Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How To Find REAL Love & How Our Ability to Speak Defines Us

Episode Date: April 8, 2023

Music can affect us in lots of ways. You may not know that the music playing in a store can impact your spending behavior. This episode begins by looking at how different types of music can steer you to spend more or less. https://www.psychologistworld.com/behavior/ambient-music-retail-psychological-arousal-customers Finding true love can be tricky. Sometimes it seems impossible. Here to the rescue is behavioral scientist turned dating coach Logan Ury. She has the latest research on what will and won’t work if you want to find love in the 21st century. Logan is author of the book How Not to Die Alone (https://amzn.to/3cWniDK). Humans are the only mammal on earth that can speak words to communicate. That ability to speak words and thoughts and relay messages has been a key reason for our success as a species. Yet, could human speech also be the thing that ultimately destroys us? Listen to my guest John Colapinto a writer for The New Yorker and author of the book This Is The Voice (https://amzn.to/2PBA9m5). When you hear what he has to say, you will have a new appreciation for how amazing human speech is. Estimates are that more than half of working people don’t like their job or the place where they work. And while that’s a shame for those who are unhappy, what really matters is how much YOU like YOUR job or place of employment Listen as I reveal a way you can discover just how satisfied you are in your work. The website I mention is https://www.iopenerinstitute.com/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them and treat almost every condition under the sun! Go to https://Zocdoc.com/SYSK and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Discover Credit Cards do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you’ve earned! See terms and check it out for yourself at https://Discover.com/match Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, how the music a store plays while you're shopping can affect how much money you spend. Then, finding love in the 21st century. It can be difficult. And that difficulty can make it more difficult. Sometimes people are so burned out from dating they turn people off. So

we know from the fields of behavioral science that mindset is so important. Whether you think the date will go well or you think the date will go poorly, you're right. Then an easy way to find out just how happy you are at your job. And humans are the only mammals that can speak and that ability to speak is Then, an easy way to find out just how happy you are at your job. And humans are the only mammals that can speak, and that ability to speak is more amazing than you ever knew. Language through voice is what pulled us together as a species and allowed us to collaborate and thus rise to the top of the food chain. But it might also be what ultimately destroys us because voices also push us apart. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations.

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Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts experts and practical advice you can use in your life today something you should know with mike carothers hi welcome and here we go with another episode of something you should know thank you for joining me i'm sure you've noticed when you walk into a store, there is often music playing.

Sometimes the music is very noticeable. Other times it's just in the background. You don't really pay attention to it. But I bet you've wondered, as I have, why that music is playing. Could they be trying to influence your behavior by playing a certain kind of music? Sometimes I go into one grocery store and they have oldies from the 50s and 60s blasting pretty loud, and I kind of like some of those old songs. So I'm not sure if that's influencing my shopping behavior, but I do like the songs. But there is in some stores a real attempt to get into your head. It seems the type and tempo of music can actually affect

your shopping behavior. In studies, when fast-paced music was played, shoppers walked more quickly through the store. This gave them less time to make impulse purchases and less time to absorb the range of items for sale on the shelves. As a result, people spent less money, and the stores made less money. Conversely, slow-tempoed music has the opposite effect. It slows customers down as they shop, and as a result, people spent more money during their visit. In stores where classical music is played,

people tend to spend more on higher-priced items. So clearly, music has an impact on what you buy and how much time you spend shopping, and more and more stores are realizing this and using music to try to persuade you to spend more money. And that is something you should know. What's the best way to find love? People have been asking that question for a long time. And this past year has made it particularly difficult to meet people in any kind of social situation that could lead to love. With online dating apps, finding people to meet is easy enough,

but finding the right people, well, that's a little tricky. But it's always been tricky. Getting fixed up by a friend or meeting somebody in a bar is a pretty iffy way to meet someone as well. Behavioral scientist turned dating coach Logan Urie has looked at some really interesting and telling research at what does and what doesn't work in finding and maintaining love with someone. She's author of the book, How Not to Die Alone, and she's here to explain all this. Hi, Logan. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. So people have been searching for love as well as long as there have been people. And you always hear the complaints about how all the good ones are taken. It's hard to find someone. So what's the lay of the land? Where are we now in the 21st century with all of this? So the first thing I'll say is that we are definitely living in the time of dating apps. Meeting online became the number one way that couples who get married meet. And this happened around 2017, 2018. And we know this

through the great research from Michael J. Rosenfeld of Stanford. And what this means is that dating apps are a wonderful way for people to connect, but they also introduce a number of problems. And so what's going on right now is that we're actually living through a pretty major change in how people are selecting their partners. Well, the motives for finding love have changed. I mean, we all, I guess, are part of the species that needs to get together and have babies so the species can continue. But more than that, I think people today have this, you know, idealized version of that they want to find their one true love, that they want to find someone very, very special and be happy for the rest of their lives. It isn't even that long in the span of human history that people have been marrying for love. As I'm sure you know, marriage used to be about convenience or an economic partnership, right?

Your parcel of land was next to my parcel of land, or my father would give you 12 camels for my hand in marriage. And so it wasn't until the last few hundred years that people started marrying for love, it wasn't until around 1890 that people started dating the way we know it now, where two individuals would come together and start dating as opposed to their families arranging it. And we've only had online dating since 1995, and we've only had the apps for around a decade. And so we really are living in this very new time period where people have so much choice. And so even though dating apps make it easier for people to find potential partners and to meet each other, one of the biggest issues is that it makes it harder to understand who should I choose? Who should I commit to? Could I be 5% happier with somebody else? Well, it's interesting what you

said that online dating, online dating apps are the number one way people meet each other. And it's surprising also in the sense that online dating, I think still, maybe not. I think it still has a bit of a bad rap that, you know, that's where, you know, people who can't really meet someone go. I know that that's less so, but it does seem to still have a bit of that stigma. Yeah, I think that stigma has really gone down. Many people are meeting through online dating. As I mentioned, it's the most common way that people are meeting each other. And I think any remaining stigma of meeting online has really decreased during the last year during the pandemic. Does it matter much where you meet somebody? I mean,

my experience is there are those people who are looking for love, and some of them find it, and some of them never find it. And it doesn't matter if they meet somebody in a bar, or they're meeting people online. It isn't just the way you meet, it's who you are and what you're looking for and all that. Yeah, absolutely. That's definitely part of my philosophy is that who cares how you met, right? If you go on to have a long, decades long relationship with somebody, then how you met is point 001% of the whole relationship. And so people get so focused on our we met story, but it doesn't matter if you met on match.com or if you met reaching for the perfect tomato at the farmer's market what really matters is the day-to-day effort that you

put into the relationship not how the relationship started did anybody ever meet reaching for the tomato at the farmer's market what a great way what a good story that would be i mean i know it sounds ridiculous but in my work as a dating coach I really hear people that are so focused on the, we met and they say, I was on an airplane and there was an empty seat next to me. And this guy moved his seat and he wound up sitting next to me. And then we had this great conversation and it's meant to be, and they get so focused on the fact that they had this romantic meeting that this must be their soulmate. And so my advice is don't enter the wrong relationship because you met the quote unquote right way. Yeah, but so often people focus on that. So how did you guys meet? Tell me the story of how you

met. Like that tells you something. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting point, right? When you meet a new couple or you're going out for dinner with them, you might say, oh, how did you guys meet? And that's just a form of small talk. But maybe we could update that to something different. Maybe we could say, what's your favorite thing about your partner? Or what's something about them that you've learned over time? What's something about them that's changed who you are?

And so really what we can do in conversation is actually start to ask questions that focus on the stuff that matters as opposed to the we met story. And so as someone who has really studied this, what are the things that people do right? And what are the big things people do wrong? I can tell you some of the things that people think matter more than they do for long-term relationship success. And so people often overemphasize the importance of looks and money. And so of course you wanna be attracted to your partner, of course money matters,

people are happier when they make above a certain amount per year, but part of what happens in relationship is that we adapt to our surroundings. And so in the beginning, your partner's great looks will be very novel and you'll focus on them. And in the beginning, your partner's great looks will be very novel and you'll focus on them. And in the beginning, when you get more money than you had before, it will be very exciting. But we know that over time, people just evolve to their circumstances.

And so looks and money matter less than people think they do. And the same goes for shared hobbies, right? You don't have to love wine if your partner loves wine. You don't have to love wine. If your partner loves wine, you don't have to love biking. It's really much more about giving your partner space than necessarily having the exact same passions. And finally, another one that people overestimate is having the same personality. I have all these clients who say, I'm an extrovert. I'm the life of the party. I need to find a girl who's just like me. It's like, no, man, you are such a big personality on your own. Two of you would take up way too much space. It's great that you have a girlfriend that is more quiet and compliments you. And so those are some of the things that people think matter more than they do. And now we can talk about things that people underestimate

the importance of. Those are things like kindness, loyalty, having a growth mindset, the ability to make hard decisions together. And then finally, what's probably become the most important one to me in my research is what side of you somebody brings out. And so people are often so focused on resume qualities and biography that they don't understand that who cares what your partner looks like on paper. If when you're around them, you feel de-energized, depressed, small, that's not a good partner for you. That is so important. I never thought of it that way, but how they make you feel about yourself. I mean, that's everything. I mean, if you're around them and you feel like you don't feel good about yourself, what good is that?

Yeah, exactly. And so, so much of the work that I do is to help people throw out their checklist, throw out the resume, stop treating a date like a job interview, focus on being in the moment, focus on having experience with someone, and see, do I like spending time with them? What is it about your best friend that you love? What is it about the way your best friend makes you feel that draws you to them?

Well, you want to find something like that with your partner. And so I think people get so focused on height, looks, symmetry of somebody's face. But in the end, what really sticks with you is the side of you that your partner brings out. One of the things, or a couple of the things you often hear people say really matter in a relationship is, you know, do you both want children? Do you both have the same religious beliefs, those kinds of things? What do you say?

I think a lot about deal breakers versus pet peeves. I remember I was at a networking event and this woman came up to me and she said, I'm 35. I've been single for a while. I'm really happy to date anyone as long as he's not a mouth breather. And I just couldn't believe it. I was like a mouth breather. Wasn't even something that I had ever thought about. And you know, she was trying to be funny and dating is a vulnerable thing. And she was being a little tongue in cheek, but I hear stuff like this all the time where people have pet peeves, right? Something that annoys them maybe more than the average person. And they blow it up into their mind into this deal breaker. You know, we can't be together for this reason.

And so for anyone listening, it's really important to distinguish between an actual deal breaker, something that would prevent you from having a successful long-term relationship with somebody, and something that you may find annoying. And one of the best things you can do is move things from that deal breaker list to the PPP, permissible pet peeves. And so something like I want to have kids and you don't, I absolutely think that that's a deal breaker. That is something that couples need to discuss before they get married.

One thing that I found in my research, and you know, a lot of what I do is apply behavioral science, right? Why are people irrational? Why do people make the wrong decisions? And something that we find is that when two people are in love, they don't have hard conversations because they say, I love you. You love me. We must believe the same things.

We must both want kids. We must both want to move back to Portland to be near my parents. But it's critical to have those conversations because if you're not aligned before you get married and if you're not aligned before you have kids, that's really where a lot of the trouble comes from. One of the issues where there is a disconnect is, you know, a lot of people are looking for someone, but not necessarily looking for someone for the same reason. Some people are just looking for someone to have fun, hang out with, you know, not be lonely, and other people are looking for that special someone. People often overvalue the present, right? We focus on the hot person who we want to sleep with, not the person who will be reliable in the long term. or we focus on the feeling of falling in love and that it's different from being in love. And so yes, if you are somebody who's looking for a

relationship and the person that you are dating is just looking to have fun, that's not going to end well. And a big mistake that people make is they think, oh, I'm so great. I'll convince them to do something else. But you know, when somebody lets you know, I just got out of a relationship and I'm looking for something casual, you have to believe them. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time. We're talking about finding love in the 21st century. And my guest is Logan Urie. She is a behavioral scientist turned dating coach who is author of the book, How Not to do so. Be alert, be aware, and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual.

That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. So, Logan, is it your sense that when you look at the people who are successful at finding love, that it's kind of like a sales job that, you know, you have to date a lot of people. You have to have a lot of prospects in order to find someone that fits the bill. Right. And that's absolutely part of it. And so part of it is just putting in the effort and it's showing up.

If you want to find someone and you go on one date a year, it's going to take you a really long time. So step one is putting in the effort. And so I like to recommend to people, try to go on a date at least once a week. That's obviously a somewhat arbitrary benchmark, but it's enough that if you say, I'm going to go out on a date every Wednesday, then on Tuesday, if you don't have a date by then, you're going to put effort in and go on the apps or ask somebody out. And so you really need to focus on putting yourself out there. But effort is not the only thing.

I've had people who come to me in a dating coaching capacity and they say, I've gone on a hundred first dates in the last two years and it doesn't work out. And I look at them and their arms are crossed across their chest. And every time I say something, they say, but no, here's why that's not going to work. And they're just boiling over with negativity. And so step one is showing up, but step two is really your mindset. Sometimes people are so burned out from dating. They walk into the date with this negative mantra of, it's not going to work. It didn't work the last 100 times. And they turn people off. And so we know from the field of

behavioral science that mindset is so important. Whether you think the date will go well, or you think the date will go poorly, you're right. It seems like expectations play an important role in all of this, because if your expectations are too high, it's going to be hard to find anybody. But if your expectations are too low, then you're going to settle for somebody you probably shouldn't settle for. So, so talk about expectations. Yeah. Expectations are such a fascinating part of romantic relationships because if your expectations are too low and you're willing to settle, you might get into a relationship that's not very fulfilling.

But what I've seen in my research is actually there's a lot of problems with too high of expectations. And so here's the way that I think about it. I have a framework called the three dating tendencies, and these are a collection of the most common dating blind spots. So the patterns of behavior or ways of thinking that hold people back from finding love. And the first one is the romanticizer and they have unrealistic expectations of relationships. And so this is maybe the friend of yours who says, I just want to find my soulmate. I don't want to put effort in. I just want that

person to find me. And once I get into that relationship, it'll be effortless. The second type is the maximizer and they have unrealistic expectations of their partners. So this is the person who says, could I be with somebody who's 5% more interesting, 5% more attractive, right? The grass is always greener. They're always looking for the next best thing. And they always wonder what else is out there. And then the third type is the hesitator and they have unrealistic expectations of themselves. This is the person who says, I'm just not ready to date. I'll be ready to date when I lose 10 pounds. I'll be ready to date when I have a more impressive job title. And you know, it's very sad. They feel like love is conditional and that they're just not

lovable yet. And so they believe that one day they'll wake up and be worthy of love, but that that hasn't happened yet. And the sad thing there is that dating is a skill and you have to date to get better at it. You have to date to figure out who you want to be with. And so those hesitators are sitting at home trying to work on themselves, but they're not really getting the chance to go out there and date. And so really in my research and in my work, I found that unrealistic expectations of these different realms really holds people back from finding love. I think a big question people often have and a quandary that you get into, especially if you're dating a lot, is like, how do you know this is the one? Because we hear about, well, you know, you'll know it when you know it. It's the sparks will fly or you'll just grow into each

other. And there's all this contradictory. And I don't know what it really means. And maybe you just know it when you know it. Yeah, I really appreciate that question because I think there are a lot of myths around this idea. I think you know it when you know it is harmful because what ends up happening is if you think there's one person out there for you, then what happens with romanticizers is that they date someone. It ends up being hard because relationships hit those inevitable rough spots. And instead of working through them and putting in effort, they say, must not be my soulmate. If it were my soulmate, it would be easier than this. And so I really try to avoid words like the one or soulmate. And instead, I try to help people focus on the fact that you could write many different

love stories with many different people and you get to choose. And it's really empowering to think I I can build the relationship I want. Not, I have to find the perfect person and then it'll work out. So often people focus on the spark. And the spark, as you know, is that pang of instant chemistry. It's when you walk in the room and everything around you fades into the background. And, you know, trust me, I've had the spark and it's a peak life experience. But people really make a mistake when they over optimize for the spark.

Because the truth is some people are just very sparky. Some people are attractive, charismatic, and they give a lot of people that feeling. And so when you think that you have a spark with somebody might be more of a reflection of who they are than the dynamic between the two of you. Another thing going back to to the how we met thing, is people say, we had a spark when we met. This is meant to be. But look, a lot of divorced couples have the spark because the spark can fade. And so the antidote to the spark, the antidote to focusing on that initial chemistry is going after the slow burn. And the slow burn is the person who gets better over time, who's kind, loyal,

reliable, truly a partner. And so if people stop focusing on that instant chemistry, that spark, that thing that can fade, they actually should start focusing on when I peel back the layers, who are you? And are you somebody who I could build a life with? But what about your ability to judge a first date that, okay, we've gone on a first date and I just know this isn't going anywhere. There's no need for a second date. So in general, I suggest to people that they create a rule of thumb that they go on second dates as a default. There's a lot of reasons for this. One is if you're on a first date and you're feeling nervous, you are having a hard time, right? You're just not somebody who's

initially charismatic. A lot of people are going to miss out on the chance to date you. And so if we make a rule that people go on second dates, some of those diamonds in the rough, some of those slow burns are going to get a lot more chances to show somebody who they are. The other thing is that so often right now, first dates feel like job interviews, right? I sit across from you. I ask you, where did you go to school? What did you study? What part of the city do you live in? Right? We're just interrogating each other. We're just exchanging information. And so if you go on a first date with a checklist of, are you good enough for me? And do you, do you fill in all the boxes? I'm not having fun. I'm not being playful.

I'm not being sexy. I'm not flirting. I'm just focused on evaluating you. And those relationships, those, those, those dates are sterile and they don't lead to good experiences. And so, yes, certainly there are first dates that are disaster. And you might say to yourself, I never want to see this person again. They were rude. They were disrespectful. I felt unsafe. But in general, if as a society, we made the second date, the default people would get into a lot more relationships. People would take advantage of wonderful people who they might have missed out on otherwise. And so I think as a rule of thumb, it's really helpful to give people a chance and understand that not everybody shows up the way

they want to on a first date. When do you know? When do you know this is either something or this is time to say goodbye? It's a great question. And the truth is people are so irrational about this. I mean, I got a call a few weeks ago and the guy says, I've been dating my girlfriend for three years. The first six months were great. The last two and a half years have been bad. Like, why are you still there? And he's like, well, I just keep thinking about how good the first six months were.

I'm like, if you watched a TV show and season one was great and seasons two through five were bad, would you watch season six? No, you should move on to a new show. And so people just get very anchored on those early honeymoon periods. And the truth is people are wearing a mask at the beginning of a relationship. People are on their best behavior. People are trying to be who you want them to be. And so he was focused on those first six months where probably both of them were not exactly being themselves. And so it was focused on those first six months where probably both of them were not exactly being themselves. And so it's irrational, but it's very common. And so part of it is

understanding that one of the best ways to get into a great relationship is by getting out of a bad one. And people need to understand that, yes, it's going to be hard to break up. It's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to be alone, but you need to focus on the great relationship waiting for you on the other side of that breakup mountain. And you can actually build a better relationship if you can convince yourself to get out of the not great one that you're in right now. Well, that's a nice optimistic message to end on. And this has been some really good advice. Logan Urie has been my guest. She is a behavioral scientist turned dating coach, and she has a book out called How Not to Die Alone. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes.

Thanks, Logan. Appreciate you being here. Oh, thank you so much, Michael. Thanks for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr.

Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives,

and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts.

Yes, it is true that other animals communicate, but only humans have a real voice that can make lots of complicated words and sounds and inflections that allow us to communicate the way no other species on the planet can. Human speech is really unique and is at least partly the reason why we are the dominant species on the planet. And, as my next guest argues, human speech may ultimately cause our own demise. John Colapinto is a writer for The New Yorker, and he has a particular interest in this topic of the human voice because of what happened to his voice. And he is author of the book, This is the Voice. Hey, John, welcome. Hi. Thanks, Mike. Thanks so much for having me. So you have a particular interest in the human voice.

Explain that to begin with here. Yeah. I started getting interested in The Voice about 20 years ago when I injured it. I was a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, and I agreed to be this lead singer in a rock band that the owner, Jan Wenner, was putting together. And I didn't know how to do proper vocal warmups. I oversang. The gig itself was highly stressful. 2,000 people in the audience, a bunch of not go away. And I ended up actually having it ultimately diagnosed as a vocal polyp, which is like an injury, a bleed in one of the vocal cords. And about 10 years after that, I was doing a story about a vocal surgeon who saved Adele's career by removing one of these polyps from her vocal cord. And he was the guy that actually said to me, look, yours, because he actually scoped it

and looked down my throat and saw that I had a really bad one. He said it was worse than hers. And he said, you know, it's not just your singing that I could no longer do. He said, you're actually changing. Your personality is changing. Your life is changing because of the way you talk now. You don't speak with as much vocal emotion, up and down, pitch control and change and difference. He said you're avoiding noisy restaurants because you know you're going to be extra raspy for a week afterward. You're kind of pulling back socially. And all of that was true. And I thought, my God, our voices are more important to everything about our lives than we ever really give them credit for being. So that's really what kind of launched me ultimately on this exploration. And so when you look at the other species on the

planet, nobody, I think, you know, people talk about dolphins having a language and being able to communicate and that kind of thing, but nobody has a language and a voice like we have. And so what is it? What is the voice? You're so right to ask what is the voice? And science actually has had a lot of trouble answering it, philosophy as well. But really what it is, is it's a communication system, obviously for a species and an order of animals, mammals in particular, who are highly social. So, you know, obviously I'm making vowels and consonants right now, but the vowels really are just singing notes. My tongue isn't hitting any targets in my mouth. It's literally just raising or lowering or moving backward to give a slight change in the overtones of the pitch. But my consonants really are just musical percussion. Those are just isolated consonants,

Ks and Ps and Ts and Ds that I'm stringing together to create like a percussive sound. What we do in speaking, again, to finally narrow down really on your excellent question is we take those skilled and precise movements that give pitch and percussion and we string them into things that we call words, which we then string into sentences. And that's a game changer because it means we can beam our thoughts into each other's heads and make plans so that we can outsmart predators that are faster and bigger and more dangerous than us. Well, that's really interesting when you say it that way, that we have the ability to make plans, that we can collaborate verbally with each other, and that that has a lot to do with why we're at the top of the food chain. And it makes me wonder, if other animals were smarter, could they make those sounds? Would

they have the physical ability to make a language if they had the brains to do it? Yeah, great, great question. What science tells us is that in fact, we are special. So the answer is no, they really wouldn't be able to, even if they had the mental sort of imagery of language in their minds. And we know from chimp studies that in fact, they're rather good. They get kind of good at sign language or pointing at symbols that indicate, you know, meanings of words. So they have some kind of representations in their minds, but what, what a chimp would lack and chimps are relevant because they're kind of closest to us genetically. And we parted company from them evolutionarily about 6 million years ago and started to develop as these species that

became human. Really how we differ is in two major ways vocally. Our larynx, the little box that encloses and holds our vocal cords, and in men you can see it's about midway down our neck, it's where our Adam's apple is. That is actually further down the neck than a chimp. A chimp's larynx is way up at the sort of at the back of its mouth. And that matters because you need a sort of, you need a chamber in the throat for making vowels, the resonance chamber in the throat and the mouth. And the chimp just has the mouth resonance chamber, which limits its vowels. And so a chimp can maybe say, uh, uh, uh, that sound. We can say A-E-I-O-U, those sounds, which allows us to make words. We can say had, hid, head, hut, hud, all with the same consonants,

but we change those vowels to create different meanings. A chimp would say, hud, hud, hud, hud, all with the same consonants, but we change those vowels to create different meanings. A chimp would say, hud, hud, hud, hud, hud, hud, hud. You can't get meaning from that. So humans have this ability to talk, but when did we actually start talking? Yeah, it's believed that we started talking about 400,000 years ago. It's also when we started to kind of take over the planet. So that's where people hone in about 400,000 years ago. And it makes you wonder, well, do we have any sense of like, and what was that language? Like how primitive was it? I imagine it was pretty primitive. You know, it's fascinating. And I wish I had a better answer for this, but we don't know.

And the thing about languages is all languages that exist on Earth right now are all equally advanced. In other words, there's no such thing as a primitive language. So you'll go into the Amazon, as I did for a story for The New Yorker, and meet a tribe that has a very unusually simplified vowel and consonant system, but their language is incredibly complex because of the pitch changes they use. I guess what I'm saying is all language is a representation of our inner thoughts through sound. And that, according to a famous linguist named Sapir, is equally complex and rich in every language and in every part of the world.

So you're positing correctly that there obviously had to have been some sort of simpler system of sounds from which language emerged, but no one knows what those could have been. And you do have linguists arguing, oh no, you know, language couldn't have emerged gradually. It had to have sort of sparked in a single giant leap of intelligence. And so I guess what I'm saying is those are mysteries that are hidden in the past. I don't know if we'll ever solve them. It does seem that everybody's voice is unique. I mean, I sound, I know what my father sounded like, and I sound kind of like him. Our voices are similar, but, you know, I can tell if I listen

to a recording of him and me, I know exactly who's who and, and everybody, I mean, some people are very, or a lot of people are very recognizable by their voice. Is it, is it kind of like a fingerprint? You know, it really is. And that's for a lot of reasons that, you know, make you sound like your dad, but also not. So you inherited him from him him maybe very similar vocal cords, literally even in their viscosity and texture, not just their size, but that would also matter. You may also have inherited from him resonance chambers,

like literally the geometry inside your head and neck that could be very similar to his, so that the resonance of your voice is very similar. But then you think about those other things that affect our sense of voice, the speed with which someone talks, the aggressive attack on the syllables, or maybe they have kind of a laid back sound in their voice. And those are temperamental personality things. Again, we can share those with parents, but we might not. And so we might share temperamental things with mom and dad, but we might have very different vocal cords and resonance chambers. I guess what I'm saying is because there's so many different things that are occurring

simultaneously to give us the sound of our voice. We can sound a lot like a family member, but there's always those little differences as in a fingerprint that allow us within a few minutes or seconds on the phone to say, oh, that's not my sister or that's not my brother. It's my dad or whatever. So we can sort of see these or hear i should say these micro differences that we all possess so yes they're like a fingerprint it's interesting and we've talked about this on on this podcast before about the idea that how people in general tend to dislike their own voice when they hear a recording of it and that's kind of interesting because, you know, our voices are primary means of communication and most of us don't like it. You know, we actually possess within our brains a voice recognition area that lights up when we hear a voice and it tells us that we

know or don't know that voice. And it's directly cabled to a face recognition area. So we've got like this thing in our brain that tells us this is a friend or a foe. And we can tell, and this is again why we can tell people apart on the phone. So we know people's voices with an incredible intimacy. But the cosmic irony is that the only voice we don't know and cannot know on Earth is our own. Because everybody else's voice we're hearing just through air vibration well we hear our own voice through air vibration but we also get it through bone conduction literally through our bodies our voice our bodies are literally vibrating with our voice and it goes up into our audio cortex and creates a different sound than anybody else is hearing when we speak.

And it makes perfect sense. So you only hear your own voice through a high fidelity recording. And when you do, you're shocked. You're like, wait, that's not what I sound like. Like, and I, I actually explained the cringe factor in my book this way. You you're hearing your voice at an arm's length. You're hearing it with an objectivity and a disembodied objectivity that is totally unusual to you. And it permits you to hear with ruthless objectivity all the things you're doing with your voice that are phony, that are in effect a way to put yourself across, to idealize this kind of performance of yourself. And you're not aware that you're doing it because we do this kind of unconsciously.

We're not aware that we're doing it until we see or until we hear ourselves. And as a matter of fact, it's funny I said see, because a lot of people have that reaction when they first see themselves on videotape or in home movies. They're like, oh, God, is that how I move or walk? And it's because we're picking up things that we're doing that don't exactly match who we inwardly know ourself to be. We might try to sound more confident. We may, in fact, know ourselves to be insecure, shrinking creatures inside. So there's this mismatch that makes us just cringe. Well, it does seem that because our voice is so important in how we communicate with people,

that it is directly related to how successful you are, you know, professionally, socially, you know, your voice, your voice telegraphs a lot about you, whether it's, I guess, truthful or not, people judge you by your voice. God, it's inevitable. And, you know, I, there are people that are bird voices that they really are embarrassed of and, and, and even ashamed of. And it's, it's really sad to think of that. And these people will often turn to speech therapists for help in changing something. I actually, in the book, detail a guy with a very gay sounding voice. He just simply has those sibilant S's and the kind of drawn out vowels. Now he happens to be a gay man, but he doesn't want to sound that way. And he tries to change it. You can have people, you know, who are born in like economically depressed circumstances

and may feel that their voice is giving them away as being less educated or what can be a Southern accent, which a lot of people stereotype as less intelligent or intolerant or any number of things. Are there voices that are kind of universally thought as very pleasant or very enjoyable to listen to and on the other end of the spectrum voices that are really hard to listen to or has everybody got their own taste in voice voices that we find kind of objectionable or that fall on our ear a bit like chalk you know like nails on a chalkboard astonishingly aishingly, a scientist back in the sixties, he was a psychiatrist that was studying like hysterical patients and people with personality disorders. He found the

very hard to listen to often. And actually what he discovered when he kind of broke their voice down with a spectrogram was that they actually had more energy and sound in a part of the vocal register that sounds like a baby crying, that actually is that range of a baby's complaint that they use to get food and get fed. Pre-verbal communication saying, feed me, need me, love me. So we don't like that sound. Vocal cords that are very healthy and ripple smoothly, they create a very sort of beautiful, soft, suede tone that falls nicely on the ear. Voices that have a polyp like mine, raspy voices, a voice that actually has an injury like mine, can be pleasant. I mean, they can be scored as pleasant. But I think that that's only when the speaker doesn't sound like he's in actual distress. So you get some focal disorders where the person actually speaks like this. You hear them on like Sopranos and Scorsese movies.

It's, you know, you hear someone and you think, oh God, that person sounds like he's just like struggling and that you don't like. And yet Rod Stewart seems to have done pretty well with his raspy voice. Oh boy. Isn't that the truth in a singing voice that can be absolutely galvanizing. And if I had to theorize, I would say, because he's singing passionate rock songs and love songs, the idea of a voice sort of strained to its limits, strained beyond endurance to express love or sex or lust, you know, it fits the lyrics. It fits the rock and roll sound. You've got maybe fuzzy or dirty sounding guitars. So, you know, I guess ultimately now I'm talking myself into thinking that I've got a pretty good theory for that, but who knows. What else about the voice, since you've

really looked at this, what, what else fascinates you or what did you find in your research that, that people may not know that's really interesting? You know, it blows me away just, you know, how we, we mind read through the voice, you know, when you go on a first date and things don't work out, people talk about the chemistry wasn't there. It might have been the voice, the studies that they've done of what we're picking up through voice. It may not match what someone's ideal vocal sound is. So much of mating is through voice. That fascinated me, but maybe ultimately,

what really blew me away was how language through voice is what pulled us together as a species and allowed us to collaborate and thus rise to the top of the food chain. But it might also be what ultimately destroys us because voices also push us apart. And the guy that studied this, a guy named Labov, learned and showed us that accents literally develop in opposition to populations that you are hostile to. on Martha's Vineyard where the poor fishing families hated the rich New Yorkers and people from Boston that summered there and bought up all their ancestral homes. And they literally changed their accent to a more ancient accent of really of the founders of Martha's Vineyard, going back to the 1600s. They started to imitate this sound as a way of saying, we are not you. And literally, you know, we see this across the country and studies have been done to show that accents are

pushing us apart. And, you know, if you look at separate languages, for God's sake, across a continent like Europe, those are really languages that developed out of these tiny and originally accent changes, vowel changes, concert changes that develop into full language differences. And, you know, we do know that different countries, as they become more nationalistic, ultimately end up warring against each other. There is an argument to be made that these differences in voice that really define boundaries, boundaries of country, you know, really could be our ultimate downfall if we end up having a nuclear war, let's say, against a hostile superpower like Russia. So, you know, I guess that's sort of where

my book ended up going was that we're this beautiful paradox as human beings. We've shaped the vocal channel into speech that brought us together and brought us to rule the planet. And yet the differences we hear in sound in our voices may ultimately be what brings us to extinction. It's remarkable. Well, that's certainly a frightening prospect, but it really makes you think about just how important our voices are. John Colapinto has been my guest. He's a writer for The New Yorker, and he is author of the book, This is the Voice. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, John.

Dynamite. Thanks so much, Mike. It was a pleasure. There have been a lot of studies done that try to figure out how content people are in their jobs and with the work that they do. Some studies report that more than half of all workers don't like their jobs. But what really matters is how much you like your job. So would you like to get an objective analysis? A management consulting firm has an online test you can take for free, and within 48 hours you receive a detailed report back about just how happy and well-suited you are to your job. The test is 75 questions long, and it'll take about 10 minutes to complete. Just go to iOpenerInstitute.com. That's the letter I, OpenerInstitute.com. It's all confidential, and you get your assessment back within 48 hours,

and I'll put that link in the show notes as well. And that is something you should know. I hope you learned something interesting today, and if you did, then share it with someone you know and get them to listen. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been

investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. Listen to Chinook wherever of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.