker 50 And

Speaker 76 then Lulu, are you close to your delivery date?

Speaker 43 So close.

Speaker 63 I was useless.

Speaker 16 I went on maternity leave for the full six months babies beautiful and uh and so you guys picked up the torch the reporting torch yeah and it took a while but eventually oh are you showing up too hello we got in touch with Annie I don't know if you want to kind of either start or say more well I was there when David was born Oh all right let's start there

Speaker 16 June Mir and Don Mirror you're David's father yes I presume I am David's parents who live outside of Phoenix and seemed actually just like really excited to talk to us about David, I think, because they don't often get the chance to.

Speaker 7 Well, when David was born, this was in 1961. The doctor said, This guy is going to be a football player.

Speaker 16 He had like really strong, defined muscles.

Speaker 3 Like somebody that had been doing major calf raises at the gym.

Speaker 42 A little jacked baby.

Speaker 10 Yeah, little jacked baby.

Speaker 27 Okay.

Speaker 7 But in the first year, he had some problems that I noticed when he started walking.

Speaker 17 So for instance, like most kids.

Speaker 7 You know how they take their little fat feet and they just sort of plop them down? Yeah.

Speaker 17 When David lifted his foot to take a step, he would halt,

Speaker 7 hesitate, then put it down.

Speaker 17 Then one day when June noticed he was playing, he couldn't get up off the floor. So at the age of five, they took David to a doctor who ran some tests and told them that David had muscular dystrophy.

Speaker 7 And the doctor was describing what was going to be happening and how he was not going to be able to walk and finally not be able to breathe and the heart wouldn't work because they're all muscle

Speaker 7 and they

Speaker 7 probably wouldn't live past 12 years of age.

Speaker 7 And I'm thinking to myself,

Speaker 7 why are you saying this in front of my child?

Speaker 8 Did David seem terrified in that moment?

Speaker 7 He was just sitting there.

Speaker 3 Very stoically.

Speaker 17 And so they go home and try as best as they can to just have a normal life.

Speaker 7 He loved cartoons on Saturday morning.

Speaker 17 He loved to play with matches.

Speaker 3 And little plastic army guys.

Speaker 16 And in an early age, he's using a wheelchair.

Speaker 7 A push type. The little stinker.

Speaker 17 Apparently, he got his friends at the playground to push him as fast as they could at this ditch.

Speaker 7 And and tried to jump it.

Speaker 27 What?

Speaker 3 To hit the berm and try to get it over this.

Speaker 40 Don't get air. Yeah.

Speaker 7 So I got a call to come down to the school. So he didn't do that anymore.

Speaker 16 Instead, what he did is he got his friends to push him down the hallway at school.

Speaker 7 And they were mowing down all of the kids in the hallway. So I got another call from the principal.

Speaker 27 Okay, okay.

Speaker 22 So he's got like rambunctious troublemaker, like fun.

Speaker 63 Yeah, totally.

Speaker 17 But I think like the thing that June and Don said like stood out most about David was.

Speaker 19 He was an unstoppable communicator.

Speaker 8 David was a talker.

Speaker 7 A motor mouth.

Speaker 16 From the age of six, seven, eight, nine.

Speaker 7 We talked about everything.

Speaker 35 10, 11, 12.

Speaker 7 The last year he has.

Speaker 35 But then 13, 14.

Speaker 7 If he heard something on television that morning, he would pick his side and I'd pick his side. 15.
And then we would just debate back and forth.

Speaker 16 16, 17.

Speaker 3 He's He's in high school.

Speaker 16 His voice is dropping.

Speaker 18 Didn't get as deep as mine, but 18.

Speaker 3 He's 12th grader.

Speaker 16 He actually switches high schools, and this new one doesn't have a ramp.

Speaker 16 And in this way, that totally reminds me of Alice, he tells the administrators, There is this law that you're supposed to provide me access. You guys have to build me a ramp.

Speaker 7 Or I will sue you. Or I will sue you.

Speaker 15 That week he had a ramp.

Speaker 8 There was a ramp. No way.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 By 19, he's in an electric wheelchair, and a lot of his muscles were just slowly shutting down by 20 21 his diaphragm's not working enough he's having trouble breathing that's when all of his fears came out it'd usually be at night in bed when he started talking about dying

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 the things that he had noticed that he wasn't able to do any longer In June, we would talk all night. Would sit next to him in bed trying to calm his fears.

Speaker 16 The next morning he'd be up cheerful talking.

Speaker 7 But nighttimes were bad for him.

Speaker 35 And then he turns 22, 23, 24, 25.

Speaker 17 And one morning when June was on her way to the house, she went into David's room to check on him.

Speaker 7 And he said, I'm having a dream. The good guys are fighting the bad guys.

Speaker 7 Should I go back to sleep and see who wins? And I said, sure.

Speaker 17 So she grabs her keys, gets to the front door.

Speaker 7 And I think something's wrong.

Speaker 17 She goes back to David's room.

Speaker 7 And David was blue.

Speaker 17 And I don't know what to do.

Speaker 7 She just freezes. He needs oxygen.
Then I remember the alarm.

Speaker 17 They had an alarm installed that went directly to the fire department.

Speaker 7 Push the alarm. And the firemen come.
They give him oxygen, put him on a gurney, and take him out to the hospital. And when we're at the hospital, that's when they put the trick in.

Speaker 17 The doctors performed a tracheostomy on David.

Speaker 23 So he could breathe.

Speaker 16 In the hospital, the best doctors could provide David with the ability to speak was.

Speaker 7 With these communication boards.

Speaker 16 You can imagine like a Ouija board. It's this board with letters and numbers.
And basically, somebody like June would have to sit with David and watch his eyes go from letter to letter.

Speaker 8 To spell out the words.

Speaker 17 So if you ask David, what do you want to watch? On TV, June would sit there and watch as his eyes would go to the B, the A, the S, the E, base, B, A, L, L.

Speaker 18 Baseball.

Speaker 7 It took forever.

Speaker 16 It was not a good deal. I mean, for somebody like David,

Speaker 36 when you took that away, it's just like his whole world fell apart.

Speaker 7 He was asking me if I can't live with this drake, if it's just one step too far for me.

Speaker 7 Will you help me die?

Speaker 7 I've got to be able to talk.

Speaker 17 And then one afternoon, he's sitting at the table with his mom and dad, and he starts to spell out and mouth the words of this idea.

Speaker 8 He says, my ventilator has

Speaker 8 this

Speaker 19 little valve.

Speaker 17 It's a valve that's connected to the machine that lets air come come in into David's lungs, but then it closes.

Speaker 17 So that David's breath, the moisture in his breath, doesn't go back down into the machine and, you know, potentially damage it. Right.
It's like a door that swings shut behind you. Yeah.

Speaker 27 Yes.

Speaker 16 And so David was basically like, can we do something like that?

Speaker 16 Can we take this valve that's on my ventilator, modify it, and put it right where the tray tube goes into my neck so it still lets air in, but then it closes.

Speaker 7 Trapping the air inside my body, forcing the air to take its normal path up through the neck up through the vocal cords and out meaning hopefully possibly he would be able to talk

Speaker 7 so he tells us while they're okay i need you to do this for me go to the ventilator get that valve tweak this cut that attach it here i'm going oh

Speaker 16 he wants us to kill him don how do you feel about it uh well this is an interesting project to me so don goes and grabs an x-acto knife some duct tape walks over to David, and disconnects the tube from his neck.

Speaker 17 So at this point, David could barely breathe.

Speaker 16 And then he grabbed that little valve from the ventilator.

Speaker 14 Just pulled it off, cut it, shaped it, and literally taped it onto the end of the tube.

Speaker 16 Put the tube with this modified valve back into David's neck and waited.

Speaker 27 And lo and behold.

Speaker 79 Today, April 22nd, 1989, we're visiting with

Speaker 79 David Mirror, the inventor of the Pasimir tracheostomy speaking valve. How are you doing, David?

Speaker 80 Great, how are you?

Speaker 17 Just fine, thanks.

Speaker 79 I have a few questions for you.

Speaker 79 Why did you invent the valve?

Speaker 80 Out of pure frustration.

Speaker 80 You needed to speak.

Speaker 6 I had a

Speaker 80 respiratory rest,

Speaker 80 and after that, I wasn't able to speak. All the air just escaped.

Speaker 80 Very frustrating.

Speaker 80 So I decided that if I could just keep the air in,

Speaker 80 send it to my motor cords, then I'm able to see.

Speaker 22 Wow, it's like a little bit soft, but super, like, it just feels like it has all the complexity of voice.

Speaker 16 Yeah, like you can hear a real personality there.

Speaker 15 I wonder if he could laugh.

Speaker 22 You want to take a look at that?

Speaker 16 Well, so there's this moment where they hand him this book that has a picture of his valve in it.

Speaker 38 Oh, yeah, he just did.

Speaker 57 Okay. He just chuckled at the book.

Speaker 8 Yeah, this little chuckle.

Speaker 12 I mean, it's like the thing,

Speaker 38 it's like built, it's like using duct tape to build this ladder out of a deep well.

Speaker 61 Like as in releasing himself from himself once again, with duct tape.

Speaker 13 Right. Damn.

Speaker 38 So this is David Muir.

Speaker 39 So what did the, what happens?

Speaker 24 I mean, I guess we know this valve becomes big enough to make it to Alice's hands.

Speaker 16 Yeah, so what happens is not long after they made the valve, we ran into Dr.

Speaker 18 Passey.

Speaker 16 This doctor in California.

Speaker 19 ENT doctor.

Speaker 16 Ear, nose, and throat. Right.

Speaker 17 And he's like, I can help a bunch of people with this right now. And so they patent the valve and they form this company.
And David.

Speaker 3 Initially, he was one of the order takers.

Speaker 16 Don and set him up in his room with a computer.

Speaker 3 Where you could talk into the computer and it would write.

Speaker 16 And he would process orders for this valve he'd created.

Speaker 3 And it just evolved from there.

Speaker 16 And over the years, this valve would be given to patients.

Speaker 29 Can I sing a song? Young and old.

Speaker 26 Let's

Speaker 16 There were even cases of infants who couldn't make a noise.

Speaker 3 Because of the trach they had.

Speaker 16 So parents would have this valve attached to their trache

Speaker 37 and

Speaker 23 they could hear their baby cry for the first time.

Speaker 81 Agnes, what was it like to not have your voice when you were on the ventilator without your valve?

Speaker 23 Horrible.

Speaker 16 And there's all these testimonials online.

Speaker 7 The worst feeling ever.

Speaker 16 Of these different people with traches

Speaker 7 to speak.

Speaker 16 Who got their voice back from this valve?

Speaker 26 Thank whoever invented this.

Speaker 31 It's just so much better.

Speaker 30 It's made a lot of very unhappy people be able to live again.

Speaker 7 Oh, I'm so grateful.

Speaker 7 It was like a switch had flipped.

Speaker 16 Suddenly, David.

Speaker 7 He was just happy.

Speaker 7 He said, I thought I was just doing it for me.

Speaker 7 But there were all these other people out there waiting to have that.

Speaker 7 He says, I know why I'm here.

Speaker 16 One of the things about this story for us, and I know you guys aren't a part of the company at all, but we were working with this writer, Alice Wong, who lost her speaking voice and had a tracheostomy.

Speaker 16 And she saw on the website, when she learned about the Valve, that there was this, the word dignity was used

Speaker 42 about

Speaker 16 this valve giving people dignity through speech, and that word really bothered her. And so I kind of was

Speaker 16 just curious how

Speaker 16 you guys think of the word dignity, how David maybe thought of the word dignity.

Speaker 7 You know, if you can't communicate with people,

Speaker 7 you disappear,

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 8 you

Speaker 7 do lose yourself

Speaker 7 because

Speaker 7 well just like you're doing with the interviewing the talking

Speaker 7 you're expressing yourself you're putting your opinions you're being heard

Speaker 7 you're making a statement in life

Speaker 7 if you don't have that

Speaker 7 it's much more difficult on you

Speaker 7 And I think that's where the dignity comes in. It's the

Speaker 7 I want

Speaker 7 people to know I'm here.

Speaker 7 How did

Speaker 15 go ahead?

Speaker 17 Oh, I'm just curious, like, what happened next? I mean, yeah, because you said that David died at 28.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 16 And he made the valve at 25. And so I'm just wondering, like,

Speaker 16 how did he die? Was it just ultimately like his muscles failed?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 15 So.

Speaker 17 June said it was August 30th, 1990.

Speaker 7 I went in and I got David up, got him dressed, combed his hair, brushed his teeth.

Speaker 17 And she reminded him that he had promised to go pick his nephew up from the bus stop that day.

Speaker 7 On the first day of school.

Speaker 17 So David in his wheelchair left the house, made his way to the bus stop, and after a little while, his nephew came to the front door Crying.

Speaker 7 And he said, David didn't come and get me. My stomach was falling.

Speaker 17 June runs outside.

Speaker 7 To the middle of the street, and I look down the street, and I see him down at the end of the block.

Speaker 17 His wheelchair is on its side on the sidewalk.

Speaker 7 And I'm running as fast as I can.

Speaker 7 I hear the ventilator, which means he is disconnected from the ventilator.

Speaker 17 Which means he had no air, no way of calling out for help. And June rushed over to him.

Speaker 7 I said, Cowboy, what's wrong?

Speaker 7 And I put the ventilator hose back on and connected it.

Speaker 17 She had a neighbor call 911. The EMT showed up, took David to the hospital.

Speaker 7 They're at the hospital, and the doctor came out and told me he didn't think David was going to make it.

Speaker 7 Don was was working in California at the time. I called him, told him what the doctor said, hung up the phone, and

Speaker 7 went back to stay by David's bed.

Speaker 7 And all I could do

Speaker 19 was say,

Speaker 7 I'm sorry,

Speaker 31 because

Speaker 7 he was alone

Speaker 7 when he died.

Speaker 8 He just didn't want to be alone when he died.

Speaker 7 And yet, that's what happened.

Speaker 8 He was alone when he died.

Speaker 74 The way David died is one of my biggest nightmares.

Speaker 55 So we played all that to Alice.

Speaker 74 Oh, yeah. Falling and having your ventilator disconnected or malfunction while in public.

Speaker 9 She said like David, she has alarm systems in place and she even pays a speaking person to be with her at all times could call out for help.

Speaker 74 But these systems will never replace the ability to scream for help and the loss is real and it's terrifying.

Speaker 74 I was a pretty sassy young person, so I laughed when I heard David's threat to sue his school. Maybe that's one aspect of being disabled in a non-disabled world.

Speaker 82 The aspect being what exactly?

Speaker 74 I guess we have to be tenacious and pretty daring in order to get the bare minimum which in many ways drives us and our ambitions.

Speaker 74 He created something out of a personal need that helped many disabled people which is so rad.

Speaker 82 Does learning about him as a person

Speaker 82 change your feelings or some of your frustration with that phrase, dignity through speech?

Speaker 74 My stance hasn't changed after David's mom reflected on that phrase.

Speaker 74 Yes, David and I both lost our voices and he was able to gain it back thanks to the invention of his valve but let's say he wasn't able to speak again.

Speaker 74 He would still have dignity despite mourning the loss of something so close to his identity.

Speaker 74 I miss my voice every day and am frustrated by how I communicate and the way I sound on the radio right now but I still have dignity.

Speaker 24 And in true Alice fashion, she has since joined this organization for folks who are non-speaking.

Speaker 67 It's called Communication First and she's become a part of their advisory council, just

Speaker 26 sort of like advocating.

Speaker 9 Advocating for folks who don't have a speaking voice and shining light on all the ways people can communicate.

Speaker 42 Right.

Speaker 28 And yet, okay.

Speaker 22 You shown the bat signal on the moon two days ago.

Speaker 62 Do you want to tell us why we are here?

Speaker 56 It turned out, despite all her beef with the speaking voice, or her belief that most of us overvalue it, all that while she had been feeding recordings of her old speaking voice into this AI model to try to recover hers.

Speaker 76 This is an impossible wish, but my hope is that any sort of generated voice from my past can capture my humor and personality.

Speaker 76 This may be too much to ask from something artificial, but at the very least, maybe when talking to friends who knew me in the before times, they will feel like it's the same me.

Speaker 9 And so one day she messaged Annie and I and was like, It just made me a voice based on my voice.

Speaker 41 Do you guys, I haven't listened to it yet.

Speaker 67 Should we try it out together on tape?

Speaker 76 Yes, let's give it a whirl.

Speaker 75 How do we, how should we do this?

Speaker 76 Okay, I'm going to type a sentence and play it.

Speaker 34 And

Speaker 42 hello, Google, Eddie.

Speaker 71 This is the voice created by AI.

Speaker 27 Oh my god!

Speaker 34 It was eerie, right?

Speaker 61 Yeah, that's not not

Speaker 17 you. And like the part I remember the most is that it included her breathing machine, like it included the very unique voice that she had.

Speaker 40 Yes. What do you think? Okay, what do you think?

Speaker 71 I agree, it's like a reclamation of my old self.

Speaker 71 And the old self that was always a part of me. That didn't get a chance to come out.

Speaker 71 Of course, I can't go back, but

Speaker 71 this is a tool that might be helpful.

Speaker 71 Adjusting to this new way of existing.

Speaker 71 I wonder if a good analogy is with cosmetic surgery. This is something I don't really need to live, but it makes me feel a bit better about myself.

Speaker 16 But here's the thing.

Speaker 82 Alice!

Speaker 73 A few months later, when we check in again.

Speaker 82 How are things over there?

Speaker 74 Good to see you.

Speaker 47 She's not using it.

Speaker 30 She doesn't want to use it.

Speaker 41 In part, she said, because the more she thought about it, she realized that.

Speaker 74 It's no longer who I am.

Speaker 82 That is a question I've had throughout all of this, though.

Speaker 72 Like, is

Speaker 82 inside

Speaker 82 necessarily any different

Speaker 82 just because the mode of getting you to the outside has changed?

Speaker 74 I think the inner me has changed because I still cannot be my full self. And by full self, I mean my old self, and this is a conflict that I struggle with.

Speaker 74 I lost a way to to express my personality, humor, I lost the kind of wit that comes from my ability to quickly respond or interject something vital during a chat.

Speaker 74 I lost my ability to debate and smack someone down with an argument who deserves it. I lost that sense of freedom, looseness, and messiness.

Speaker 74 I am still me to some extent from the before times but I miss the old me. I am changing, we all are changing, and I hope I am becoming fuller and a truer reflection of the inner me.

Speaker 74 But that's a work in progress. Hmm.

Speaker 12 I'm wondering, what are you noticing that's

Speaker 12 changing or becoming this truer version of you?

Speaker 74 As I say less with my text-to-speech app, I am more into my thoughts. Perhaps I am more precise and concise on what I want to say.
For me, everything I process is more vital, urgent, and serious.

Speaker 74 If only you knew what's really going on inside of me, haha. It's also a more perceptible, gentle world.

Speaker 82 Perceptible.

Speaker 82 Perceptible.

Speaker 82 Meaning, I like.

Speaker 82 Can you help me understand what you mean by perceptible?

Speaker 74 I am sensing and seeing and feeling more now that I am in the solitude of this silent world.

Speaker 74 I am taking in a lot, and perhaps because I am not communicating fully, I am absorbing things more than before.

Speaker 75 Like, for instance, Alice explained this moment with a friend of hers named Latif, who also uses a computer-assisted voice.

Speaker 24 They were at this party together.

Speaker 56 And she said they were sitting at the dinner table amidst all the people talking.

Speaker 73 She was watching as Latif's attendant helped him eat.

Speaker 74 in itself.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I guess, yeah, it just makes me think like sometimes,

Speaker 17 I don't know, sometimes the voice is

Speaker 17 this wall, like it's it's it can get in the way

Speaker 17 of two people and their connection. And

Speaker 17 yeah, I don't know, it's not, it's not all gain.

Speaker 8 Alice Wong.

Speaker 56 Her most recent book is called Disability Intimacy. Her memoir is called Year of the Tiger, and her website is Disability VisibilityProject.com.

Speaker 67 You can head there to learn more about everything she is noticing and perceiving.

Speaker 56 This episode was produced by Matt Kilty and Annie McEwen.

Speaker 46 It was also reported by them and sound designed by them with additional sound design by Jeremy Bloom, original music by Matt Kilty and Jeremy Bloom, mixing help from Jeremy Bloom.

Speaker 73 It was edited by Alex Neeson, fact-checking by Anna Pujol-Mazzini.

Speaker 46 And big thanks to Wren Farrell, who recorded our conversations with Alice over many years.

Speaker 51 Thank you, thank you, Wren.

Speaker 68 And also to Room Full of Teeth, the very talented musicians and vocalists who you hear a lot of throughout the episode.

Speaker 46 A special shout out to Amanda Kreider for helping us get our hands on this music, composed by Caroline Shaw, Judd Greenstein, Leila Hua Lanzalati, Rebecca Cariord, and Michael Harrison.

Speaker 62 And then a special, special thanks to Hector Espinall and his parents, Chrisali and Hector Espinall.

Speaker 39 Hector was our young child in the museum.

Speaker 73 Wonderful acting.

Speaker 13 And finally, special thanks to you,

Speaker 46 our listeners, for supporting us.

Speaker 50 It has been a deeply unsettling summer for Radiolab Radiolab and public radio across the country.

Speaker 46 As you are likely aware, Congress voted to eliminate all federal funding for public media in America for the first time in history.

Speaker 73 And for Radiolab and New York Public Radio, which produces this show, we cannot count on this funding to come back in the future.

Speaker 9 But while we may be defunded, we will not be defeated.

Speaker 22 And this is where you maybe, just maybe, come in.

Speaker 53 The best way that you can support Radiolab is to become a lab member.

Speaker 70 This is our membership program.

Speaker 73 For as little as $7 a month, a fancy coffee a month, you can become a lab member.

Speaker 67 And as a thanks, you get all kinds of perks and extras like ad-free listening, bonus content, and as of right now, an extra big tote bag.

Speaker 24 Our newest producer, Anissa, designed it.

Speaker 61 She drew it.

Speaker 75 She's a genius. She's very multi-talented.

Speaker 9 She could do radio, multimedia, and we didn't know it, but also drawing.

Speaker 30 And she designed it.

Speaker 17 Wow, it's so pretty.

Speaker 15 Isn't it gorgeous?

Speaker 48 Much more.

Speaker 17 you see. Ooh, I see.

Speaker 40 What's the theme?

Speaker 61 What theme is she detecting?

Speaker 17 The age of fishes. Well, I guess not.

Speaker 27 They're not all fish.

Speaker 51 Well, there's some. There's a seashell.

Speaker 38 There's a starfish or a sea star as they're called. There's a squid.
So, okay, so we looked back.

Speaker 12 The reason is not just because it would make a great beach bag, but we looked back and we realized we had like a secretly, incredibly aquatic year.

Speaker 38 So each creature represents a story.

Speaker 51 Can you pick any out of this?

Speaker 8 Where the heart is the shark?

Speaker 30 That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 24 Oh, there is a shark. No, there's a shark.

Speaker 22 That thing in the bottom left is the scientist's best guess at what an ancient shark might have looked like.

Speaker 24 Like the one from the shark inside you that like inspired all of our immune systems.

Speaker 8 Wow.

Speaker 22 That's it. So the one bottom left is an ancient shark.

Speaker 24 Can you guess any other ones?

Speaker 30 Pufferfish?

Speaker 22 Eel? No, no, no.

Speaker 16 That's on Neil. It's not Neil.
It's not Neil. It's a lungfish.
Oh, right, right, right. Is that a squid or is that Annie's octopus from the Octomom?

Speaker 27 What did we do with the squid story?

Speaker 22 That is a baby octopus. That is?

Speaker 55 Which is an octomom reference for you, Annie.

Speaker 16 Why is there a seashell?

Speaker 48 Don't ask about that, please.

Speaker 40 What about the top left?

Speaker 8 He's like, la la la la.

Speaker 22 The top, oh, the top left,

Speaker 22 not to brag, that's my guy.

Speaker 22 That is the singing fish, the toad, the ugliest fish in the sea that sings out to attract our mate.

Speaker 67 And we put him in our Screaming Into the Void episode.

Speaker 63 I did a little essay about him.

Speaker 46 But yeah, there are all kinds of references to other stories.

Speaker 41 It's kind of like a secret code, all rendered in this beautiful blue, and it is big.

Speaker 40 It is a big tote.

Speaker 17 I wonder if I could fit a toddler.

Speaker 34 Oh, I think it could, but would not recommend.

Speaker 61 Pack one in there. I think, oh, for sure.

Speaker 22 Maybe, like, in the way that like a doggy bag, like the toddler could put a head out.

Speaker 30 Yes. Yeah, I think.
Yeah, and they'll get a little coffee.

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 45 But please, if you would like this jumbo tote, if you would like to support our voices, go and sign up to become a lab member.

Speaker 46 It would mean so much to us. Just head on over to radiolab.org slash join.

Speaker 24 Radiolab.org slash join.

Speaker 12 See if it's for you.

Speaker 68 That was our show.

Speaker 51 Thank you so much.

Speaker 9 See you next week with more stuff that hopefully makes you think more deeply about this world and the sounds within it and the sounds that come out of you. Anyway, bye.

Speaker 42 Thanks.

Speaker 83 Hi, I'm Jonathan and I'm from El Monte, California. And here are the staff credits.
Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lila Miller and Latza Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 83 Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Blue, W.

Speaker 83 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Pazbutyaris, Sindhu Yanam Sambandam, Matt Kilchi, Annie McEwen, Alec Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandback, Anissa Vitza, Arianne Wack, Pat Walter, Molly Webster, Jessica Young.

Speaker 83 With help from Rebecca Rand, our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Creeker, Anna Pujo-Matsin, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 84 Hi, I'm Monica, and I'm colleague from Mexico City. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 84 Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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