Amy Landon

the world a great disservice. I've seen what happens out in the world and inside our relationships when women stay numb, obedient, quiet, and small. Selfless women make for an efficient society, but not a beautiful, true or just one. Welcome to the podcast. That's all about the voice, which means it's all about power. Who has it, how we get it, how we say

sound when we have it. I'm your host, Samarave, and this is permission to speak, where we can throw all our best ideas about how to get ourselves heard into the pot and start. Today's guest is Amy Landon. She is a dear friend of mine, and she's also an

acclaimed audiobook narrator in super high demand. She's narrated, among other things, White Fragility by Robin d' angelo, which I mentioned last week, Ted Chang's exhilaration Verity by Colleen Hoover, and a huge amount of well loved fantasy series as

well as erotica. I wanted to have Amy on because as an audiobook narrator and a voice actor, she thinks all day, every day about the voice as an instrument, how to get across store and character and tone and point of view when all you have is the voice.

And I love our chat about what it means to sound sexy, which I mean she's got a surprising take on, and also the practical side of taking care of our voices, which is my way of saying she's got all the goods on the over the counter cure alls when you've woken up with a sore throat and you know the

show must go on. We also talk about that comment from her past for many of our pasts about our voice that we wish hadn't stuck with us, and yet it did and really affected our relationship with our voice. And also um what it is to not necessarily fall in love with the sound of your own voice, but maybe fallen alike with it. Anyway, this is Amy Landon. How do you find your books? How did the How

does the book find the perfect narrator for it? Oh? Well, there's a couple of different ways at this point in my career. Usually publishers just match me up because they know my voice, and so most big publishers have producers that kind of do the whole kitten caboodle if they cast it, they decide who they want to do their perfect voices. They get it all lined up and they take you through the whole and how do they differ,

Like how do they describe those voices? Like do you end up seeing like an actual breakdown that's like we want a voice that is low and calm, or like how do they know? That's all on their end? I have no idea. They just see whatever the descriptions are and they think, Amy Landon, They read the book and then they go, Okay, what do I hear? What do I hear in my head? Whose? Whose voice? You know?

And you're usually matching to your lead character obviously, so you're matching gender and age and that kind of thing. Generally to the lead character of the book if it's fiction, and if it's nonfiction, you're often matching to the author. Oh, not to the desired audience, but maybe it's related related, But usually if a guy writes a nonfiction book, a guy, generally speaking, not always, but generally speaking. And why do

people pick you? Do you think because I'm amazing? I mean obviously, but you know what do you what do you think you're known for? Maybe it's an impossible question, that's solid question. Um, I do a lot of thriller, mystery, horror kind of stuff I would have. I don't know if that's just because I have a dark, dark soul or because I have a dark, dark voice could go in EA. Do you feel like when when it's that genre, Um, you infuse in an element of drama to it? Or

do you think that you're uh even about it? And it's not really you know that it's that you like the content, not that you like manipulate the I think it depends on every single book. So when I prep the book, when I read the book, the whole point is you're trying to find the author's rhythm, the author's voice, the authors how they would do it. And some authors are very like standing outside the story. It's very third person.

It's like this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and all the dramas happening in the dialogue. And some authors everything is very like heightened and it and it doesn't matter genres, genre by genre, every book is different. So this is partly why I wanted to have you in because you know, when we're talking about audiobook narrating, obviously what we're talking about is spending time in a booth and making your voice breathe life into

something that you didn't write. But inherent in that is the element of like, how does language work? How do you personally like put your feelers into a text and say, ah, this is the rhythm or this is the spirit of how this person writes. And it probably doesn't happen on an intellectual level, But what does your prep look like? Do you read it and do you think, oh, this makes me think of this other thing or does it feel like music or does it feel like like what's

what is that? I am an experiential trial and error kind of girl, so I usually do my prep. I read the book ahead of time, so I know what this structure is the shape, that kind of what's happening, who the main characters are. Take notes? Why you're doing that? Are you just like take it in. It's usually just at this point kind of sucked into my brain, unless it's you know, there's a bunch of pronunciation things, and then I've got notes on everything going on the side. Yeah.

Nonfiction you're like, I don't know that God from the second century BC, sumeria, no idea how to say that? Um. And then I usually just get in and I will do the first chapter until I've found the rhythm and do it meaning over and over and over and over until I found the rhythm. And some books you're just like, oh great, this author they write like I talk. I can do this falling off a log, by the way, that's not that is definitely how I talk to all the type guys. UM. And then some authors I really

like it is a battle. I'm just like i'm and I'm. I will get stuck on sentences and I'll go back and I'll get stuck on sets that I'll go back and I'll just do the first chapter until I'm finally like, Okay, that's how this person talks. That's how this person writes, and some people you can tell do not write to have anything read aloud, and you're like, all right, here we go, right yeah, and that's literally your problem to solve.

The biggest challenge for audio books overall, it doesn't really matter what audio book you're doing is it's it's the marathon of voice acting. So most voice acting you go in and you're like, I'm gonna do this commercial. It's two lines, it's three words, whatever it is that has zone challenges, but it's super short pieces of text where you're doing video games and you're just doing a bunch of dialogue and then grunts and hits and blowing things up.

And so if you have maybe not great like voice form, like you're not breathing or you're you know, hurting aspects of your vocal apparatus, it doesn't really bite you because it's so short. Right, you can go blow your voice out for one day of video games and you're fine. But if you're doing audio books, it's a marathon. You're doing usually six to eight hours a day in a booth talking a new microphone, and if you're doing it full time, you're doing that five days a week and

how does the eight hour feel. It's usually pretty brutal. Vocally, you're tired and you can just hear it. But the harder part is actually the mental So that's where finding the language and the rhythm is. By hours six, especially with complex sentence structure, your brain is tired, and staying engaged becomes some of the bigger challenge sometimes when you're that tired and you have to kind of I'll stop and just go back and I'm like, all right, why

is this important? Right? Okay, what does this mean? Again? Okay, wait, you just read an entire paragraph and you have no idea what you said. Go back to the top and do it again, because you're getting tired and right right

right your brain. And on a really really technical level, like what we're talking about in certain ways is actually like what word you lift to make sense of a thought, which obviously is a lot of the stuff that I do, especially when I'm working with English as a second language actors. You know what word gets lifted if you're comparing two things, for example, um matters to English. Years if we're gonna actually understand sometimes a complex thoughts, sometimes a relatively simple one.

I mean, even if We're just saying, like, you know, are you going to leave now or you're gonna leave later? But if now and later are not being held in opposition with each other in this thing that people call antithesis, if you can background, then you know, I mean, if you say you're gonna leave now or you're gonna leave later, people don't understand why they don't understand it. And then add into that that it's not TV and film. I

can't see their face. I have no context visually. They can't your face or yes, they can't see my face. Either way, you can't see a face. There's no face. There's a disembodied voice coming through your earbuds or coming over your car radio. And so that is the only way to make sense of what's going on is getting that language right. And unlike working on a script like a theater person, where you usually have worked on this script for months and you have gone through and everything.

I've got a book and going through and marking up every single sentence is just not practical, So you really are It is about staying on top of it and saying, wait, did that make sense to me? Okay, we're having a direc actor who's on the outside. They're listening like like our lovely producers here are and they would be out there and they would just stop and be like, Um, you know, I don't understand what you just said. Can we go major percentage of the work you do? You

do not have a director around. You're doing this alone in your own and you're producing and directing your own Yeah, so you're wearing all the hats at once. So here's a fun fact about today's guest. Everything you've talked about thus far is probably relevant to what I'm about to say. But you secretly, relatively secretly, also do erotica. Oh yes, relatively secret Um. So I wanted to talk to you

about sexy voice. What does that mean to you? I think that's such a fun thing to ask about because I think most women, when you when they see the words sexy, have a very distinctive idea of what that is, and I think it's often wrong, wrong meaning it doesn't actually make other people turned on. Yeah, I think that we have preconceived notions of this, like sexy voice thing.

I taught a workshop at an undergrad school for voice over recently, and I deliberately picked uh, commercial audition copy for the girls that, like almost every commercial audition, it's going to be like, here's the breakdown, we need twenties to thirties, blah blah, blast, straightforward read and somewhere in there. At least for women, it almost always says sexy. And that means that almost every woman is going to come in and get on the mic and be like, I

really like this pig Mac. Oh my god, this pig Mac, and I'm going to get like down here and I get a little husky, and every single person that is there like sexy voice, and it almost never works because it's almost always put on. You're almost trying too hard, unless you have a voice that is naturally kind of husky and low, which minus, thank you very much, But unless that's how you really sound, you sound like you're pushing, you sound like you're trying, and then it's not sexy.

It just sounds like your cartoon character. Then it sounds kind of awful. And so what I was trying to teach these people is that what's actually sexy is your natural voice coming through you. Having fun. Fun is sexy. Confidence is sexy. It's less about a timbre and a certain idea of sexy, and it's more just actually sounding confident on the mic, having fun with the text, putting a little bit of a wink and like a laugh in it. Literally smiling while you're talking really helps. And

for erotica audiobooks it's the same thing. Sexy is actually like you're in on the joke or you're in secret, and if you're funny, that's that's so much sexier. And even like in the sex scenes, it's not about like I'm gonna get all sexy time now, it's about being engaged and being confident and telling the story and engaging with the idea of falling in love with someone. It seems like a metaphor for literally the female experience that we think there's a box that we should be fitting into,

and there are signs that that's right. But if we all try to fit into that same box, we all become so generic that are we know, we leave ourselves at the door, and we can't actually, you know, become self actualized humans until we figure out what makes us happy, Yeah, and what makes you unique and lean into that vocally, Yeah, I don't know if I can talk about everything else, but vocally you can By the way, what makes someone sexy on the mic is them sounding like them. It's

the weird, like quirky people that you're hearing commercials. You're like, Oh, that's a weird voice. I really want to meet that person. So okay, But I'm going to challenge you a little bit on this because I also I think that ring is so true, right, and we all understand that. You know, we're living in a world where authentic is king or queen. I mean, we all hate that word because it's overused.

It's overused, but it does mean what you're talking about, that we find within ourselves something that feels real, not something outside of ourselves that we're trying to play at a and then be. But we all have a range of us nous, So you know, one could mistake this for like, well, then I should just come in whatever voice comes out of my mouth is the only one I have, and I shouldn't try to sort of find range.

But you work on so many different projects, from you know, erotica to White Fragility and extremely serious book about social justice, that you obviously do have various voices that are all equally authentically you, but that you bring out different aspects of yourself for different projects. Does that feel right? It does? But I rarely am thinking about it technically, And it really is more about what is the story. What is

the point I'm trying to make. If I'm narrating white fragility, I'm not thinking like, oh, I have to make sure that I sound like this when I'm talking about sex, right, or I have to sound very strong. I'm just like, Okay, I'm talking about this thing, and I have to make this thought clear. And so I'm probably going to slow it down and really think about it. But that's because I'm dealing with complex language. It it's not about me

technically choosing. So the choices that we make about how to sound in a moment, what tools from within us we bring are should not be arbitrarily made. They should be made based exclusively on the actual content that we're working on. Yeah, and if you're really connected to the content, I would say nine times out of ten that that whatever comes out of your mouth is what it should be coming out of your mouth, right, if you're really kind.

And there's and there's a there's an analogy here for anybody who's thinking, I don't know how I sound because I sound different in different situations. I mean, code switching is real, and I talked about it in in last week's episode. But all of us, all humans, have some aspect of changing the way we sound based on the environment that we're in. And so to think of that not as like, oh God, I'm so inconsistent with myself, but really just that we're bringing the authentic version of

ourselves to the moment at hand. And that actually sounds like what you're doing professionally. Yes, if I'm doing it right, and when it feels icky, you do the chapter again, then you do the chet. You just go do it

until you get it right. I asked my husband for if you had any questions for you, and what he asked was, um, something like, um, do you make big decisions about what characters what a character's voice is and then you end up being like super wrong and you realize like a way too late in yes, and it's awful.

It usually happens when you're doing book series because the first book series you're like, oh, these are my leads, it's gonna be great, and like Joe Schmo number three, who has two lines, who you're like, I'm gonna make him like a dude, and he's gonna what right, because he's had two lines. He's the lead the next book and no one told you that. And you're like, um, so what do you do? What do you do? What

have you done? You? You slightly adjust him, you make him sound a little less BROI, and you pitch him up a bit, but you're like, I'm I'm lean towards that, and then I'm also going to make him listenable. You do do accents I do. And I've also had like I recently did this. I have this lovely author who writes a million characters in these fantasy series, and she'll just give me general notes of like, oh, she's like

a sexy, strong woman. She'll be great, and I'm like great, and I made her breath And then book three she's like she's from Florida and I'm like, wait, but you made her British well because it's set in Scotland and there's wizards and there's like sure, there's people from all over the world. You just make choices. It's not like in a book. I mean, obviously, it's not like all of us in a book reading where we're like God's some sort of general sense of foreign Yeah, it was.

She made her britt and I was like, oh, she's from Florida. So I just hit the author up. I'm like, all right, so here's your choices. I can make her American in this book and we can just pretend she wasn't there in the first book, or you can change where she's from. What do you want to do? She's like, just make her American? And I was like, all right,

this is your call. And in real life, even if we're not doing an accent, right, if I'm in a really emotional moment of my life, weird sounds come out of you, you know what I mean, Like you say words and ways that you would never say them normally because your your heart and your brain and there's you're just a mess, and sh it just comes out and you don't you don't always sound like yourself, And all of a sudden, you have this devil voice that comes out of me because you're so angry, or you get

really hype, Like all of a sudden, I'm like high pitched in ways that I never am. And like part of what's gorgeous about how human communication works. We think about words as being these discreete. You know, units of meaning, and we pull the right one out at the right time and we throw it to people, and then if the right one doesn't come out, we feel really bad about ourselves because we were inarticulate at that moment. But I'm a huge fan of like the human experience is.

We're having all the stuff going on on the inside. We're trying to make connections with human beings outside of us, and all we have are like whatever word comes out at the moment based on all of the stimulus that's like moving around in our body. And all we can do is just have like grace around that. And we

use words. We humans use words in weird ways. I mean, sounds uh can shift, and the way that we'll say, you know, I'm not sounds different in eight different scenarios, eight hundred different scenarios, which obviously comes up when I'm working with um, you know, actors who are trying to be perfect and get it right, and it's like, you know, at the end of the day, right can mean so manyferent things, and we're inconsistent. Isn't it beautiful? I say either,

I say either, I say I don't know. Words just come out. I'm inconsistent with how I pronounced words in my daily life, so why would I not be inconsistent in an accent? All right, we're gonna take a break. We'll be right back. We're back with Amy. So, um, how is work being affected right now? Well, it's a It's interesting. I've been talking to the narrator community a lot because we weirdly have been weathering this whole coronavirus thing fairly well for most of us because we already

had home studios. Um, there are a few who didn't have had to really make shift home studios. It's pretty impressive. I've seen pictures of narrators who have built a studio in their parents car, in their garage, and they have a full set up in the back seat of a car, and they're spending six to eight hours a day the back seat of a car. I mean, I get, I won't. I did some pickups in the in my car and then Kat was in hers. Uh for our last week's episode.

We feel we're all joking. We're like, oh, we've been training for We've been training for Lockdown for years. We narrators, right, we work from home anyway, we have a full setup. We're kind of an isolated industry and all the people doing post tend to work from home, so a lot of it hasn't changed. And I was talking to a fellow narrator and he's like, you know what, it's like, It's like weird fish in a fish tank, just watching

while the house is getting robbed. And I was like, oh my god, that's perfect because our life hasn't changed. We're just like doing our little thing and everything's fine. And meanwhile you look out the glass and you're just like, oh, the world is exploding, and so you it's a weird disconnect of my life is sort of fine and very little has changed work wise, but you're looking out at

the world that is completely different happening around you. You're watching the house getting robbed as you're just like floating around doing your thing. Yeah. Well, and also people seem to want books now. Yes, audiobooks sales are going up. The cleaning of commuting for many people. I think, I think podcasts maybe you're going down, but I don't know how much. Obviously, just because there's a lack of like, you know, I'm bored on my drive and I need

something to listen to. And yet you know, obviously people have some time, especially people without children. It must be nice. Uh. And and are you know, looking for an escape or for something that feels like it's a it's a heightened version of storytelling that isn't just like the news every day. Yeah. And I think we're all getting tired of watching too much TV, watching too much you know, binging Netflix, and we're watching the news, and so long form narration is

it's actually sales are up, it's doing well. Amy. This was really like, um, the promise of the premise, Like, what a long con we've been. We've been prepping for this for years. Guys. That's also funny because I feel like you're you come from like a prepper family. It's like a whole different kind of prepping. Oh yeah, no, my parents have like a years to ply of food in the basement. I was like, Oh, you guys were ready for this. You've been You've been waiting your whole life.

Did you plan? Oh my god, Amy, Bill Gates and I we've had we've had a plan in the whole time. Oh god, Well, I'm really glad that. Um, you know, I didn't think of this podcast as being like hard hitting journalism where I was really going to cover the truth about coronavirus, and yet here we are, and yet here we are. It's my master plan, guys, it's my master plan. It's working wonders. That's truly tack too soon. Okay. Actually, speaking of your upbringing, how did how you grew up

inform how you think about your voice? Oh? Fun, fun question. I have a couple of different weird things. I grew up Mormon. It's very exciting group in a very uh religious community with traditional patriarch case out of order, very very traditional gender roles, um in the entire community, small town. And I remember very distinctly when I was four or five,

I was at church and I was singing. We were singing a little you know, church hymns or whatever for kids, and I was belting it at us, having a blast whatever, having a good time, and this little boy in front of me turned around. He looked at me and he just said, you sing like a boy. And I shut down, just completely shut down and stopped singing for years. I was so uncomfortable with it. And by the time I decided I wanted to sing again, I think i'd like

completely messed up. My own brain about it, and I've never really been a singer since, even though I paid for lessons, I really wanted to sing. I really wanted to be that, And I think that moment, in a deeply shaming way for a little, tiny kid like got in my brain about what I was supposed to sound like. Do you think it was about them the actual tone of the voice, or do you think is about taking

up space? I think both. I grew up in a world where obviously you're supposed to be, especially girls, quiet, and I'm not a quiet person. I read educated. There you go, there you go. It's a little bit like what I mean. My my family was quite that intense, but certainly that's the community, and uh, I am not by naturing quiet person. I've definitely been the girl in the theater who people turn to look at me because I'm laughing too loudly. It's upsetting for them, and I'm like, ohink,

it's funny. It's funny. I called myself a laugh leader, like I'm helping. I don't know, I thought I was funny guys. I think I was singing loudly, and I think I have a naturally alto voice, so I think it was a combination of like, I didn't sound feminine to this little boy, didn't sound like a little girl because I was not a high and I was loud and I was having a good time. And I think both of those things were not acceptable. So how did you? I mean, then you ended up using your voice for

your life, for your livelihood. Have you thought about like how that got reconciled or or how you embraced whatever that thing was that that boy was, you know, felt was transgressive. Yeah, I mean I definitely have. I don't know if it's fully been reconciled. I still like a mad that I'm not a singer. I'm still I'm still like heartbroken about that little part of me that got shut down years ago and got put in under under a shelf somewhere. But I clearly don't have a high voice.

And now I just talked like this all the time, and I'm much better about being loud and taking up space and phone calls and in public arenas, and I just have stopped caring so much and I own it now. But I don't know if I don't know, I remember that moment you and it really messed me up. I have no idea who that little boy is. Thanks dude, thanks for hurting my child brain. Should we name him? If only I knew what was his name? Let's let's make it up, some good Mormon name. Hiram. Oh god, wow,

this is not the cultural group. It's not the top, not on the tip of my tongue. It's a good woman name. All right, well, Hiram, Thanks m I mean, seriously, a lot of us have high ROMs in our life. Yeah. I think a lot of girls have been told to And obviously that was part of a larger, you know story that you were being indoctrinated into, probably around that age, in terms of how girls are supposed to be. Yeah, this also makes me think of when you went back

relatively recently and taught college kids did a workshop. What was coming up for them in terms of the voice stuff. We talked about sexy voice and sort of misunderstandings about how to you know, fit ourselves into a box that other people have for us. But what really resonated for them? What were they thinking about boys and girls in terms of their you know, what was really freeing for a

lot of them. As these were all theater students, so they're all doing plays and they're all in you know, classes with their voice teacher who is wonderful and she's great, but the whole you know, they're all learning how to like support themselves and get to the back of the room and play all these certain parts in plays. And I was like, voiceover is really really more about sounding like yourself. Yes, having range within that, but it's okay to sound like you. So it was fun to do that.

It was interesting to see what people felt like they had permission to do when I was like, oh, you sound you sound like an eighteen year old gay guy. Let's find the right role for you. I don't need you to sound like you're a twenty five year old buff soldier. I don't care. Do you think that's also actually true in terms of having the range to get paid? Yeah? Actually, I think the way the business is moving for on camera too, it's actually more about you figuring out what

you do really well and doing that really well. And I think, yes, there is range with in that, but I think we are maybe getting away from doing the disservice of telling actors that they all can do everything and they have to and they'll have to. I think casting and voices are changing in in the voice over world.

In video games and in animation. We're seeing a lot of that, and we are starting to see it more in TV and film, and hopefully we'll lean more into that when we all get back to on camera work, which hasn't happened for a while, but it will. It will again, and I think that we're starting to see different faces and hear different voices, and that is just it's going to change the world. Is actually going to change the world. Okay, I want to talk about some

very specific advice. You are my person I go to for a number of things, but one of them is over the counter medicine. Cocktails that solve body ailments. That sounds so you just pick up some cocaine everyone, I was very clear to over the counter I mean, and look at some cocaine everyone from the old drug store. So like, as somebody who relies on their voice, obviously on a daily basis and for money, what do you do if you wake up in your voice feels off. Oh,

there's so many different things. I'm a big fan of throat coat, which I know it tastes disgusting, but it does amazing. Thanks everyone lost that sponsorship if you just have to like get the vocal chords moving if you're dealing with postnasal drip and or uh any kind of congestion, which will just like postnasal drip is like the enemy, the massive enemy on vocal cords. I think it's actually the one thing that people are like, I don't know why my voice sounds on him like it's postnasal trip.

Does that in this context really just mean like it's left your nose, The mucasy stuff is left your nose and is now dripping down. And that's correct. Usually happens the most when you're sleeping. But so you elevate and will wake up in the morning and you're like, why is everything and it's gonna take me two hours to talk. I'm like, yeah, because you got clear cords up. Um, you try to sleep elevated. You're like, I can't sweep.

That is never going to I mean, I do try to give myself time to warm up and talk in the morning before I get in front of a mic for that very reason. But if it's happening because you have a cold or allergies throughout the day, will also keep keep happening and destroy you. So I think if you're going herbal, you go get this stuff called queer satin. Everyone. It's like nature's version of musinis, kind of queer sittin q U E R C I T E N. I

believe um. I pick it up at a Whole Foods, but you can probably find it any herbally place and you pop a couple of those and it will help clear you out. And if you're doing the I don't care if it's herbal, advil, Colton Sinus will like get me through anything. And how many don't you? Don't you take like four or something crazy like that. I'll usually take two if I really have to clear out, and then I'll take one every four hours after that or

something great. Great, Yeah, but it really is like my miracle drug. I go coldon sinus. Guys so good. And do you sleep with a humidifier? And I mean, like, do you know do a Nettie pot through your nose? Tell me all. I hate them with a burning passion. I've tried, and I'm terrible at them. But I do have a personal steamer. So the little like you put your face on it and just steams your cords and gets you moving if you're really dried out. My old

trick from the opera singers is hot pineapple juice. Yeah, you hate it up like you would tea, and you sip pineapple juice. That is an opera singer stand by. They love it great. What does it feel like to listen back to your own voice? It's something you do so regularly. A lot of people hate listening to their voice. How do you solve that? You just make yourself do it? You just you just do. Do you hate listening to your own voice? Or have you moved to a really

different relationship with your voice. I think I've mostly moved beyond that, But every once in a while I'll still hear something and I'm like, oh, really that's what I saw? What? Man? Do you think of those moments? Or when you sound the most like yourself or the least like yourself? Solid question, Probably probably the most like myself. It's usually like some video that someone made on an iPhone camera and I'm like, oh, wow,

that's brutal. I sound terrible. I mean, higher on would have an opinion, but I do think you if you can force yourself to listen to yourself objectively, if you can just let it go that you're like listening to me and I'm just listening to an audiobook narrator or I'm listening to a politician, and you take yourself out of the equation and what you're listening for is is it effective? Is it effective? That's all I'm listening for, Like listening for sense? Does it make sense? Is the

thing that I'm hearing? Like can I follow the thought? That's what I'm listening for? And then I'm like, oh, is it fun and engaging? Great, I'm gonna do a listen for that. I'm going to do a listen for I think it's awful the first couple times you do it, and then if you really can like separate yourself, you just go, oh, okay, I'm just gonna listen to this

politician or this narrator or what happens. This reminds me of is I actually can across a study where if somebody listens within um, you know, within the context of a study where they're like listening in a booth and somebody's you know, given them herror phones, if they hear a bunch of snippets of people's voices and their own voice is thrown into that mix and they're asked to, you know, judge in some sort of quantitative way, which voice they like best. People like their own voice best

when they don't know it's their voice. I'm going to link to that study. I was like blown because obviously our instincts is that's not possible. It also feels like it's not possible to not recognize their own voice, like they must have set up some I'll go back to the study and see fascinating because most people do, they say they hate to me that also if we believe it, if we just decide to believe it for a second, it should give us a sense of permission that our

voices actually great, and we with our judgment like it. Yeah, there's a subset this is making me think of, and I'm just getting aculative, but there's an aspect of hearing our own voice that isn't actually just about the tone of our voice. And boy does it sound different than it does me inside, because that's of course what's what's

really happening there. But also when we hear ourselves back, we may be hearing some of the ways in which we undermine ourselves, whether it's up speak or vocal fry or whatever that in the moment, you really did seem like that is the mode that we're in, it's who we're talking to, it's how we're going to get what we want. And then we hear it back and we realize m may be miscalculator or maybe just have some bad habits. So it can be a moment of reckoning

if we listen back to our voice. And that's how you learn, right, That's how you also learned from your That's why you listen to yourself is to get better. I don't know I have I have an interesting moment when I listened to my siblings. I don't know if you don't have siblings, so you don't get to have this moment. But if you have siblings, I think it's fun to listen to them objectively because then I have

moments of like do I do that? Because all of my siblings, but the girls in particular, my sisters in particular, do these things, and I'm like, your insecurity is in your vocality and it comes out in these like weird twists vowels or the way that they phrase, and it makes me really aware of what I do and how that I just think it's interesting to your family. I mean, I like to say that our voice reflects our life experience.

So obviously when we look at our siblings, it's a fantastic way to take out some of the variables and be like, these people had a similar life experience to

me up to a point. But then of course there's huge variations that happen once we leave home, and you know, have different ambitions than them and have different you know, people that we date and have different places we live, and have different educations and you know, different things and have different proclivities and yeah, and sometimes get accents beaten out of us humans humans. Okay, how do you think about breath when you're working in when you're not working? Oh,

big question for me. So I had nodules, vocal nodules when I was living in New York for a while. It was a combination of doing theater whilst bar attending whilst not sleeping enough because I was speaking over music and a a lot of people at a bar, and then going and doing plays and the Hashteck twenties twenties in New York. So I had nodules and I went to this voice teacher, a wonderful voice teacher at and why you to try to figure out how to get rid

of them because this e nt that I saw. I was like, oh, well, I mean there's sure probably to surgery and you're probably and I was like, oh, manly, I don't want to start there. So I went to this voice teacher and he sat and just talked to me for the first fifteen minutes about my life, like we're just going to talk. At the end of fifteen minutes, he looked at me and said, well, I know why you have nodules and we could fix it. And I said, okay, great, Why and he said your breath And I was like,

I have nodules because of my breath. He's like, yeah, here's the thing. I just listen everything you told me. You're the fourth of five children, which means you probably learned at the dinner table that the only way to be heard someone's talking along you want to say something, you jump in immediately, and like that's how you get a statement out. So you He's like, you, you have a tendency to interrupt, which is something I've worked on personally having learned that from him. So you have a

tendency to interrupt because that's what you learned. And what you're also doing is you're never taking a full breath before you speak, because you hear a moment, you do a catch breath, you jump out and you go and you're grinding your vocal cords because you don't have enough breath. He's like, you have to relearn to breathe. So I spent a bunch of time with him learning to take full breath before a thought and to do that in my regular life. And it was like the worst six

months of my life. It was awful. I was trying all the time. I was a mess because it was so much about how I just literally functioned and had since I was this big, and I had to retrain my entire thought process and body process. And I did get rid of my nodules. It did fix it and fixed it, but it was so much of my own psychology was wrapped up in it. How I interacted with people.

I had to really learn not to interrupt, really learned to take a full, deep breath before I started talking, so that like, on a personal level, breath is incredibly important to me, incredibly important. And then when I'm working on a mic, it's a weird thing. There's a lot of people who don't love hearing breaths in audiobooks, so sometimes they'll cut them out. I hate that. I think it makes it sound like you're listening to a robot.

I like hearing breaths, but you also don't want to overhear it, right, So I don't want to be blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I think of breath in that context, or when you hear um, you know, a public speaker, politician something. I think of breath as somebody who coaches people in those moments, as another unit of communication. Yeah, and so if you're taking a breath that feels very over dramatic and unnecessary, then that is telling a story which is I'm about to

be very dramatic and unnecessary, right. But if you're taking the breath that goes along with the thought, or if you're actually taking a breath because you're literally breathing in and out, and then it's an entire cycle of breath because the moment is large and there are no words, that is an important thing for listeners to hear. It says as much as the words would have if not

more and taking the time to breathe. I've also had to learn that, like right, because sometimes it's it's loud because we're trying to go so fast, and there are moments when I'm narrating them like this, we're going to get through this as an action sequence, and it has to be slow enough the listener can follow it, but you are keeping the energy up and some of the breaths are going to happen a little more audibly, and it's okay because it feels like it's part of the rhythm.

But then there are times where you're like, I'm gonna take a full breath. And what it also does is lets listeners go, oh, I can breathe with you. And now we'll go into this new thought. Because listeners breathe along with you, you're also telling them when to take a breath. And when I made a joke early on

about a SMR. But like, my understanding of the whole you know trend is that it's a way of acknowledging that when we are listening to people's voices, it has a direct effect on our nervous system, which is what you have the power to do when you are in people's ears telling a story. Okay, we're gonna find out whose voice you brought in for us to listen to after this. Okay, we're back with Amy, and who have you brought in for us? I have brought in a

childhood hero slash obsession, Jane Goodall. So it's it was really fun to go back and listen to her as an adult and sort of put into context what I loved about her as a kid now as an adult and where her voice fits into that spectrum. Do you have an answer to that? Well? As a kid, I mean I was I was obsessed with I really wanted to be Indiana Jones, Right, He's a guy and he was an archaeote, Like, that's what I wanted to be, able with these archaeologist running around the world doing all

these crazy things. And Jane Goodall was the closest real person I could find to that who was a woman, and she was off an Africa, and she was this well respected scientist who ended up I mean, she is I think the kind of the premier expert on chimpanzees in the world, and she built this whole life for herself in a very adventurous way. And I think what I Also love about her is that she's done it in such a way that feels so, for lack of

a better word, feminine. Like all of her work is about empathy and understanding and connection, and so it's science that is, it's definitely science as research based, but it always felt like it was she saw the bigger picture, she saw macro. She works from a place of empathy and she's this scientific expert, but she's also like the warmest, softest spoken. She's a really interesting mix of what I

think we think of contradictory things personally. Oh that brought here is my eyes so yeah, yeah, and it actually ties in pretty well to the little bit I picked for us to listen to. This is from her Ted talk in two thousand two, which feels like, you know, half my life ago, and yet what she's talking about is pretty relevant unfortunately. So let's dive in. Yes, there is hope, and where is the hope? Is it out

there with the politicians. It's in our hands. It's in your hands and my hands and those of our children. It's really up to us. We're the ones who can make a difference if we lead lives where we consciously leave the lightest possible ecological footprints. If we buy the things that are ethical for us to buy and don't buy the things that are not, we can change the world overnight. Thank you, eighteen years ago and so relevant today and something that we have epically failed to do. Amazing.

I mean, I did happen upon an article quoting her from like two days ago that literally said, coronavirus is you know, our fault and here's why, having to do with you know, just erosion of the distinction between the environment and our own lives and the erosion of the environment period. Um. I'll link to it because everybody needs to read it. But yeah, yeah, So, first of all,

she's very British. She is, she's very British. She she feels very proper and yet and yet there's a there's a bit of a relaxation that suggests she's not trying to put on. You know, there's something I love about her and you can certainly see it just by looking at her in this in this Ted talk. Also is she's just not interested in being glamorous like you just so get that she's lived among chimpanzees and what works

for them works for her. You know, you can tell there's um, there's a degree of careful I think about how she talks, like she's really trying to be as clear as possible, which suggests the lifetime of trying to communicate. Yeah, she spent her lifetime studying how to communicate, right, and and and you know, across species is obviously like the most massive version of what we what we are always talking about, which is, you know, trying to be understood

by somebody who's not like us. And there's also an element of sort of complete lack of strain in her voice, like she's just not pushing, She's saying exactly what she's come to say. She knows it's true. It's speaking with authority, but without trying to sound like you're authoritative. She just she just knows what she's saying is true. I think it's also interesting listening to that clip, in particular the

Brits versus how Americans speak. I think Americans were always talking about up speak at the end for women, or we're talking about I'm going to finish the thought and so I go down, and Americans do this a lot blah blah bah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah, and the Brits are so good at keeping thoughts floating and they kind of land right in the middle.

And I think she does that beautifully in that clip where she's gonna she speaks and she's talking along and she gets to the end of a thought and it's the end of a on but it doesn't really like end of a thought or end of a thought. It's like she just drives all the way through in a

really easy way. I do an exercise with clients sometimes along these lines, because people do have habitual you know, up or down at the end of thoughts, stuff that they do for all kinds of reasons having to do with you know, just habit or habit based on on um social cues that like it's better to sort of lose power at the end of your thought in case somebody disagrees with you. You know, there's all kinds of

like multi level things going on there. But the super simple, sort of comical exercise that I've done with a lot of people is like throwing a fake ball in the air and trying to have your voice match what the curve of the ball is doing. So if you're throwing the ball from like low to high while just saying like, my name is Samara, just seeing if you can actually do like my name is Samara, just to see like

it does that feel normal? Maybe it does for some people totally does right, And then to do the dropping the ball thing and feeling what it feels like to have what you know, what you're from saying, which is sort of this American concept of front loading, where we put all of our energy into the front of the thought and by the end we're sort of like whatever. So then in that case it would be like my name is Samara, which often is connected with vocal fry, right.

And then the hardest one is the third one, obviously, the final option, which is to throw that ball until it actually hits the wall opposite you. Not harder than that, but to actually hit the wall. And what does that sound like my name is Samara. It feels scary, It feels weirdly scary, but it is something to practice, and you know, it becomes obviously less scary, and it feels vulnerable at the same time, which that's Jane Goodall always

sounds to me like someone who owns her vulnerability. She feels so open, she feels like she walks through the world just like heart open, mind open, empathy open. But she's again also a premier scientist and researcher, which is such an interesting thing that I don't think we often put together. And you hear it in her voice. I think you hear she's not afraid of being emotional. She's not afraid of expressing things emotionally in scientific turns. Hope.

You know, hope is it's way cooler to be cynical. Yeah, And she's like, I'm finding my own kind of cool. Yeah. Instead of hating your after all of these years of researching, instead of being angry at humanity, she's still focusing on hope. And when I saw that article from just a few days ago, which is obviously almost twenty years after this thing that we just listened to, and she's saying the same thing, I was like, Oh my god, the amount of energy it takes to maintain that kind of hope.

I mean, it's what a lot of us are trying to sort of navigate right now. But just to think about the decades and decades of it and saying, guys, where the problem We can do this overnight? Wait, Okay, but how about tomorrow night. But okay, but we can still do tomorrow night. But really, but really, guys, but really, Thank you so much to Amy Landon for joining me. You can find out more about her in the show notes or on our website Permission to Speak pod dot com.

Please also go to the site if you have any awesome quotes or any questions you want to submit for my next mail dig episode. What is getting in the way of your voice? I always want to know? Also feel free to send d M s or voicemailmos to our instagram at Permission to Speak Pod, where we're posting a bunch and join the community. Thanks as well to Sophie Lichterman and the team at I Heart Radio, my

family and cohort and all of you. We're recording this podcast at various locations around Los Angeles on land that used to belong to the Tongva indigenous tribe, and you can visit us D A C dot us to learn more about honoring native land. Permission to Speak is a production of I Heart Radio and Double Vision Executive produced by Katherine Burt Canton and Mark Canton. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, listen on the I Heart radio, app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. H