Good Job, Brain! - 136: Raise Your Voice

Episode Date: November 28, 2014

La la la laaaaaaaaaa~ We explore the world of voice and speech. Learn about the history of "the robot voice" and the crazy machines that made synthesized speech possible, we turn into Munchkins and find out why helium makes your voice squeaky, famous speeches every pub trivia team needs to know, and how to speak Australian! ALSO: Congrats Rob! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, delicious, dexterous dukes and duchesses of the digital den. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 136. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. and we are your verifiably vivacious va-vav-voom vickers and vixen's voracious for vocabulary and voo-vozalas. Wow. Oh, man.

I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris. Before we start the show, I have this really interesting listener email, and two episodes ago, we talked about safety. Yeah. And Colin, you dropped the truth bomb on lightning traveling through phone cords, phone wires. Yep. Up to your face.

I've quoted this to people, and they're like, yeah, we know. Oh, really? Yeah, this happened. I'm from a place with lightning, yeah. And here I have an email from Daniel. And Daniel says, I just listened to the safety episode and want to share with you that circa 1992, my sister was struck by lightning during a summer thunderstorm in Columbia, South Carolina.

She was in our parents' kitchen talking on a corded kitchen phone. I arrived home shortly after it happened. and found her unconscious on the floor of the kitchen. The receiver on the wall phone was next to her dangling from its cord off the wall. She wasn't unconscious for very long at all and escaped without any injury. But she was a little foggy and confused. 1992. That's like an encyclopedia Brown mystery story.

It's like a lateral thinking puzzle. You find your unconscious on the kitchen floor. The phone receiver is on the ground. There's no murder weapon. Yes or no questions only. was there dry ice is it dry in there? I noticed the handset

was warm when I hung it back up it smelled like lightning it smelled like lightning it smelled like baby we're glad she was okay not to make light of this yes we can laugh

because she's okay she's safe and he says since then we don't ever talk on the phone during thunderstorms and my family which is pretty ridiculous

since we all have wireless phones these days it just became part of habit. Right. You won't find any of us showering during a thunderstorm either. So, yeah, I mean, like, I've never heard of this until you mentioned it, Colin, but seems like a lot of people have experience with it. As you say, like, we don't have a lot of crazy thunder and lightning storms out here in the Bay Area compared to, you know, living out in the plains somewhere. But, yeah, I mean, as I say, like, we had that family story. We used to laugh at my great grandma, but no,

she was right. Yeah. Pretty nuts. So thank you, Daniel, for, for writing in. I'm so happy that you and your, well, your sister survived. Yes. All right, without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot. I just want to say, Chris's baby is in front of Chris. Like, you are... I'm one of the ergo baby. You're like a kangaroo.

Like it's a reverse baby backpack. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I'm like a, yes, I'm just like a kangaroo. I feel like you have an advantage. You're cheating now in the pop quiz hotshot. There's two brains. There's two Chris's.

Yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll see. We're adding buzzers. We'll see what happens. Yeah, yeah. We're going to add some buzzers and some boonings. All right. You guys have your morning radio zoo buzzers.

I have a trivial pursuit card. Here we go. Blue Wedge for Geography. What national capital is called, oh no. Crung Thep in its native language. They set you up for that. Colin. Cambodia.

What national capital? Oh, oh, oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay. Dana. Go ahead.

Uh, Ho Chi Men City? Incorrect. From Vietnam. I don't think it's national capital. I don't think it's Bangkok. Bangkok? It's Bangkok. Oh, I thought it was Bangkok.

I didn't say that. Oh, okay. Wait a minute. That sounds like Thai as well. It does. Yeah, it does. It does. It does.

All right. Pink Wedge for our pop culture. What kind of legal agreement inspires the plot of the Cohen Brothers movie intolerable cruelty Oh Colin? I think that's a prenuptual agreement Yes it is pre-nup

starring Catherine Zeta Jones Nice accent Nice nice Welsh accent there Oh yeah she is I think she is Yeah she is All right Yellow Wedge

Who wrote Industrial Society and its future Published under duress by the New York Times and Washington Post on September 19th, 1995. Published under duress in 1995,

Industrial Society and its future. 1995. Colin again, wow. That's the Unabomber, right? Ted Kaczynski. Yes, it is. Ted Kaczynski. The work is more popular known

as the Unabomber Manifesto. Industrial Society and its future. All right, Purple Wedge. Tom Wolfe. originally wrote the bonfire of the vanities for what magazine? Oh, oh, Harper's. Incorrect. What is it?

Is it? Was it Esquire? Incorrect. The Atlantic. Incorrect. Chris again. Rolling Stone? Rolling Stone.

It was published in 27 installments. Yes. Yep. Wow. Yeah. It's kind of a throwback. I remember the movie and I fell asleep as a kid. Yeah.

I think most people agree it was not a very good movie. Oh, okay. I was like, what is this boring? Sorry if you were involved in making of that movie. All righty, then GreenWed for Science. What software product was originally called Display, then Image Pro? Chris. Adobe Photoshop?

Photoshop. All right. All right. Last question, Orange Wedge. What video game is recognized as a sport in Norway under the name Machine Dancing? Yeah Chris. Got to be

Dance Dance Revolution. Correct. Dance Revolution. That was so, it's still big thing. Recognize that's a sport in Norway. Yes. It is athleticism.

It's super athleticism. Good job, brains. Oh, sorry. Quick announcement. I don't know if you guys know, but I know because I receive text messages. Our former pub trivia teammate Rob from New York

our lobe trotter number one. Yes. Is going to become a pub Quizmaster. Go, Rob. In New York City, we don't know where yet, but yeah, he went to the

actually the It takes years of training. So the pub quiz that they're running in New York is the same company as the company that runs our pub quiz. Yeah, so in fact I ran into Liam who runs the

organization that runs our quiz night and he's like, yeah, so do you know Rob? I'm like, yeah, I know Rob. I give him a good recommendation. And that's how he got the job. I'll expect my kickback in the mail, Rob. No, he actually had to go through tryouts. Yeah.

Like, he had to audition. And he actually did have to deliver, like, round and read round three. And I was like, that's so cool. He would be good at it. He's really funny. Yeah. He's very dry.

So if you're in the New York area. You have to be able to look at the words and then say the right words if you look at the words. It's harder than it sounds. Right. Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, a lot of people have trouble with that. I can't even pronounce some of the stuff. You know what I mean? well don't read those questions I know it's so cute it's okay I know oh it's so cute uh oh is he gonna puke on you

no no no no okay oh he might decide that he needs to start eating or something he's like I want to be a quiz man he's looking for a boob he is he's like where is it where is it

let's all pray he doesn't find one it's gonna be a little awkward but for whom yeah what's a buff for for everybody for him he's like We all in this. Uh-oh.

Well, we're going to take a quick baby break, and we'll be right back with your regularly scheduled podcast. Oh, friend, it's okay. Oh, so cute. So today's episode this week we're going to talk about, you know, since we're on a podcast. Oh, are you recording this? It's very meta. We decided to do a topic on voice and speech. speech and the power of voice

the power of voice I have a cute I have a cute little thing for you guys I have a cute little thing for you guys But it's just, you know, just to loosen us up. In addition to the baby. Yeah, you want to take them. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give each of you a little slip of paper that's going to have three English language words written on it. And I just want you to read them out loud.

Just read them out loud putting separation in between them at first and then read them all out loud. Okay. All together. And I'll let you know who I want to go first. All right. This is scary. Yeah, it's okay. I think we're going to say some bad words.

You might know where this is... Yeah, you... I'm not tricking you into saying swear words. Don't worry. I was having flashbacks from 6th grade. Right, right, right. Yep. Okay.

Cool. Here, Colin. Oh, there are a sign. Don't look at it. Don't look at it until you're... Dana and Karen. So I want you, Dana, Colin, Karen. Okay.

So, again, read it, put some spaces in between, and then just read it all the way through, and then you do the same thing, you do the same thing. Okay. Rise up lights. Rise up lights. My, bull, fine.

My bull, fine. Good I might. Good I might. So you want to read them all fast again? Rise up lights. My bull fine. Good I might. You're all speaking Australian.

What are, rise? Rise up lights. You just said razor blades. Rise. The way that some of our Australian listeners ride a bit. Rise up lights. Oh, rise-a-flight. My bull-fine.

My-ble-fine. My-bo-fine. Maybe fine. Mobile phone. Mobile phone. Oh, my-bo-fine. My-bo-fine. And, of course, Karen has said.

Good, I might. Yes. That's very cute. These phrases have been kind of, you know, going around Reddit and the Internet for a while. There was just a video where they captured some people's reactions to saying these that's getting passed around a little bit. That's pretty cute. And it's interesting, it's like, it's kind of reminding us like, oh, we make all of the sounds that, you know, people who speak with a different accent make. We just put them in different order and, you know, we use them for different words.

But, yeah. I had a friend and she was telling a story how she went to visit Australia and she was at a fah, you know, a noodle shop, you know, P-H-O, you know, the Vietnamese-style noodle shop. And she's, the menu was written in case you didn't know what this food was. Sure. So, you know, they're like, pha, and then in parentheses it says, pronounced like fur, F-U-R. Oh, yeah, of course. And in her mind, she's thinking like, fur. She's like, no, it's not.

But like, oh, for an Australian speaker, it's actually pretty close. Yeah, it's closer. Fah, yeah. All right, that was good. That was good. I feel like at least one-tenth Australian now. Well, we got tintams here, too. That's true, yes.

20%. So 20%. So, yeah. I've got a quiz for you guys. A general grab bag. You know, I like these grab bad quizzes of voice facts, vocal facts, speech facts. So please get your buzzers ready. All right.

As you guys likely know, vocal singing, completely unaccompanied by music, is called... Acapella. Acapella singing. Correct. But do any of you know what Acapella means? Chris. In the chapel. What?

In the manner of the chapel. That's right. That's right. Chapel style singing, basically. Like Capella is chapel. Cappella is Chappellas, like in the church choir sings in the chapel they sing without. Yeah, that's right. Aca awesome.

Like a lot of musical terms. Yeah, like a lot of musical terms. Yes, Italian, like a lot of musical terms. Yes. Right. And, of course, an allusion to its origins is church singing, religious singing. You know, just it feels more important without all those fancy instruments there. We'll stick with singing here.

What? And you guys can work together on this one. What are the four traditional voice? voice types for male singers. Tenor. Oh. Oh, okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. You guys can go one at a time if you want there. Yeah.

Base. Yep, you got three of them. Alto. No, right? No, tenor, baritone, bass. I believe countertenor. Correct. Oh. Yes.

From lowest to highest. Higher than tenor, right? From lowest to highest, bass. Bass. Baritone. Tenor. Countertanner. Yes. When you're talking about boys, like boys' choir, then they'll have like alto or supreme higher right there are a few enough you know what they call male sopranos that they call them male sopranos it's yeah yeah yeah the guinness world record

for greatest number of characters voiced in an audio book okay we may have discussed this on the show before i'll give it to you guys it's roy dotrice okay uh for his reading of a game of thrones uh by George R.R. Martin. Whoever gets his closest will be correct. How many characters? I know you guys have all read these, seen the show. So think about it. Really think about it.

How many characters were voiced in a Game of Thrones? 126. Chris says 126. That's a lot. 80. Karen says 80. I'll say 50. 200.

Oh, my God. 224. Every state. Two hundred and... Servants. Right. Roy Dutrice. Wait, hats off to you.

Yeah. Did all of those people talk? 224 people did. Wow. Point of view character might be in some other room talking to five other people. Absolutely. That's true. And they interact with a great number of, you know...

Right. Just think about everybody up at Castle Black and the nights watch. Oh, yeah, because it's not a... It's not a narration because each chapter is... is a different character, so he has to get into that character. Well, and all the characters they interact with, more importantly. I wonder how many of them are the same voice, though.

Yeah, yeah. Like guy number six, or, you know. Jim Henson and Frank Oz worked together for many years, of course. They famously voiced what two duos? Karen. Kermit and Piggy. Yes, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. What other

famous duo did Jim Henson and Frank Oz's voice. Dr. Bunsen-Berner and his assistant beaker? No. Oh, that's good. That's a good duo. Bert and Ernie. Oh.

Okay. Bert and Ernie. Since the first Academy Award ceremony in 1929, this will be another closest to answer. How many silent films? Oh, wow. Which is to say, very specifically, films with no voice or speech in them have won best picture. Ooh. Since 1929.

1929. First awards were given out in 1929. I say 10. Three. Six. Just one. Wow. Jazz singer?

I mean, talkies was right around the same time. It was. It's right. As we know, the jazz singer was sort of the first full-length sound talkie. And that was right around

the same time they started giving out the Academy Awards. It was not the jazz singer. It was Wings. The very first movie to win Best Picture. Oh, okay. It was silent. Everything since then.

God, that is such a good trivia. thing. We got to remember that one. So now this, so here's the thing to watch out for at Pub Quiz. You know, some people might say, hey, but what about the artist? The artist one in not 100% silent. Yep. There are. It's topped at the end. Yes. Yes. And also there's some voices in his dream sequence. Yes. But, you know, they very pointedly kind of, it has a lot of weight because it's silent for the rest of the movie. Yeah. We'll stick with movies here and TV as well. In the world of movies and TV, what is an under five? If you call a person. That person's an under five. What is an under five?

Dana. I say under five words. You're close. An under five is an actor who has no more than five lines of dialogue. Because this is where the pay scale, this is the break of pay scale. If you have more than five lines of dialogue and it's limited to 50 words, then you start getting paid more. The ability to throw one's voice is an old entertainment tradition, of course, also known as ventriloquism. Oh. What does ventriloquism literally mean in Latin, ventriloquism? You can probably figure out at least half of it. Yeah, locatious is like talkative.

Distance talking. Like vent of cold. Chamber. I like the way you guys are trying to break this down. It means belly talking. Belly talking. Belly? Venter. Venter is your stomach, your belly.

Yeah. So stomach, stomach speaking, stomach talking. as if you're projecting it from a different part of your body. All right, last one here. And I'm sure this will be an easy one for you guys because I'm sure you have all been taking our advice we give to listeners, studying the order of U.S. presidents. I'll even give you what president this is.

So this will just be a softball for you guys. All right. Thanks for setting us up, Colin. Play along and pretend. He was the 19th president of the United States and was the first president to have a telephone in the White House. Oh, man. 1879.

Okay. Any guesses? Any guesses? Grant. Madison. You're close. You're close. It was Rutherford B. Hayes.

Hayes. You say hey on a telephone. Oh, I like that. Hey. President Hayes. Hey. President Hay. There are some great anecdotes about him and the first phone in the White House.

So first I learned that he has been. unfairly maligned by, uh, no fewer than two presidents, both Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan have told this anecdote of, you know, that when Rutherford B. Hayes first saw the telephone, he said, oh, that's a great invention, but who would ever want to use one? And this is actually not true. He was a big technology proponent. He was fascinated by the telephone. Probably why he wanted one in the White House, right? Yeah. All right. Good job, guys. The human speech in general is just fascinating. Isn't it the idea that we're able using this weird combination of like our lungs and throat and teeth and tongue and stuff to form. Yeah.

It is. It's like you think it's like a machine, but really it's just like squishy stuff. Yep. But to form these unique sounds that we then interpret as having meaning and all the different weird kind of stuff we can do. So over the years, inventors and crazy people have attempted to build machines, you know, that can raise. Definitely not. Lots of connections. Build machines that can reproduce the sound of human speech. And so when you, I mean, now we have Siri, right?

Which is pretty dang good when you listen to Siri. Sounds pretty great. When you start looking into the history of speech synthesis, two machines keep coming up. One is considered to be the first historically verifiable mechanical speech synthesizer. and then the first electronic. Right? Mechanical. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the search for the earliest machine that attempts to mimic human speech brings us to Wolfgang von Kempelent. It already sounds old. Does anybody remember Wolfgang von Kempelan? We actually spoke about one of his... Phonograph? Not the phonograph. That wax reel?

Not the wax reel. No, it was, this was a, um, we talked about him on our hoax episode. Wolfgang von Kempelan was the creator of the mechanical Turk. It was the machine created in 1770 that purported to be a robot that played chess, but was actually, it was a hoax. There was a guy inside control. Now, this was still a very intricate and cool piece of machinery, right? I mean, you know, you try to. building a box that a guy sits in and it controls a, you know, you know, man that

moves chess pieces around a board and that guy's got to be able to tell where the chess pieces are. Somebody just said challenge accepted, Chris. Yeah. So, I mean, he was a, you know, he was a scam artist, but he was a smart scam artist. And so the vocal apparatus, the speech synthesizing machine, this was real. Like, this was, this works. You know, linguists understood, like, vowels and consonants and, like, how sounds.

were made, basically. Let me ask you this. What is a vowel? What is the definition of a vowel? A vowel, it's anything that's unencumbered air through your passageways. Very nice. Wow. Very good.

A vowel is any sound you make without cutting off any part of the vocal truss. A-E-I-O-U. I didn't use, I didn't stop anything. Any consonant, like C, I have to stop. it. T. P. And, of course, they have all of the, you know, like, labiodental, you know, when you put your teeth to your lips, you know what I mean? Like, that sort of thing. Frickettives. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's all classified by like,

what you're doing, like, you use your lips and you click that close the ear. Or like a glottal stop, like when I say, like someone whose name is Martin, you know, and I just say Martin, Mr. Martin. I'm just like, close open my throat, right? Yeah. So anyway, vowels, you don't stop. And so basically. Basically, people kind of started to realize, and certainly von Kempelan thought, like, oh, okay, so what I need is just an air passageway, and then a variety of different ways to stop the air that would simulate the consonants, and I could have a machine that you could control that would make. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Sure. So basically, the machine that he created looks like, it looks like a shoebox with a bellows attached to it, like the thing you've used to blow air onto a fireplace. Yeah. So just imagine that. and you put both your hands into this thing to manipulate the bellows with your like forearm like while you're working all these different like holes and levers and stuff so like you it's like accordion yeah yep so you're pressing the bellows and you're holding your hand over a rubber opening that like is a mouth and so that you know depending on how open that is it'll sound like a or oh you know so there's your vowel sound there's a reed that vibrates and that produces the sound of the of the of the mouth. Sounds sort of bagpipe-like, maybe, in some ways.

Nostral holes that you had to cover unless you wanted a nasal sound. Oh, wow. It's like a fake face. Yeah. There's levers that let air escape in such a way that it makes s sounds. And so if you just let it go, you get s. And if you voice it, you get z. You know, that's the difference between S and Z is, is there a voice?

Right. What? Yeah. The original machine is in the Deutsch Museum in Munich. It's still there. Cool. Um, you can still mess around with it if you, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're, well, no, you can't. You and I can.

Like, experts in the field of antique musical instruments can, can get permission to do it. There is a replica, um, that, uh, somebody plays on, uh, YouTube that's also in your, so I can play this for you. Yes. Oh, yes. Please do. Um, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama. Mm-hmm. Mama.

Wow. Whoa. Oh, that's creepy. It's like the teacher from Snoopy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was the origin. That was the origin. And other people would sort of jump on that, and there were more machines.

There was one, there was a really freaky one. There's photographs of it. Bigger, it's more elaborate, but yeah, it lets you sort of play all these parts of the machine to try to produce speech. But the guy put a, like a wooden woman's head on the front of it. So it's this big, it looks like a big sort of elaborate, you know, like. like a set of monkey bars or something and then a woman's face on the front and then you can make the mouth go up and down

while you're saying stuff. It's like Siri's great, great, great, great, grandmother and also horrifically freaky. So now, let's jump ahead to the 1930s, the late 1930s when Bell Labs, an inventor named Homer Dudley at Bell Labs, he debuted the voter

at the 1939 World's Fair. Very good. Yeah, 1939, World's Fair in New York. Bell Labs and Homer Dudley debuted the voter for voice operating demonstrator. It's helpful to think of it as like the second half of a text-to-speech, you know, computer. It didn't take text and turn it into speech, you know, but because it had to be operated by a human. It was actually very similar to what the Von Kempel and machine, it was just electronic instead of

mechanical. Okay. So somebody had to put in commands to get the machine to make these sounds. Like a simple keyboard. Yep. So the keyboard had 10 keys, and then there was a foot pedal, and the foot pedal would control intonation. And the 10 keys would just, would control things like consonant sounds, hissing, vowel sounds, popping, you know, nasal sounds, and just you combined it all together. So here's some, so here's some audio from a demonstration of the voter at the, I believe, at the World's Fair.

Well, we've heard the voter make a word, and by combining words, of course, we get a sentence. For example, Helen, will you have the voters say, she saw me? She saw me. That sounded awfully flat. How about a little expression? Say the sentence in answer to these questions. Who saw you? She saw me.

Whom did she see? She saw me. Well, did she see you or hear you? oh that's cool the different intonation yeah that's pretty good now something you might have noticed you might have picked up during that sound clip the interesting thing about the voter the operators were all women women because he said oh helen could you make the voter say this so what i what i assume here is that you know at this point you know typing right typing letters and doing stenography and stuff like that was primarily a female profession at this point.

And so that is who they kind of called upon, you know, to operate the voter because they were bringing in because, you know, the keyboard was like using a stenography machine, basically. And so they were calling on, you know, the absolute most talented, like, typists in the country to come and do this. And it actually, so Helen there, she had to train for a year to be able to use the machine that way. Oh, I mean, it's got to be like learning anything. instrument like you say it's like it's yeah yep um because you just have to break the word down into all

of its component parts and like you know hit the you know the right thing for the right consonant sound and then kind of like you know let go of that and go into the vowel and then do the end of the word no there's something that i noticed about you know listening to the audio there's even some like film clips of this demo too but listening to the way that they kind of constructed this whole demo there was something interesting that i that i noticed about the about the technology i'm I want to play you a clip of voter speaking again, and I just want you to tell me what is voters saying in this clip. I'll play it again. I get your point.

Your point is, with the previous demos, the person says what the voter's about to say, to give everybody context and prime you so you're expecting it. But when you just play it out of context, it's hard to get it. Yeah, I couldn't make it out. He's saying, good afternoon, radio audience. Okay, so Helen, why don't you have Vodas say, good afternoon, radio audience? Good afternoon, radio audience. Yeah, it's funny. You know, you can hear it.

Wonderful, voter. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Also notice how totally, I mean, you know, they actually did, they really do to emphasize, like, you know, how difficult it was. Like, they auditioned hundreds of women, and they got down to, like, just a tiny handful of people who were talented enough to do this. But, like, man, Helen, her contributions to history here were pretty, we're pretty serious. Serious. Like, you've got to be talented to make it do all those things.

Good job, girl. Yeah. And, of course, we, you know, we had these same issues with the first recorded sounds also. Like, I played you guys, um, that twinkle, twinkle little star, you know, when he was like, what is, what is this? What was he saying? All right. Let's take a quick break. a word from our sponsor.

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So when I found out today's show is about speeches and voice, I was immediately like, we should bone up on our speeches. They come up in trivia all the time. It's true. And we're not very good. I know. I know. So I went to time.com and I was like, what are the most, or what are the 10 most famous speeches? Like, if we can't do the A's...

Like, we have to know. We have to know. Not word for word, but know that they can name them. Yeah. I'll tell you the most famous line from that speech. And you tell me who said it and the name of their speech. All right. Okay.

All right. You're a shame. All right. Buzzers up. These are top ten. We can't do that bad, right? Top ten? The title of this speech is hard.

Okay. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah. All right. My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. what you can do for your country, everyone. John F. Kennedy. Man, I don't know the name of that speech.

Yeah, but that's definitely JFK. Uh-huh. This is from his inaugural address. Okay. All right. Yes, 1961. All right. Got the person right.

That's good. Four score and seven years ago, our father's brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Everyone. Abraham Lincoln,

the Gettysburg. Yes. Do you know what year? Well, I mean, it's four scores and seven years after 1776. 87. I like your math approach. That's a good, I mean. 87 plus 76. Right.

I don't know. I don't know. 1863. There we go. You would have gotten the answer right. That would have answered it. That would have answered it. Pen and paper.

Nice. Yeah. All right. Wait, how much, a score is 20, right? Yeah. Score is 20. Yep. Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be perfect.

purchased at the price of chains and slavery. Forbid it Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. Patrick Henry? Yes. Who is that? He was a one of the...

It's kind of a pounding forward. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was revolutionary, right? 1775, this was his give me liberty or give me death speech. Oh, that's what's called. Okay. All right. There we go. Some of these were kind of named after their famous line.

Yeah, okay, okay. Trick question. Patrick Henry. All right. All right. They're going to get a little trickier. These are still pretty famous speeches, but they might not be speeches you've thought about since high school. Okay.

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Does somebody upset? Really upset. Is that an OK? You're kind of upright. Malcolm X. So you're like a hundred years too soon.

Frederick Douglass? Yes. Oh. It's called the hypocrisy of American slavery. That one came up on a lot of speechless. I looked around. I was like, oh, okay. All right.

It was we the people, not we the white male citizens, nor yet we the male citizens, but we the whole people who formed the union. And we formed it not to give the blessings, things of liberty, but to secure them, not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people, women as well as men. Can go both ways. Yeah, I'll say Susan B. Anthony.

I was going to say Susan B. Anthony. It's Susan B. Anthony. Yeah. The suffragette manifesto. Women's rights to the suffrage. Okay. Okay. Nice. You ask, what is our policy? I can say it's to wage war by sea, by land. by air with all our might and with all our strength that God can give us to wage war against the monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalog of human crime this is our policy

this FDR like getting us you're so close it's like right era it's like yeah right error yeah Winston Churchill yes getting Britain into World War II yes you know the name of this one this is the blood toiled tears and sweat speech wow yeah they're so dramatic yeah they have are. All right, just a couple more. We have also come to this hollowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make the real promises of democracy.

That's got to be the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. Yes. Do you know which speech? Was that the Washington Monument speech? It was, but that speech has a very specific name. Does it? I mean, that was I had a dream? Yes. Oh, okay. Yes. For some reason, they never make you say that one in elementary school. You don't get to that part of this. Yes. Yeah. All right. There is no moral issue. It is wrong, deadly wrong, to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of state's rights or national rights. There's only the struggle for human rights. I have not the slightest doubt what will be your answer. So getting people to vote? Yeah, it's not the slightest of what will be your answer. It's going to happen at any time, right? Yeah, really? Yeah.

Is this like around like Civil Rights Act? Mm-hmm. Oh, Johnson? Lyndon B. Johnson. Yeah. The American Promise, 1965. He had dogs. All right.

Last one. He did. He did. He did. And he would lift them by the ears. All right, last one. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. That's Ronald Reagan.

Yes. Yes. Ronnie Riggs Ronald McDonald's What was the name of the speech? Was it just... This one would come up, I think. This one is a remarks at the Brandenburg Gate.

Yeah, because he was there at the wall. He was this wall. Yes. Yeah, this one right behind me. This wall. Yeah, 1987. Good job, you guys. Yeah.

I'm motivated. Okay, guys, so I apologize for a potential squeakiness that you might hear in the background. So when we talk to... about voice and speech. I think I just watched this on the Jimmy Fallon show, on the Tonight Show. He

and Morgan Freeman, he challenged Morgan Freeman to inhale a little bit of helium and narrate things with Morgan Freeman's very stately voice in helium. Okay. He was not very amused. And it occurred to me that I've never, ever done the helium squeam-

Really? I thought that was just a right of childhood. No, I've never done it. It also perplexes me, like, why does your voice become squeaky after helium? So, I actually have helium balloons here. I'm going to try it for the first time. What should I say? What should I say?

Something really dramatic. It's, you know, it's more fun if... You should do a good job, brain podcast introduction, you know? Yeah, do today's. Read the alliteration. Yeah. Yeah. For the first time ever, yes. Karen's voice on helium. As I will...

No, Karen, you have to take a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you have to take a breath. We'll show you what it's like And then you can do it Hello and welcome to Good Job Brain I'm Chris and I'm here with Colin Dana and Karen Talking crazy facts about the human voice And what happens to it when you have helium

And now you can see it going back to normal basically And we're pretty much back Yeah it's still a little high So a lot. Karen's first helium So now four reels Yeah. More, a little more. All right.

Hello. Oh, my God. I sound like an oopalupa. Or not oompa lupa. The thing is from Lolliland. We are the... Wow! Munchkin, yeah. We are... Yeah, nah, na, na, na, na, na, na. Yeah.

And then now it's... Oh, it's still a little bit high. Yeah, yeah. It's still a little bit high. Yeah. Whoa, that's weird. Right? That is super weird. Yeah, okay. Well, now everybody has to do it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a little higher. He sounds so cute. As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Some Culeo. Right, right. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Oh, you actually sound like a robot.

Tiny Ronald Reagan. So why does Helium make your, you're scared? Is your voice still high? No, I think it's back to my way. I'm stuck. What if it sticks this way? Why does helium make your voice? voice sound funny. Why? Do you guys

I mean? Oh, I mean, I don't know. It does something your vocal cords. Something with your vocal cords. Actually, so here's the thing. Contrary to popular belief, helium does not do anything to your vocal cords. It does not, and it does not change, even though it sounds high, technically

it is not changing the pitch. So how about this? What we know about vocal chords right so air it's it's it's carbon dioxide passing through our vocal tract through our lungs right helium is lighter than air it's lighter than carbon dioxide so it must sound moves differently in a different way yeah exactly and it's it's so weird to think that what voices sound like to us is entirely dependent on the air quality the the pressure the the temperature of the world.

It doesn't change that much wherever you are in the world because, you know, our air, our atmosphere is probably comprised of the same kind of proportions. Maybe I'll change with temperature. Not huge, not huge variations. All your squishy bits are still making the same exact movement. It's how that frequency travels through the air. It excites the air molecules more, and helium is one of the light. making the frequency higher, making you sound higher.

Awesome. I absolutely, when I was a kid, there were grownups who in the explanation they gave me was, as you say, it was a common, oh, it tightens up your vocal chord. So it's like, okay, it sounds plausible, but there is no, yeah, we can't make any sound without air. And the air is the vital component of it. Of course, this goes the other way. Obviously, I don't have a heavier, but if you do breathe in heavier, which please don't, it will sound lower because your frequency is lower and so sound more bassy and less pitchy, even though your larynx and your vocal cords are doing the same exact movement.

So that blows my mind that it's not our voice, it's how we perceive voice. It's very kind of counterintuitive. It's always startling to be reminded how much of our perception depends, yeah, on the physics of the world around us. Sure. However, I have to say, you know, I guess I should have made this disclaimer in the beginning. of my segment. Breathing helium, even though it was fine

and you heard our funny voices, could be very, very, very dangerous. And this is because when you breathe in helium, you're basically not breathing oxygen. You're not breathing oxygen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you might deprive your body of oxygen. So if you take a really big hit, please don't like, it could be very dangerous. Actually, just this year, there are several deaths involving with helium, like at parties for people breathing in helium.

Right. But it's like, you don't want to see. Huffing it? No, it's to make funny sounds. Yeah. Oh, really? Well, like taking a helium balloon and inhaling a little bit of it and making funny sounds

for a few seconds, fine. But like, don't go getting a helium tank and like sucking in tons and tons of helium. Or even just, or even just breathing a lot of the helium. Like we, you know, all four of us shared one balloon, basically. And it was like little sips. And you could hear that our voices went back to normal very, very quickly. Yeah. With little kids, why it sound funny, they would inhale.

a whole balloon or more, hold it in, and within seconds, you're depriving yourself. Yeah, you pass out. So here's the thing. Most of the deaths weren't necessarily a fixiation. It was because they would pass out and they would fall and hit their head on something. So it is, I just want to say, it is dangerous. If you do want to sound funny, if you're a kid, you're listening to this, you want to sound funny, you know, have an adult there.

Prentile supervision, absolutely. Yeah, ask your parents. That was pretty fun. Like, I'm not going to lie, that was, that was pretty fun and that was pretty weird. So did you, I'm curious, did you just never have the opportunity or you were always scared to try it? I don't think I even knew it was a thing until I came to America. And also it's like, where do I go? I'm so wacky in America.

Like, where do I go where there's helium balloons all the time? Right. I mean, not a lot of places, especially, you know, once you're an adult. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know a helium guy. Yeah. Yeah. So please, be careful.

Be careful. Be helium smart. Be helium smart. Be helium smart. Be helium smart. Be helium smart. Book Club on Monday Jim on Tuesday

Date night on Wednesday Out on the town on Thursday Quiet night in on Friday It's good to have a routine And it's good for your eyes too Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers You'll know just how healthy they are Visit Spexavers.cavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam

Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. Colin, you want to bring it home? And bring it home. Yes, I will close this out here. So earlier in the quiz, you know, I had asked the question about Roy Detrice, voicing the Game of Thrones characters. Yeah. I'd like to talk about one of those characters in particular, a character who has quite a few lines, good number of lines, but only one word. Oh, Hodor.

Hodor. Yes, we were talking about Hodor. In case you have never read or watched Game of Thrones Hodor is the... They describe him as the simple-minded, stable boy. He speaks one word. Like, all of his communication is Hodor. Hodor, Hodor, Hodor.

And he can modulate it, and he can give a different intonation. But there's some point in the books where they're just like, wait, his name isn't Hodor? He's like, no, his name is Waldor. Yes, that's right. Because all he could say was Hodor. We just started calling him Hodor. It's like, oh, okay.

He's a Pokemon. Hodor's condition is real. This is not something made up just for the show. George R. Martin did not come up with this. And it's not even as rare as you might think. Hodor, if you were to diagnose him today,

would be diagnosed with an extreme, extreme case of expressive aphasia. And you may have heard of aphasia before. Aphasia just generally as a family of disorders is any kind of neurological impairment that interferes with your speech or your language. There are sort of two broad types of aphasia. You can have expressive aphasia, which means you can't express yourself fluently.

You can comprehend oftentimes just fine, but he can only answer Hodor. He has low expression ability. The other type of aphasia would be receptive aphasia, meaning you can generate words perfectly fluently, but they may not make sense. You may not even be aware that what you're saying doesn't make sense. Whoa. Yeah. And, you know, you can imagine that each kind of aphasia would be sort of frustrating in its own way. They say that about 20% of people with chronic aphasia, some type of aphasia, have what's called speech automatism.

So speech automatism is basically a condition where you only have access to one sometimes or a limited set of stock phrases or words. I am Groot would be an example. of exactly speech automatism or or stereotypes type speech. I want to play for you guys an example of a real live person who has essentially the same type of aphasia that Hodor has. This is a man being interviewed and his, his Hodor word is tono, tono. And this is an example of how if you have to deal with this kind of aphasia, you learn to really express everything you can with this one word.

So let me play this short little interview. This is a clinical interview. And he understands everything. Right. So again, to be clear, his comprehension is virtually undamaged. It's virtually fine. It's the expressive part that is failing. However, we shall see how effective this patient is at manipulating his intonation of this utterance.

Tell me, why is it that you're moving, actually? Teno, tonal, tonal, tonal, tonal, tonal, tonal. A tonal, tonal, tonal, tonal, tonal, tonal, ton, or tonal, ton, or tonal, ton, or it's a ton of, amazing. It sounds like real. It is. It follows the prosody and the patterns of, I mean, what we would say, you know, otherwise normal speech. Right.

And that's how he's expressing himself. And he knows that he's saying the same words. Not like he doesn't understand. Right. But the way, you know, his neurological. condition is such that that's all he can express. Aphasia usually, you know, you'll see it a lot post-stroke or a traumatic brain injury. So it's definitely tends to arise in place where you've had some sort of injury.

Damage. Yeah, to the brain. Yes. So, Chris, as I think you mentioned briefly, some of the most famous examples in fiction and the world around us of severe expressive aphasia are Hodor and virtually every Pokemon. Yes. Every Pokemon except for Miao.

Pikachu. Yeah. Pekachoo. Yeah. Mouth speaks. Chew-choo. Yeah. And every single poe.

Except for Miao. On Team Rocket. Yes. So although he's not typical of a phoenix, Hodor is absolutely believable and absolutely realistic. That is cool. Yeah. It is amazing when you think of everything that has to go right for us to be able to produce and

process speech. Right. Now, when Brand's brain goes into his wolf's body, that's real, too, right? Absolutely. Oh, that's 100%. Yay! Start trinning. Start picking a wolf.

We'll talk more about it on our work episode. Oh. On work on our work episode. Yeah. All right. And that is our show. Thank you guys for joining me. And thank you guys listeners for listening in.

Hope you learn a lot of stuff about speech, about helium, about vocoders and voters and also Hodor. Hodor. Hodor. Hodors, Hodors and Vodors. Hodors and Vodors. Wow, that's really hard to say.

Of course, you can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and on our website, good jobbrain.com. Thanks to our sponsor, Linda.com. And we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Hodor. Hodor. Hodor.

If you like this podcast, can we recommend another one? It's called Big Picture Science. You can hear it wherever you get your podcast, and its name tells part of the story. The big picture questions and the most interesting research in science. Seth and I are the host. Seth is a scientist. I am Molly, and I'm a science journalist. And we talk to people smarter than us, and we have fun along the way.

The show is called Big Picture Science, and as Seth said, you can hear it wherever you get your podcasts.