Samara Bay

of us are free. A world that isn't intimidated by confidence when it shows up in a woman, or in black skin, or in anything other than our preferred archetypes of leadership. Hello everybody, and welcome to the inaugural episode of Permission to Speak, a new podcast for anyone who thinks that the way that we talk about women's voices could um use a little work. I'm your host, Samarbe

for those first episode the this is actually me. So we have Jack O'Brien, the head of my Heart Radio l A, in the studio and he's going to be interviewing me along with Katherine Burke Campton. So I'm going to tell you guys a little bit about them for context.

Here's what I know about Jack. He first of all, founded Cracked dot com in two thousand five and was editor in chief there until he left in to become what I like to call the King of podcast over here, where he produces projects like The Ron Burgundy Show and the one that he co hosts every single day called The Daily Zeitgeist. And uh, I should say I know him as the gentleman who greenlit my show, which I mean will surely be his ultimate legacy. And then Kat

and Mark are my producers and my friends. And Kat is joining us on Mike today as well. Wait there she is. Hi, guys, this is Mark. I'll probably do a pickup of this because I'm not gonna like the way it sounds. Um, and I have to say also, they sometimes bring their newborn Eloise, and um, she's got

some hot takes, ladies and gentlemen. Anyway, I'm thrilled that they joined me in the studio today and I can't wait to share with you guys why I pitched this show and why I'm so excited that we're doing it. Samara Cat, thank you for joining me here. I'm glad you've no so, I guess I wanted to uh talk about just what is great about the show. Why I'm super excited to have this show in existence and on our network. Um, why I'm excited to have you Samara,

Thank you. I have to say, by the way, I'm wearing my same blazer I wore when I pitched this show. I just I just felt like, you know, my new lucky blazer. Yeah, and it's a great blazer. Uh. And I was just looking back at the email I sent after you pitched it, and it was like, I think it was I sent it while you were pitching it. I was like, we have to get this show on the butt pitch. It's something. I host a show called The Daily y. I'm not saying that to plug it

like upto, man, am I right? But I am, you know, because it's a daily show. I am plugged into like what is happening in the culture on a regular basis, and the subject of women's voices and voices in general is something that I feel like keeps coming up. Is uh sort of becoming a front line in you know, some of the most important conversations we're having about power dynamics. And then you came in and just kind of put it all into words and like made it Crystal Clear

for me. And then there was, you know, an episode of This American Life where they talked about how the most common feedback they got was men telling the women on their show to stop having vocal from that was like ten years ago, and people are like, vocal fries

this new phenomenon. It's gripping young girls everywhere, and I'm like, it's actually been around our entire adult life, and amazingly because the men on This American Life have way more affected voices than can we just real quick define vocal fri because we're gonna talk about that, Yeah, for sure. I mean vocal fry for me fits into a much

larger category of ways that we kind of hided vocally. Um. But it I mean, it's technically for for people listening who have always been like, what does it really sound like? It's something you're probably already doing at the ends of a lot of sentences, but it is when your voice goes from like being supported with breath to kind of not being supported and sounding like that, Ah, that was good.

It's almost like you did this. And I know and I do tell people like even when we say something strong and powerful, like you know, I believe filling the blank thing. We often end it if we're talking in front of other people and we suddenly become self conscious, we often end it with like I care a lot about this thing, or like whatever, and that's you know.

I mean, honestly, one of the biggest aspects of my kind of ethos or philosophy as a you know, speech coach for people is that I am not actually pointing those things out to demonize it. I'm not saying like young girls who do this are bad or are you know,

or even are undermining themselves. I'm saying it's something that we should be aware of and that we have so many more tools at our disposal, so we have to know is that thing we're doing helping us get what we want, or is it's something we've picked up at some point to please someone else and it isn't actually

our authentic voice. Yeah, I mean, it's the raw material that we communicate with, and that a lot of communication, especially now as podcasts are increasingly becoming a record of the oral tradition that we have what um, it's it's increasingly the raw material that we're using to spress ourselves and to communicate, and it's just something that hadn't I hadn't specifically thought about in the terms that I probably should have been thinking about it until you came in

and were like, here and let me describe it in this incredibly clear and perfect way that just crystallized a lot of things from it. I mean, I do feel like, um, the voice, I mean, I don't feel like the voice is invisible. Guys, you're here first. But you know, my point is really that although we may have seen think pieces here and there, the voice is invisible and we haven't necessarily thought about our own voice except for those

rare moments when somebody points it out to us. You know, a lot of my clients, whether we're talking about actors or we're talking about people in like you know, the corporate world, or entrepreneurs or politicians, a lot of them are people who are finding their way into power in a new way, Like they see it on the horizon, or they're being offered an opportunity or they're not being

offered it and they're ready to fight back. And what do they do differently to bring you know, the best version of themselves into those scenarios so that that power happens. So the people who deserve it, get it. That's yeah, I mean there, there it is. There's the cry. Oh,

I don't know, I don't know, but you know. But but what I what I really loved about that conversation that we had, Jack, was that, um, I was able to talk about what I've always thought about, which is that, like, the voice is a way in, it's a frame to talk about so much of the societal stuff that's played out on our bodies and in our minds in terms of how we talk to ourselves in these high stakes scenarios.

And you know, because I have a background as a voice coach, I also have found ways that the voice solves a lot of the problems that seem like they require all kinds of other things. But really, you know, learning how to breathe just a little better than you already are, uh, can actually change your life, you know.

So that's the the thing where like when I've worked with people from all kinds of different industries and seen the same patterns, the same like getting them to breathe a little bit more, getting them to realize that stuff like vocal fry is about not taking up enough space and trusting that what they have to say matters, the same patterns come up with all of us, and so the I mean, the dream for this podcast was that we could kind of see the similarities and break them

down and say, here are some tools so that we can break the patterns that need to be broken, and let's do it together. I mean, I told you this in them when I pitched this too, because it had just happened. But the real origin story for this podcast is that, uh So I went to Princeton undergrad and they the crowning achievement of that was really that they asked me to come back and speak at this women's conference and there was like Justice Soda Mayor and Justice

Kagan and like you know me. You know, it was just the lums gathered around the water cooler. There was no water cooler, not Aton, but it was a golden water cooler. Um. They had told me that as somebody sort of the more creative side of things, as a Princeton alum, they wanted me to come back and do a workshop on the voice to a group of fifty to a hundred women as sort of a breakout, you know, option at this conference. And uh and I was like yeah, and I had been working on a wonder woman at

the time. At the moment I got that call, I was like in Washington, d C. On the phone with them and they were like, what would you want to call it? And I was like, how do you use your voice to get what you want? Clearly I was on a bit of a high. And then a week before I flew out to do this workshop, I got an email the four hundred and sixty people had signed up for this, which and I remember just thinking like, okay, a, I need to actually figure out what I'm doing now.

But the um, you know, if we need some market research on who needs this help, it kind of seems like a lot of people, you know, and um. And then I had an hour fifteen and I had this big, you know, gorgeous like gothic building to interact with these women, and I my dream scenario really came true, which was that the first half I did talk a lot about these patterns, the the the tricks is maybe a word

to use that I've found that really helped people. I have a lot of sense of like kind of psychological hacks, so that this isn't like a six month job to find your voice. It really is like let's just talkle that switch. Let's just in the moment right now, no drama, no preciousness, Let's just try something new and see how

much our nervous system can actually like adjust. And I talked about that, but the main thing that happened was I had made sure that there was gonna be microphones in the audience, and about halfway through, I was like, so, why did you come to something about how to use your voice to get what you want? Like what's going on? And truly what's going on? And it was, you know, it was a room full of four indred plus women of all different ages, and they looked, you know, like

they had all kinds of different life fixed variances. And they got up and started to tell me about them. And there was like, I mean, I remember there was like a woman who had just gotten out of college. She was like twenty two, I think she had just launched a podcast and was dealing with trolling about her voice. And then there was a middle aged woman who had a teenage daughter who was freaking out because her daughter had up speak and like, oh god, she'll never be

taken seriously in life. And then this woman stood up in the back of the room and she was probably the oldest that you can begin and to have come to Princeton because they didn't let in women till the seventies. And she said she's the only female board member of a massive financial institution and and I'm trying to be delicate and uh, and she said she couldn't get a word in edgewise at meetings. And I thought this was a good chance to sort of see if there's kind

of some group wisdom here. And I asked, like, is anyone else here from corporate, you know, and do you have anything that's worked? And people started to stand up and offer suggestions. And that was really when I was like, this is there's something here, because you know, I got some really kind feedback afterwards about how I should do a TED talk, and I was like, yeah, I succeeded at you know, standing up on a stage and doing all the things I teach other people to do, like

seriously check. That was awesome. But the real magic was when people were sharing you know, quote unquote best practices across industries, and I was like, there isn't like a place for that. And then you know, I was on a friend's podcast and I was like, oh God, this is my media. Like that was like a month afterwards, and I was like, oh, maybe that's maybe that's what that because I didn't know how to process what that

Princeton thing was like. That room was magical. You came back completely just you know, a glow with what the process that happened. And I was so moved by that moment when I think that's when we kind of had first met each other, and I'm I am just so proud of you sitting here and we're doing the show.

Thank you, my love. We have a mutual friend UM named Jess who who had said to me as I was walking out the door to go to the conference and we were at a coworking space we're working at together, and she like, I'm literally in the door frame and she was like, it's not a moment, it's a movement.

Thank you for that. Needed to hear that, but you know it really, um, it really set the tone for me that, UM, you know, my dream is that all of us in those moments that feel scary when we have to decide whether or not to sort of sound like the most generic version of ourselves as possible, or to sort of break out of that box. All of us have to do that work on our own, but that does not mean that we are doing it alone. There is a you know, unspoken god. The words sisterhood

comes to mind. I'm sorry if that sounds so cliche and cheesy, but there really is, and we're all dealing with this. And one of the things that Princeton thing taught me was that one of the ways in which we're conditioned is to think that all of this vocal drama we have, like I can't get heard or I don't like the way I sound, or I sound too girly, or I sound not cool and millennial enough, or I

sound you know, too foreign, or I sound to anything. Um. We often mistake that for being something that's happening only to us, and that we're alone in this little silo that sucks. And the real lesson is we're all in this together. So but I will say, I know it's about a sisterhood, and we're about it's about feminism, and

it's about the female voice here. But what I think this podcast brings to the table, and Jack, maybe you can weigh in on this too, if we let you speak um um, is that this podcast is helpful for men, for women, for whoever and wherever you are. And I really feel strongly about that. Yeah, I mean, look at somebody who's married to a straight white man. I can attest.

I cannot I And I have, you know, a little boy who I don't know what his you know, sexual orientation is yet, but you know, I'm raising a white boy and I think about that a lot. And UM, I have to say this as somebody who still works primarily in Hollywood, I'm working with all kinds of people who feel like outsiders. They're gay, they're people of color, they're people in toxic masculinity recovery, as I call it, allies.

We're trying to figure out how to stand up for the right people at the right time, despite their privilege. So this is really work for everybody. And part of my work that feels like it's sort of advocacy as well as just speech work is in trying to change the world in terms of how much we can reveal ourselves. And it continued to be something that gets us more power,

not less and be safe or not less safe. My background, you know, before running this podcast network was running a website with hundreds of writers, and even in in the written word. I was surprised, as a straight white man, oblivious, straight white man, that whenever there was a byline that suggested the writer was a woman, it would get at least two the scrutiny, the negative feedback just brutalized in

the comments section. Um. And then I started seeing it happen with you know, the most talented comedians that I worked with on this network. There would just be scrutiny of their voice. Part of what I'm interested in is

saying like that is not necessarily inevitable. I mean, I hope our society continues to change, but if it is inevitable, if it is, just like there is maybe an additional struggle the further you are as a human from like the straight white male archetype, if there is that additional struggle to be heard, to be understood, to be taken seriously, let's just acknowledge that, and then let's make that struggle be as I mean, joyful is the word that comes

to mind, and I don't mean to minimize people's experience, but let's just make that something that's shine a light on that, the same way we're shining a light in the voice. It just is an additional challenge to be understood if you don't look like the archetype of power. And yeah, okay, great, we acknowledged it. Now what do we do? Yes? And you know, what we're really talking about is like, wouldn't it be amazing if we could all just be ourselves? And you know, life is really

complicated in American is really complicated. And I don't think it's responsible as a communication coach to tell people be yourself by you know, because there really are less safe spaces. But I do think that it is my job to encourage my clients to be as brave as possible about pushing on the edges, like what are the assumptions that

actually can fall down? I will say from my own experience that tomorrow you have helped to coach me, But you continue to help coach me as I get deeper into being a producer and owning my own company and you know, to a place where I am so excited and happy to be. It takes more practice to be

able to continue the longevity with that. What you reminded me of, thank you for that couty you reminded me of also is that like very obviously we can all we can all say that when we talk about the voice, we're talking about the literal voice, which we don't often you know, shine a light on, like as somebody who has a background in dialect coaching, I'm I can think about you know, avowal and a consonant sound, you know, like breaking breaking down the voice into the most micro units.

But I'm also talking about the metaphorical voice. How we stand up for ourselves, how we stand up for our communities, for people that don't have a voice. And so what I'm finding for myself, for you, for our friends, for you know, everybody who's sort of on a journey of trying to become the best version of themselves in public. Uh, there are little things that we can do up top to sort of like let go some of our old

tricks that aren't working anymore. But then there's like next level ship And that's what's been coming up with some of my guests too, that you guys are gonna be hearing from, is like, you know, yeah, it's all well and good to be like I found my voice, and then life gets harder and you have more power and suddenly you have to say no more and how do you say no in a way that continues to help you, quote unquote get what you want well? And so a lot of our guests that come on, we have people

from scientists to celebrities to mindfulness experts. But I think what is important you've said up before, your voice is connected to your heart and to your brain equally, and I'm excited to explore that with you on this show. Jack, Do you have anything to see Your job, just in general is something I didn't know existed. Uh that, Like I thought a voice coach was the person who hits the button on the NBC show and like turns around and I didn't know that there have a job. Yeah

for it And I'm so waiting to hear back. But well, now you're in competition with me, and I'm going to lower my voice to um. But I would just love for the listeners to hear just a little bit more about all the different ways that you work with people.

I've been thinking back on the threat of this, but it was like, I don't know, seven years ago or something, and I found out about this organization on the East Coast called the Alan All the Center for Communicating Science, and my dad's a scientist, and I was like, I'm pretty fearless in that realm as somebody who's not a scientist, but like, you know, it doesn't get too scared of talking to scientists about how they communicate, perhaps badly and uh.

And so I got trained by them and was already thinking like, how is what I do with actors applicable in other industries? And then you know, I would coach friends here and there when they would have a pitch for, you know, something major that mattered to them. And then the twenty sixteen election happened, and um, I started feeling like the activism I was doing in my own life and the skill set that I had could actually coincide.

And that was a pretty new thought for me, actually, and and it ended up manifesting itself in move on dot org finding me and having me coach a lot of women who are running for office for the midterms, and god, that was such a good experience and it really made me realize that, you know, so much of the um work of dialect coaching. You know, people hear actors and they think, oh, I'm not an actor, so I can't do whatever that is or what smart does

isn't as relevant for me. But the reality is it is like this small percentage about those vowels and consonant sounds and this huge percentage about how humans communicate. And I realized that I've been spending my entire life like sort of logging away both amazing readings on that subject and also picking up mentors and all so observing. And you know, I'm finally with this podcast and with the work I'm doing, like taking head on that question what

does power sound like? Because a lot of us have a version in our heads of all the people we've heard through the ages and what they used to sound like, namely, you know, this sort of rich, grumpy white man narrative. Uh. And if we don't sound like that, we either try to or we shut ourselves out before we're even shut out of rooms of power. And you know, a lot of that is societal. It's not our fault. But to the extent that we do have power, I'm interested in

playing there. The experience has been so interesting to create a podcast it's about empowering female voices because there's decisions along the way that we have to make in order to market the show the right way. Yes, we were We were talking at some point about these images of my mouth that were used for a New York Times piece about my work from a few years ago. It's my mouth actually moving into three different vowel sounds, if

we want to be very technical about it. But on its own, the female mouth often just gets really sexualized. And look nothing against sexuality or against my lips being amazing. But you know, when we think about women's mouths, we often think about them sort of from the perspective of the male gaze, and a mouth that's closed is, you know, looking hot for the sake of a man. A mouth that's open is often used in media as a sort

of shorthand for women or shrill. I don't know if it's um unconscious or not, but you know, there's like a mainstream media choice about how to portray women who dare to be powerful. And so I went into the idea of what to do with this logo design, uh, knowing all of that, and what we ended up with him that I kind of love is it's my mouth literally in the middle of talking. And by the way, I can't wait for somebody to decide what I was

saying in that exact moment. We were all sort of arrested by that image when we were looking back at um the proofs, because we just don't actually often see a woman's mouth just in the process of talking. Thank you so much for having me on your episode zero. This is a good, uh brief sort of thumbnail version of what I think people are going to find out is so great about your podcast in the coming uh

for decades and lifetime. So thank you. I'm just so excited to be on this journey, and I hope our listeners understand how much we want them to obviously take a minute and listen, but to really become a part of this community and share your voice with us and with the people around you, and to have permission to speak the Thank you to Jack O'Brien and Catherine Burke Canton for guest ho hosting my show. You can find out more about both of them in the show notes

or on our website Permission to Speak pod dot com. Also, I would like to point out that in episodes moving forward, there's a segment at the end where my guests get to bring in the voice of someone they admire and we talk about it, and you can actually hear that in action with the other episode that drops today where

I got to interview Evan rachel Wood. Also, you can go to Permission to Speak pod dot com if you have any awesome quotes you'd like me to read at the top of the episodes, and if you have any questions, I will do and ask me anything episode from time to time, and I want to know what is getting in the way of your voice. You can also send d M s or voice messages to our Instagram at Permission to Speak Pod where we're posting a bunch of

content and please join the community. Thanks as well to Sophie Lichterman and the team at I Heart Radio, to Megan Read, to my family and cohort, and to all of you. We're recording this podcast in the I Heart Radio studios in Hollywood on land that used to belong to the Tongva indigenous tribe, and you can visit U. S 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