History Daily - Saturday Matinee: Curiosity Meets The Past

Episode Date: December 27, 2025

On today’s Saturday Matinee, examine the human voice to learn what it can reveal about history, identity and expression across time. Link to Curiosity Meets The Past: https://smitinathan.com/podcast Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.

One of the joys of being a father, for me at least, is sharing with my daughter the films and TV that I loved as a kid. I will admit, though, that this can be a demoralizing endeavor. She's yawned and grown fidgety during most of what I consider peak culture. But some movies do make an impression. So while we inexplicably didn't make it through the Goonies, we did finish and relish Labyrinth. But though I love these films, even I must admit that they all haven't aged well. Somehow the movies of my childhood have gathered the tarnished patina. of the old black and white Hollywood features that bored me when I was young.

And it's not just because they might be too adult or two of their time. It's because the characters, their voices, their mannerisms, feel more than just old-fashioned. They feel foreign. People don't talk like that today. They don't look like that. They don't act like that. They're not real. Of course, they were real.

They just don't seem like it today. So on today's Saturday matinee, we're investigating this phenomenon with an episode from the podcast curiosity meets the past, which explores what human voice can reveal about history, identity, and expression across time. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow Curiosity Meets the Past. We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you. Welcome to Curiosity Meets the Past, a podcast for curious minds who love learning about the past. I'm Dr. Smitty Nathan, and I'm an archaeologist and your host. In this episode, I'm speaking with Christine Adam, a voice, accent, and communication coach. I first connected with Christine when I was

looking for someone to help me better own my voice across different speaking contexts. What stood out to me was how she approaches voice, not just as a sound we make, but an embodiment of our lived experiences, including our histories. Christine has spent years training actors in both the U.S. and the UK. She's worked with performers to convincingly take on the physicality, cadence, and accent of people from different time periods, and she's going to share a bit of what goes into that type of preparation. But her insights go far beyond the stage. Christine also gives us a glimpse into how our voices are shaped, the evolution of vocal trends, and how anyone can own their voice in a way that feels powerful and authentic. Speaking of authenticity, she starts by giving us an overview

of what goes into preparing for a historically specific role that would feel true to its time. Previous to living in D.C., which is where I am now, I spent eight years living in the UK, and I worked at a drama school there called Arts Ed, where I was their voice and speech and accent coach for their degrees in acting and their degrees in musical theater. And they always had projects around how to authentically own essentially classic American plays and classic American playwrights. So we were doing a works like by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, things like that. We're looking at Charlie early 20th century playwrights. So the first investigation is how did people in that time hold themselves? Because it's often different than how we hold ourselves now. So it kind of starts

with that of what is the body language, which is not just going to be different because of time, but also because of geographic context and culture and social attitudes. And, And from there, we kind of look at, okay, if I'm holding my body in that way, what kind of sound does that produce? Because the voice is an instrument, or I should say, the body is an instrument that produces voice. So if you think about, you know, if you play a violin and you're playing it like this, it's going to sound very different than if you're playing it like this, right? And it's the same thing with your voice. How you're holding your body has an impact on the quality of the sound that gets produced. right? So we'd start with body and then we'd look at things like social attitudes, class, race. So there's all sorts of features that kind of go into the sound of a voice, including a speech and language, right? What kind of vocabulary is being used and how can that be owned authentically? And the final piece to that is also accent, right? Accents change over time. So what was the accent of the accent of the accent?

that particular time period and what kind of adjustments do we need to make. Badi, thank you so much for that. You touched on this already a little bit, but could you go into a bit more detail about how you conceptually think about a voice? Voice is, you know, a lot of people think a voice is like, it's right here. And this is your voice box, as we call it growing up. And that's true. Your voice box is here.

and your voice box is essentially a larynx is what it's called. That's the thing that holds it. And there are two tiny flaps in there that are your vocal folds or your vocal cords. And they do produce the initial sound waves of your voice. But your voice is actually created from your whole body. It's produced through your breath, which is the power source of your voice. In terms of the anatomy of how it works, breath is what creates the power source. And as the that breath moves up through your body, it vibrates those folds. And when those folds get vibrated, at that point, the sound is only about as loud as a butterfly's wings. What creates the unique sound of your voice is then what happens next, which is that those sound waves move up into the spaces of your throat, your mouth, your nose, and get shaped in those areas and then get sent out into space. I would often talk about with students that people don't just hear your voice. They can actually feel your voice. So that was, that's the quick anatomical lesson over how it works. But in terms of conceptually, which is really what you were asking, what I think about

in terms of the voice and what is so powerful about it is that it is at once a reflection of your personal history, which is of like where you come from, your people, your country, also the places that you have lived within that country, and then your peer groups. So how you have evolved over time, it's all of that in one. And it's also an immediate reflection of how you feel in this very moment. So it is the both and of what it is to be human, if you will. Well, that's really powerful. It's very true when we're reflecting on that.

And I'm curious that when it comes to coaching. actors and actresses for historic roles. What kind of research goes into that to come up with the voice that you ultimately coach them on? First, it kind of starts with a little bit about where is this person from and what are the social attitudes, what are the cultural attitudes of where this person is from. So there's the place, there's also the class within that place that often class has a has a role in how voices sound and what kind of speech is used. Looking at like vocabulary for clues and context within the narrative for clues of both place and specific class context. Race and gender play a role as well. So you're looking at all of that and then you're

looking at body, right? Again, how is the body being held within that? Modern bodies tend to be more collapsed. I don't know if you ever like walk through malls and you, you know, you see the stores and you see the mannequins. And have you ever noticed they are like in totally strange body positions? Yes. Like they're always kind of like this or something or like this or, you know, and when you look at models and how models move these days when you know, they're often quite collapsed. Like, so that's what I mean by social attitudes of like what is being culturally set is the expectation for how we hold our bodies. It doesn't take long. figure out why, right? We're often quite sedentary. We're often like this. We're often,

you know, and so what you're doing with your time really shapes how you're holding yourself. This is not how people have held themselves through lots of time periods and history. So a big part of what we would then have to look at is kind of how to find something different and be able to maintain it in a way that's healthy and that feels owned and authentic. So I would, you know, often work with movement people on that, like with an actor training, for example, there's movement coaches as well as voice coaches. I'll back up a second. I'll talk about social attitudes, also in the context of speech or of vocabulary use. I'm thinking about that in terms of language also that a lot of like historical plays, if you will, are much longer

winded. It's much longer sentences, much more flowery language. And there's a real sense of I'm going to put myself out there. I'm going to put myself on the table. I'm going to tell you how I feel about this. That isn't true in modern place. Language tends to be more clipped. Language tends to be in shorter sentences. And this is, again, I'm talking broad trends here. Obviously, there's a lot of nuance within this. But so if you're working with actors who are growing up in that world, then for them to, like, kind of put everything on their sleeves and just like, let me express myself with this beautiful, flowery language, that can feel really inauthentic and stilted. So we have to work on how they can really own that in a way that I just have to speak this. I just have to say it and I have to say it

using these words. In terms of a specific example that I think kind of crystallizes some of the stuff that I'm talking about, I was once coaching, a voice coaching, a streetcar named Desire by Tennessee Williams, and it was a group of young British actors who were all in their early 20s. It takes place in New Orleans in the 1940s, and there are a lot of themes in this around class and gender. I would say those are two of the biggest themes. The central characters are two sisters and one of the sisters' husbands. So it says Stella and Stanley are the couple. Stanley comes from a different social class. He comes from a lower social class. He comes from a lower social class than how Stella and her sister Blanche were raised. But Stella lives with him and they have

a very toxic relationship in the sense that they are on the one hand deeply in love and very sexual with each other. And on the other hand, he can get physical with her. And then her sister comes to visit and her sister, as he would put it, has heirs, basically and looks down on their life together. And then throughout the play, what they begin to find out is that she has actually lost the family plantation. So she has actually lost all the money and she's actually coming to them because she has nowhere to go. All this is to say, this really creates interesting dynamics from a voice and movement perspective, right? Because you've got class in there. So a big part of what we were working on with the actor who was playing Stanley is this is a person who is very much in his body.

this is a person who is not going to be kind of slumped or collapsed or this is like I mean like doing a lot of animal work with him almost of just like how do you move and how you got to move in a way where people are intimidated by you that at any moment you could you could be set off right there's got to be a danger to Stanley essentially and we also you know in terms of accent there are slight shifts right at the time a more of up a up class Southern accent might sound a little different than a more lower class Southern accent. So that's part of how we tell the story of class as we look at it through the language of accent, which is, by the way, not as true in the U.S. as it is in the U.K. They have a much bigger history around that. And that's really where my remit sits is within those two parts of the world. And then, you know, we would be looking at the language, which is, you know, on the one hand from Stanley, he's a man of few words. And on the the other hand, we've got Stella, or Blanche, who Blanche is an English teacher. So, and by that, I mean English literature teacher in high school. So she is just having this real flowery, if you will, language that can get really stilted really quickly. Blanche is often played badly. British bodies move very differently than southern bodies, right? Climate is very different there. It's not as hot, right? So that's something you'd have to consider, too, is that in New Orleans, it's the summertime, everybody,

is hot, so you're going to be moving differently. That's going to be affecting your voice, because how you power the voice is going to be a little bit different. And at the same time, you've got to stay intentional. So that's the difference between life and stage, right? If I'm just really hot in life, I can just let everything collapse. I can't do that on stage. I still, I have to tell you the story that everything is hot, but I've still got to send my sound with intention. So that's the type of things of how we would work, as we look at let's do, body. Okay. Now let's look at accent, right? And how the accent is going to change the way that your mouth is moving, which is what accents do. It's just different movements within speech muscles.

And then let's own this language. Like, how are we going to own this language? And then the final thing I'll say about voice tone, right, which is kind of the one thing we haven't spoken about, is that all of these pieces then produce the tone of your voice, which in a historical piece tends to be clear. as in there's no kind of vocal fry to it like this. Like that's just that that's a very modern vocal trend. If, you know, an actor we're working that way, we would have to work on how are we going to, how are we going to work on your breathing in a way that helps that tone be clear? You gave me a lot to think about in terms of what makes a voice feel historical. And you cover the elements really well.

And I'm just curious what aspect of what you just talked about. might be the most difficult or challenging for an actor-attress, or is that something that's a bit individual? I think it's individual. I think it depends on training level and skill set. A lot of actors find accents very challenging. So that can definitely be a real roadblock for a lot of actors. And often in productions, you have very limited time to work on an accent. So that can be something that can be challenging. But I think owning the language can be just as challenging. And if you are a well-trained actor, then hopefully the breathing part comes easily. But often, you know, when the pressure is on, that can start to slip as well.

So it really depends on the person, what their training level is and how embodied their training is. Gotcha. That makes a lot of sense. So to shift a little bit. You know, I've been thinking about the media. There feels like there's, you know, a media voice. So when you tune in to the news or even on YouTube, people speak in a way that they might not speak in day-to-day life. And I was wondering the history kind of behind that and has it always been like this?

It has. It has. It has always been like this. Yes. So the radio was created in the 1930s. And when it was created, radio announcers had several hats they had to wear because they basically did everything. They did the announcements, like the news announcements. They did the ads.

So they would just read the ads. They wouldn't, you know, like today it's like you've got separate ads, right? But they would, they would be the person who had to sell the product. And they also had to be the person who knew about the music. If this was like a radio station with music, they had to be the person who would introduce the music. And so the idea was that that that. person should have some showmanship. And it was actually quite intentional that announcers should sound like somebody that you would only hear on the radio. So this kind of sound was cultivated that

was very much around like, I'm a kind of showman and a master of being able to wear different hats that has stuck with that industry. And yet at the same time, you know, now you wouldn't coach somebody to sound like that. So it's definitely evolved over time. And there has been a big push, I feel like, especially in the last 20 years, especially since the advent of podcasting in addition to broadcasting, there's been a real advent around like, let's try to sound as authentic as possible. And so we don't want to sound.

like traditional radio hosts or traditional broadcast hosts. We don't want to sound like journalists. We want to sound like people who have some information and who are kind of friendly and trustworthy at the same time. And how do we find that balance? And some of that has even filled back into some mainstream news media outlets. I'm thinking like NPR, right, which gets a lot of both praise and criticism for how some of their journalists tend to sound. I think something that's important to understand about anybody who wants to be in a medium like this is that there does have to be some kind of art form and skillfulness to it because it's just not the same thing as sitting and talking to a friend. You might want your audience to feel like it is and that's where the

skillfulness comes in, but it's not exactly the same thing. There are certain factors that are in play, and it's very similar to the factors that are in play for actors. Actors want to make you feel like you're just opening a window and seeing what's happening inside somebody's real life, right? But it's not the same thing as real life. And what I mean by that is, in real life, if somebody doesn't understand you, they can just say what? And you get to repeat yourself. And that's not true in these mediums. In these mediums, you don't have the privilege of getting to repeat yourself. So you have to be totally clear as much as you have to be totally connected to what you're saying. And that's where the kind of skillfulness comes in is how people can make

it conversational and sound authentic, but also sound credible and interesting and completely clear. Gotcha. I think a big theme that's coming through here is building trust with whoever your audience might be. And it seems that one of the current trends is speaking authentically. But of course, as you mentioned, there's a skillfulness to it. So I'm kind of curious, what are some current trends in terms of building authenticity with your voice and how might that compare or contrast to how people built trust in the past? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. This is like getting me excited to talk about this. This is such a great question because this word authenticity is thrown around a lot. And I don't want to be the negative Nancy in the room, but I'll just play the devil's advocate that I think a lot of times people use that word and it kind of becomes another mask. You know, I'll give an actor example.

Okay. So often when you're working with young 18-year-olds who are coming in, who most of their frame of reference is movies and TV. And it's not as much necessarily plays. Usually when you're training actors, you start with plays because you want to be able to stretch them. It's just a harder skill set to be able to go big first and then you can come small. So whereas if you're always, if you only know how to do small, it's harder to then go big, if that makes sense. So I say this to say that a lot of times, you give them their first monologue and you're like, all right, go away, like try some things, come back, you know. And everything they do is almost always like in this very narrow range.

And it could be this monologue that says like, I love you. You're the only one for me. And they'll be like, I love you. You're the only one for me. They just make very small choices in the name of, well, I want to be real. I want to be authentic. And I totally get where it's coming from, by the way. I want to give these actors some real credit that, you know, they're responding to earlier traditions

where, you know, things could be kind of soap opera-e and over the top. So I get where they're coming from. But I think sometimes this word real and authentic can be synonymous with, I'm not going to try. I'm not going to invest. So how this might work with not an actor is, you know, well, I'm, you know, I'm just, I'm not going to let you know how I feel really about anything. I'm just going to kind of speak like this. and you're going to have to interpret, but this feels authentic to me, right? This feels real.

But really, it's just a choice. It's just a choice. If you think about the human voice in its totally uninhibited and unfettered form, then just listen to a baby. That's what the human voice is. That is the power that it's capable of, right? that the human voice is capable to stretch around three octaves, two to three octaves. It is able to scream and cry and groan and lament and laugh and exclaim with joy.

And, you know, all of the things that babies do, it's available and able to do for hours on end without hurting yourself. Like that is possible. And that voice, if you were ever a baby, then that voice lives inside of you. Like that whole thing is your authentic voice. And anything else that we're doing with our voices is habit of how we express ourselves. You gave us a good idea of what an authentic voice sounded historically in different time periods. What do you think it might sound like in the future? Like what are some trends in terms of vocal,

trends that you see happening that maybe are not fully formed, but you see might have a future. Good or bad or in between? I think that if we're going with current trends, just of just human behavior, because human behavior is what impacts voice, right? So humans are more and more communicating in sedentary ways. We are often like communicating like on screen to each other. So I think we're probably going to continue to see vocal fry and things. So vocal fry is when your voice kind of has this little bit of a creak in it, right? I think we're going to continue to see that trend. And no matter how you feel about it, I think it's going to be around.

And I think it's going to be around a lot because of how we hold ourselves is either collapsed or we often are holding in our bellies. And when you hold in your belly, you inhibit your breathing process. So it doesn't quite allow you to have. have the full breath power. Like, again, if you watch a baby or if you watch a dog bark or something like that, like you'll see the muscles working that need to work that we then lock into place often because we're trying to be thin. You know, we have real cultural and social attitudes around size that can really impact the power of our voices because it cuts us off from breath.

So I can imagine that those kind of things may continue to happen. I also think that, that in terms of speech patterns and trends, I think that our language will continue to be expressed in shorter and shorter chunks. Let's put it that way. So instead of kind of more long-winded sentences, I feel like things are getting kind of shorter and sharper, if you will, in terms of the rhythm of how we speak. I'm wondering if accent-wise as well that things will continue to get more homogenous. That's definitely been the trend, especially since the advent of modern media, that accents everywhere have kind of tended to move more towards homogenization because everybody's listening to the same thing. So I'm wondering if that also will continue to happen.

So what do you hope listeners take away about not only how voices carry history, but also what that might mean for their own voice today? I want people to know that you have every single human who lives has the capacity for an incredibly powerful voice and that you not only have it in this very moment, but you were born with it. Your voice is, you know, as I said, if you have ever heard a baby cry, you used to do that. That used to be what your voice did on a regular basis. And that's important. That's a survival skill. That's all babies have is their voices.

That's all they have to communicate when they're hungry or they're tired or they need something. It's not an accident. The voice comes first because the language isn't developed yet, right? The speech isn't developed from birth, but the voice is there from birth. So I think that, first of all, that just know that however you're feeling about your voice in this moment, that it has the capacity for an incredible amount of power and connection, that it is a, that we have, unlike any other, that can create connection with others. It can also, you know, to have the opposite impact. But if we wanted to, it's available to create connection with others.

I used to have a voice teacher who said, you know, imagine a planet in which the creatures on it vibrated. And when they vibrated, others around them had a sense of what their internal experience was. And you're living it. I mean, that's this planet and that's us. That's what we do. And then I guess the other, the final thing is, you know, just knowing that your voice is both a reflection of a personal history, really, it's like a fingerprint. It's your, you know, your body's personal history of where you come from, but also where you've lived, who your friends have been, as much as who your family is, as well as a reflection, especially if you're really letting it come out, you're not kind of hiding it or holding it, a true reflection of how you feel right in this

moment. And in that, it is something we have at our disposal that can help guide and show others how to feel. So if we're exploring a topic together, it's one thing to, you know, send emails back and forth about it or to write a report about it and send it to each other. It's a totally different thing to talk about it. It's a totally different thing because of the human voice and what it can do and how it can shift and shape and change how people think and feel about what they're talking about. One of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is the research, reflection, and skill development that go into crafting a voice, whether it's for a historically specific role or how we show up in our day-to-day lives. What also stood out to me is that this type of preparation and awareness doesn't take away from authenticity.

It actually supports it. If you'd like to learn more about Christine's work, you can check out her website, voice what matters.com, as well as her YouTube channel and podcast. You'll find those links in the show notes, along with a link to a full transcript of this episode. And if you're curious to dig deeper and learn how Christine helps everyday folks like you and me, she shares that plus a number of free and affordable resources in our Patreon exclusive segment. Our Patreon is free to join and gives you access to all of our bonus content. If you'd like to support the podcast monetarily, we of course appreciate that too.

Thanks so much for listening and cultivating your curiosity with us. We'll see you soon.