Mailbag

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm starting off with another Rebecca Solnit quote because she's
talking to me, guys. This isn't a piece about heroism.
She said, institutional authorities often behave badly in disasters in
part because they assume that the rest of us will
behave badly in the power vacuum disasters bring on, and
thus they too often turn humanitarian relief into aggressive policing,

(00:22):
often in protection of property and the status quo, rather
than disaster victims. But ordinary people generally behave magnificently, taking
care of each other and improvising rescues in the conditions
of survival, connecting with each other in ways they might
not in everyday life, and sometimes finding in that connection

(00:44):
something so valuable and meaningful that their stories about who
they were and met and what they did shine with joy.
That is, I found in disasters a window onto what
so many of us really want and don't get. A
need we hardly name or recognize, which she calls public love,

(01:06):
the sense of meaning, purpose, power, belonging to a community, society,
a city, a movement. Welcome to the podcast. That's all
about the voice, which means it's all about power, Who

(01:26):
has it, how we get it? How we sound when
we have it. I'm your host, Samarrove, and this is
permission to speak where we can throw all our best
ideas about how to get ourselves heard into the pot
and start. So today's episode we are bringing to you

(01:52):
from our respective homes because the last few weeks since
Quarantine started, we've been able to use episodes that we
already have in the camp and now we are flying
free and not in the I Heart studios and finding
a our home studio madness. But what's glorious about it,
besides the fact that we're in the comfort of our

(02:14):
own homes obviously, is um It's given us a chance
to think about what we really want to do next
during this bizarre, bizarre time. And one thing that came
up right away was a mail bag episode because we've
gotten some great questions from people, and because really my
intention with this podcast is to make sure that it's
not just big, cool ideas about the voice and about power,

(02:38):
but also deeply practical Micro's suggestions to help people in
their regular, actual lives. And by the way, our regular
lives are weird as buck right now, but we can
still use this stuff because either you know, we're dealing
with newfound issues over Zoom, or with our families, or
however we're conducting quote unquote business right now, or we

(02:59):
can use this strange time sort of outside of regular
life to work on what really matters to us in
terms of how we present in the world, so that
when we are able to go back into public again,
we're bringing a version of ourselves that feels more whole
than we were bringing before. So I have my stunning

(03:25):
friend and producer Katherine Burt Canton. I was gonna say
with me in the studio metaphorically, when parkly with me
in the studio, I can see you, I can see
I know you. We're zooming, We're doing all the things
cat him good morning. I think this would be an
appropriate time to say top of the Morningtia. That is

(03:50):
something just for all of you out there. UM that
I quite often like to say to Samara and she
looks at me and says, Kat, we're not doing we're
not doing dialect for this for this podcast, and UM,
I don't care. Today we are. Maybe this is the
episode where I finally coach you on how to make

(04:11):
that sound slightly more irish. Oh that was That was Australia.
Oh my god, oh my ears are really losing their
their touch. How can I not have known? No? That
was there, goes Michelle, my next door neighbor, walking by
walking her dog Taco. So yeah, Cat, tell people where
you're recording from. Yeah, let's paint the picture real quick.

(04:32):
So currently I am outside of my beautiful apartment in
my Toyota Prius with a podcast studio that we've set
up inside of it. Mark, our engineer producer, and my
husband is inside Mark. Can we get a hello? Hello? Everyone?
How are you doing this fine morning day? You might

(04:54):
be able to hear trolls in the background, samaraw, can
you tell us a little bit about where you're I'm
on the floor on a to be fair, on a
pillow on the floor, leaning against a favorite blanket of
mine that has cheetahs on it. I'll take a picture,
I'll post it. It'll be great. And uh, I'm, you know,
trying to get the sound of bounce and only the

(05:16):
right ways and not the wrong ways with a little
bit of a jerry rigged set up here, and trying
to embrace how chill it is and how kind of
bohemian I feel sitting on the floor a cross leg
and doing this. Um. It's great. We're getting back to basics, guys.
It makes me think of something I posted on the

(05:37):
Permission to Speak pod um instagram feed earlier this week.
I'm not going to read all of it, although you
can go there to see it, but the last line
is um. This is by a therapist, a licensed therapist,
who says, when in the midst of trauma, just getting
by emotionally and functionally is okay. Lowering expectations and being

(05:58):
kind to yourself and is vital. I feel like our
amazing podcast setups here are a perfect example of that. Alright,
so let's dive into this party. So our first question
is from Carly. She's an anesthesiologist and she is currently
working in the ICU, and she wrote in saying, Hi,

(06:18):
I love this podcast. You're doing an amazing job and
I find it's so thought provoking. The episode was Shaunton
made me cry. I was holding onto a toxic friend
group and she helped me to admit to myself that
I was allowed the space to know that I don't
need their validation. I just thought that was beautiful. So
her first question, though, is I've been thinking about this
since the first episode. So I'm a physician and therefore

(06:40):
I work with a lot of elderly patients. I've had
mentors tell me in medical school that I need to
lower my voice so that those with hearing lost, mostly
elderly people, can hear me better. The reason is that
we often lose our high frequency hearing first before a
low frequency. But I'm starting to wonder if it's also
a generational thing that a lower voice will be more
healing to an elderly patient when I approached them as

(07:02):
a medical authority. What are your thoughts on that. I
wonder what this lower voice means, if that's about pitch
or about volume, but it sounds like it's meant to
be about pitch. I don't know about the losing the
upper register, but I do know for everybody that when
we're in a in a room with a lot of

(07:23):
din a lot of you know, whether it's a party
context or you know, a medical whatever, any any any
room that has a lot of sound bouncing around, if
we can go up a little bit, actually it cuts through,
especially if you kind of consens what the general didn't
sound in the room is if you can go a
little above that it's a great way to be heard
at a party, quite honestly, But what she's asking about
is obviously more complicated than that, because there's also an

(07:46):
element of care involved, right, And and what she's talking
about is making sure that people who are older are
really understanding what she's saying. And this is truly about communication,
right And my feeling about that is there's a few things.
One we often and I think she has a question
coming up about masks right now. If everybody's wearing a mask.
There's a second level of this, but it just in general,

(08:08):
if we're approaching people who are hard of hearing, what
we can do is remember that we I mean, this
sounds ridiculous, but we can remember that we have mouths,
and like we're often thinking about the sound just coming
out from like the back of you know, from our
throat out, but our lips. The amount that we actually
what they say in the acting world is use your consonants.
The amount that we actually can use our mouth to

(08:30):
make sure that we're communicating our thoughts is so much
more than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. We actually
do use our mouth like that. If we really know
that we need to be heard if it's the seventh
time that somebody has, you know, misunderstood us, and we're
like no, What I'm trying to say is suddenly we realize, like, oh,
I have all these tools at my disposal. I'll use them.
But but maybe in this context it would be helpful

(08:52):
to know that you don't have to wait for the
seventh time, right, you can actually just say to yourself,
what can I do to make sure that I actually
you use my lips, I use my tongue, I actually
am communicating the thought. And so Carly's in her residency
right now, so she's really trying to set the tone,
you know, during this wild time with COVID and having
to be more protected, but also moving forward as a

(09:14):
female physician and using her voice and standing in her power.
And so she has a few questions here which I love.
So the next one is, I've been told by multiple
people that I have a soft voice, and I think
a lot of that has to do with my constantly
being told by society to only take up so much space.
As you have said in many episodes. But I was
wondering if you would like to comment on my projection

(09:36):
a little, maybe some tips and how to make a
soft voice heard without feeling like I'm shouting or any
other thoughts that you have on that. I love this,
and you know, without having her in front of me,
I can't tell her exactly what the cure all is.
But in general, for people, yeah, breathing makes a huge difference.
And breathing doesn't just mean like hyperventilating. It means using

(09:56):
the extra space that we have with our ribs expand,
ending with the stuff underneath our ribs expanding. If we
can get that far down, which sometimes like yoga, running
around the block like helps our body remember like, oh,
I know how to breathe myself, I remember, you know
that kind of thing. But it's not just about the breathing.
It's about the fact that when the breathing comes through
our vocal cords, it vibrates in a way that suggests confidence,

(10:19):
and if you don't breathe like that, it does just
feel a lot lighter, like you're just cutting yourself off
from your power supply, and that is a way to communicate.
I think having a soft voice has its benefit, but
working on what is it to get this sound out,
I think is something that she could do, like completely
in the privacy of her own home, and maybe this
is the perfect time to do it when we're all,

(10:40):
you know, literally always in the privacy of her own home,
except when we have children staring at us while we're
trying to go but working on um moving around a
little bit like this is going to sound very like
acting school, but really it just works for absolutely everybody
because we all have bodies. But you know, moving around
and actually making your body kind of vibrate a little
like like dancing or just like like bouncing a little

(11:02):
bit on your on your toes and while while breathing
and just doing like a ha sound, you'll end up
with like U, which sounds crazy, but what it really
is is saying like, oh, my body has other ways
of making sound come out of my mouth. Because it
sounds like what she's talking about is just patterns, right,
that she's habits that she's fallen into for completely understandable reasons.

(11:25):
But what we can do in the privacy of our
own home that we then can sort of build up
to the confidence to do outside of our own home
is I have other options. I have other options. Let
me just try them out, let me see how weird
they feel, and sit with that weirdness and become more
and more comfortable with that weirdness over time, which is
again not to say that softness is bad, but just
to say you have more options at your disposal, and
soft really works in certain context and then not in other's.

(11:48):
And you really want to be as absolutely straightforward as
possible when you want to be you know, Carly has
another question, one more question. She says, sorry by the
way that she has so many thoughts. Don't apologize, Carly, No,
not at all. Oh my god. Eyes. So Carly's and
her residency and she just finished her I See you rotation.
She has a week off and then she's jumping into
the COVID I see you. And so in the era

(12:10):
of this coronavirus, we are all wearing masks at the hospital.
This has really created some disconnect and communication, and it
makes me wonder how much we rely on lip reading
to understand people. Additionally, it takes away a huge portion
of facial expression, and I have found myself trying to
use my eyes more dramatically to get my point across.

(12:31):
There's a few things. One, yeah, masks, I mean, you know,
the whole idea of um communication if we have all
of our faculties, uh, is that we are thinking about matching,
as it were, our body language, our tone of voice,
and the content of what we're saying. We talked about
this a little bit in the John Knaffinger interview. The

(12:53):
dream is that those things feel like they're in alignment, right,
that what you're saying and how you're saying it and
what your body is doing are all telling the same story.
When we suddenly don't have the use of our mouths,
our tone of voices is maybe really muffled, then you know,
what we have is the content of what we're saying
in our body language. So what she's talking about is like,
you know, using eyes a little bit more. Obviously that

(13:14):
can feel a little crazy making, but to the extent
that that works, yeah, I mean, compensating is what we're
talking about here. The other thing though, content wise, in
a fast moving situation where there's like, you know, a
lot of what we're all reading about that's happening on
the floor of these you know, hospitals, obviously, just do

(13:35):
what's absolutely necessary to get the information across, whether it's
just about literally being louder to get through the mask
or whatever. But if what we're talking about is these
nuanced moments when she really wants to reach out to
another human and make them feel heard. I think it's
a little bit of the consonant stuff that I was
talking about before, mixed with actually using phrases that maybe
you've practiced ahead of time, stuff like you know, you

(13:58):
can't see my mouth right now, but if you could,
you would know that, right. I mean, we can just
come up with stuff to acknowledge the weirdness of this
moment that then doesn't feel like should I say something
or shouldn't I They don't know I'm smiling, they don't know.
You know, we can do what we can't, even if
it's just to say I have a mask on, but
if I didn't, you'd better understand what I'm trying to say,

(14:20):
which is you know. Um. The other thing is all
of us have experienced mask wearing at this point. It
is so it is so weird feeling, right, but it
is something we can practice. I mean, like, even if
we wanted to, like have a FaceTime date with our
best friend and both wear masks for two minutes, I mean,
not for longer than that, because you know, one of

(14:40):
the dreams One of the benefits of actually doing FaceTime
is that we're not sharing terms, but you know, literally
that's it's kind of a ridiculous and delightful exercise to
put a mask on for two minutes with your best
friend and see, like, how do I communicate? We can
turn that into a good game. I mean, I'd be
interested if anybody wanted to try it and let me know,
like do you find what do you find about how

(15:01):
much more eyes or eyebrows you use? Or do you
not need to? Does it turn out you don't need to,
because actually, you know, we are much better communicators than
we think we are. You know, just see what happens
and see what you're getting from the person that you're
talking to as well as what you're getting from your
own you know, internal signals well. And I think also, Carly,
that's such a thoughtful question. The fact that you're actually

(15:23):
you care enough about your patients to want to make
them feel grounded and heard and connect with them during
this time. That alone, in itself is such a gift
that you're giving to them and that you carry with
you and to remember that when you're going in. I mean,
these are real difficult times and it's difficult to relay
news to patients and to make them feel at ease
during this time, and the fact that you're taking that

(15:43):
into consideration is is really beautiful. And also if anyone
out there wants to create some sort of clear mask,
maybe that would be helpful. That's that's what we need
to spend our money on right now. But it does
also make me think of what you were just saying,
which is true, uh and beautiful. It makes me think
of the body language component as well. I mean, I
was talking about facial expression, but obviously our actual bodies.

(16:07):
You know, we we can all do things to seem
more open and to see more closed, and we all
we we sort of know generally socially that like crossing
our arms in front of our in front of our
bodies is a bit of a closed off gesture. Also
totally acceptable to do when you're feeling closed off or
when you want to protect yourself. So I am not
saying there's anything wrong with it, but I am saying that,

(16:28):
you know, an awareness of what we're doing with our
body is another element in in communicating to people who
you really want to get through too. A six ft
lean in um Okay. Our next question is from Sally.
Sally is a loud woman. I've always been called loud.
I have professionally been shamed for being loud. I made
fun of for being loud. If anyone I consider a

(16:50):
friend or family member calls me loud or tells me
to pipe down, I get so sad and so frustrated.
The kicker is that I'm really not that loud. I'm
not yelling or shouting or even and straining my voice.
This is my natural volume. But I've been shamed for
it from my entire life. That's my vocal drama. God,
let's take a second for Sally. I hear you. I

(17:10):
mean there's there's two different there's two different things going
on here, and I don't know, you know, without knowing
her better, which which it is, or maybe it's both.
But first of all, I just want to acknowledge for
everybody listening in, who's like, is that me? You know,
A lot a lot of us are A lot of us,
I should say, deal with what Carly was talking about
in terms of being soft, but a lot of us

(17:32):
are the opposite. We've overcompensated or we've just compensated, and
people have told us our whole lives that were too much,
too big, too loud, right, all the things, and who knows,
who knows if that's because we're actually filling up the
space more than we need to, or that we are
just not what you know. Historically society deems a good

(17:54):
woman to be. So for all of us who heard
something in what Sally just said, you know, I just
want to acknowledge that and that we're all, um, there's
a lot of us, is what I want to say.
I'm one of them. I'm one of you Seally. The
other thing, though, is it sounds, from the way that
she's written this like she really has a trigger around this,

(18:16):
a completely understandable one. It sounds like it's been a
lifelong thing. But I wonder if that stopped her from
actually exploring a little bit with curiosity. Why it is
that people are saying that. Is it because the content
of what you're saying is unpleasant, and you know what,
people can fucking deal with it because you know you're
the boss. Or is it that you are pushing too

(18:37):
much out, whether it's you know, content or emotion or
just sound, but that feeling of pushing which may be
pushing through these this sort of scar tissue of years
and years and years and years of people saying this
about you that that may very well just not literally
not be helping you get what you want. So on
the one hand, we can say you can embrace yourself

(18:58):
and who you are. On the other hand, we can say,
if you're doing things that feel out of joint with
the room that you're in, with the people you're talking to,
it's not helping you. And so I wonder if there's
a little gentleness you can have with yourself around exploring
what it is to actually just fill the space, to
actually just throw the ball of thought to the person
you're talking to, and not harder than it needs to

(19:21):
be thrown, and not filling the space louder than it
needs to be. And just wonder, you know, without short
changing yourself or your ambitions or your heart. Uh, just
wonder what else can I do here? What else can
I do with all of the tools I have in
my in my body to actually get myself heard? And

(19:44):
then there's also this other side of it. There's something
about teaching the people in your life. If you're interested
in doing this exploration, teaching the people in your life
that you're interested in exploring it and getting real feedback
from them and saying basically creating a sense of allies
ship up, saying I'd love you to help me figure
out how to communicate better with you, because then we're

(20:06):
all on the same team. Because there's something in that
letter that feels very much me versus the world, and
I so hear that. I mean, I so hear that,
and my heart goes out to you. But I wonder
if there's a reframe there where you can enroll people
in your team to solve this problem. Well, you know,
it actually brings me to a question that I have
myself lately that keeps coming up. As I've mentioned, I
have an almost four year old son, Jack, who is

(20:28):
dynamic and wonderful and vibrant, and with that, he speaks very,
very loud. He has an amazing vocabulary and he uses
his voice with power, and I'm proud of him for it.
But it's loud, and quite often I find myself and
my husband, but I feel it more so myself asking
him to be quieter, to use his voice lower, because

(20:50):
we live in an apartment, because we have neighbors. Because
it's just sometimes annoying. It's and it's something that I
find um becoming a broken record about. And I feel
like with all this talk and working on this show
that I don't want to damage him or or make
him feel smaller or you know, what I'm trying to
do is ultimately just let him know that we can

(21:11):
hear him, and he doesn't need to, you know, be screaming.
I mean, you just solved it. That's exactly right. I
think we can all, whether it's to our children or
or to other people in our lives, we can find
a way to reframe your being too loud. I mean,
I wish people did that in Sally's life, because that's
obviously not a helpful you know note that she keeps
getting if they can reframe it in terms if we

(21:32):
as parents in this case, can reframe it in terms
of I can hear you. I'm listening, So if you're
talking at a volume that really hits me but isn't
too big, I can really hear you. When it gets
too small or too big, I'm not able to hear
it as well. I'm always thinking. I mean, I have
a five year old and almost five year old. I'm
always thinking in terms of like setting him up for

(21:54):
success in using me as a model for like what
other people in life will be like to him. So
I'm always saying, like, how you that's so, that's what
you want? How would you go about getting what you want?
Which is another way of saying please, say please? Right,
But but think helping him think in terms of the
sort of logic of it rather than just the roat
nous of it. So I think there might be something there.
I don't know if it will work, you know, but

(22:14):
something in terms of you're talking at a volume right now,
that's not necessary if you're talking to me. If you're
just wanting to make sound, that's cool. Maybe we should
go outside for a little while. Like I can tell
you've got a lot of energy to burn off, but
if you're trying to communicate to me, uh, you can
actually do it a lot quieter and then actually modeling
as well, you know, we can model like I've done
a lot of Like I mean, this will probably work

(22:35):
on the mike because this mike is so good that
I borrowed from my heart. But I do a lot
of like can you hear me? Now? Can you still
hear me? If you can hear me, then you don't
have to talk that much louder than this, right, or
even just like a little bit of a little bit
of breath and vibration behind it, but really just showing it.
And then it becomes game. You know, games, games are
sometimes the solution and saying like can you match this

(22:57):
this volume and as you said, and really want to
emphasize this for my own child. Uh, We're not in
the business of telling our kids to play small, but
we are in the business of helping them understand that
there are options, that their first way is not necessarily
their best way, and that reading a room is a
skill that they can work on even now. And you know,

(23:20):
if they're in a quiet space with us, using only
the energy necessary to get their point across and no lesson,
no more is good communication, which is like a skill
for life, it will help them get what they want
from us, from whoever they interact with in the future. Okay,
let's take a quick break and we'll be back with more.

(23:48):
And we're back cats, Who do we have next? So
this is our next question from don I do have
a question related to the use of my voice in
my job. I am a fundraiser, for a symphony orchestra,
and I'm in my early twenties. Getting one point two
million involves a lot of talking and meeting with folks
who are three to four times my age. But to

(24:08):
be successful in fundraising, they have to one like me
and to connect with me, and then three somehow view
me as a peer. Nobody wants to feel like they're
donating a couple of grand and the person asking could
be their grandchild. So there's like a lot going on there.
But where it really comes to a head is when
somebody is complaining and angry. What are your tips for

(24:30):
tone and inflection where I can be firm with a
lot of old as men and not lose my sense
of self authenticity in dealing with them. Thanks in advance,
and stay healthy, strength and warmth. You know, we talked
about this and the John F Finger one as well.
It's so important for especially young women to realize that
we can be as strong as we want to be

(24:53):
if we're also investing in how much we care about
the people were talking to write when when strang um
doesn't work so well. I mean, these are obviously huge
generalizations and and everybody has to put their own, you know,
cultural stamp on it, which is a much longer conversation.
I'm happy to have it another time. But generally speaking,
we can be firm. We can say no, that's not

(25:16):
how it is, or I need you to listen to me.
If we also add to it an element of I
care about you and I want to make sure this
works out okay for both of us. I sometimes call
the strength and warmth. It's not a dichotomy. It's just
like two completely different things that both can work at
the same time as each other, or or an opposition.

(25:37):
I think of those two things for women, especially um
it may be more helpful to think of it as
not strong and warm, but assured and assuring. So when
we're assured right, we can invest ahead of time, maybe
before having a difficult conversation. We can invest in thinking
about the ways in which we trust ourselves. I did

(26:00):
that one thing so well. I have this person who
makes me feel great, right, all of those things that
we really can This is not the same as like
an affirmation into the mirror, where we're like looking into
our eyes and saying I'm so great, I can do it.
You know. Sometimes those works. Sometimes those make us feel
more like a fraud. Right, It's not about saying like
I'm the greatest. It's about really thinking about, like that

(26:21):
time when that person said that, or that letter I
kept because it made me feel great about myself. I
can just go back to that in my mind or
literally read it and let those feelings take over. Right.
We there's this there's this um this idea of code switching.
I've talked about a little bit on this show. It's
it's a term that's used a lot in the African
American community to talk about the ways that people have

(26:42):
been systematically taught that they're sort of a white, white
way to talk quote unquote, a white way to talk
for job interviews, and then there's you know, a different
way to talk at home so that people don't accuse
you of putting on errors. There's a lot of complicated
stuff in that, but the reality is that on a
linguistic level, code switching is something everybody does. It's a
way of describing the way that we talked to the

(27:04):
briest at Starbucks versus the way we talked to our
mom versus the way we talked to a friend who
just had a terrible tragedy. We all know how to
sort of switch gears and reflect the you know, person
we're talking to and the tone that that that is
required in order to get what we want in that situation,
whether what we want is you know, a latte or
to make them feel better. And if we invest I think,

(27:27):
if we invest in thinking a little bit before a
difficult conversation in um, God, that person makes you feel great,
or that letter I got or that comment that I got,
or looking at my dog's face or whatever it is
makes me makes me connect with me, we can like
kind of a little bit code switch that version of
ourselves in to these conversations it seem a little difficult

(27:49):
and might seem a little more antagonistic, so that we
can work on that thing I talked about with uh Sally,
a little bit of of um enrolling them into our team.
If somebody's mad at us, it's not necessarily the easiest
thing to say, I hear you, and we're going to
solve this together. But it does seem like that's probably
where the solution will lie in terms of the age thing.
I don't know how much that's projecting versus real, but

(28:12):
I wonder if it will be more helpful for her
to reframe it as people love grandchildren. Right. So if yes,
there is obviously an element of like, are you gonna
take seriously a young woman on the phone who's asking
for a lot of money? But I think you can
bring in the assured in the assuring. The assuring half
of it is saying I don't worry, it's going to

(28:34):
be great, right. The assured is I know what I'm
talking about. The assuring is I've got you, And you know,
I think that kind of cuts across age. And if
it doesn't, then you're dealing with an asshole. And I'm
so sorry, but you know, try to get as much
money as you can out of him. You are the future.
That's right, that's right. In fact, I will say this also,

(28:57):
I have a friend who's in her twenties started a really,
really awesome organization for young people, and she told me,
I just feel like I'm too young. People are no
one's going to take me seriously. And I was like,
you know, considering that what you're starting to do is
actually create a network for people your own age and
talk to older people about trying to you know, sponsor

(29:19):
that sort of thing, I was so overwhelmed by the
fact that she took her greatest strength, which is that
she is a true representative of that generation, and saw
it as a weakness. And I think there's a lesson
in that for all of us. All Right, we got
a question from leanne Um. I feel like my speaking
voice can be scratchy. It's not smooth with enough breath.

(29:42):
I think it's nerves and stress. I think that I
can sound good, but not always when I want to.
I recorded a series of greeting on our organization's new
phone system, and I really don't like how they sound.
That's the scoop. Any tips, any tips there? It is
very valuable, especially if you're doing a recording of your voice.
Uh to um not feel like you're sort of only

(30:06):
thinking about your own voice and and um sort of
like hovering outside yourself, lost in time and space, but
rather who you're talking to. As soon as we're actually
connected to who we're talking to and why we're telling
them this information, we we all we all get better.
So that is part of it, right too, That is
part of it. Another part of it is breathing. Another
part of it. I was thinking about this with an

(30:27):
earlier question. Um, but I'll say it here because it's
valuable for her as well. You know, part of when
our voice sounds scratchy. I mean, I will say some
of that is, honestly just that the damage stuff that
Dr Gupta was talking about. Like some of it's just
inevitable from overuse, from yelling, from going out and partying whatever,
so you know, give ourselves a little break. But some
of it is a combination of what I was talking

(30:48):
about earlier, with not breathing enough, combined with there are
two main places that we resonate in order to make
sound come out of us. And you know, go with
me on this. Basically, there's an opening between the um
bones in our face called our mask resonance. It's below
our eyes. Uh. Maybe I'll post a little picture of
this um next to our knows that you can feel it.

(31:09):
I'm I'm putting my fingers on it right now, my my,
my first two fingers. Uh. And it's a soft area
and when you massage it, you can you often end
up needing to blow your nose afterwards. So massaging this
area with maybe a hum sound, uh, will open up
this area. It worked, truly, I like already feel a difference.

(31:30):
Um It's just a way to remind our body to
vibrate in that area. And then you can also just
put your fingers there and just feel, is am I vibrating? Um? Right? Uh?
Mask resonance it helps with our penniness. Pinkiness is just
a word that some of us used to just mean
like that that that really present forward sound. The other
place that we vibrate is our chest, our chest resonance,

(31:53):
and that you can put your hand on your chest
right now and talk, Hi, my name is and see
if you vibrate and stereo. Typically, UM, women have more
mask resonans and men have more chest resonance. Uh. The
dream scenario is a is a perfect blend of the two,
so that all sort of like all the parts of
our body that can vibrate when we talk are all vibrating,

(32:13):
and literally those sound waves are are leaving our body
and landing on the people that we want to be
talking to. UM. And what's interesting about it is that
if we really do have too much mask resonance and
not enough chest resonance. UM, here's my here's my example.
If we don't have enough chest resonance, we do sound pingy,
We sound very forward and present and present is good,
but we do tend to have this sound where we

(32:36):
sort of cut ourselves off from our sense of power.
We're often not breathing. It's a good solution for not
you know, taking up any space in the world. We're
just right here. The opposite, and again, stereotypically this is
this is a male thing. But you know, obviously many
people are outliers for either of these. But if you
don't have any mass resonance and your only chest resonance,

(32:56):
you feel a little bit underwater. People don't quite know
why you don't seem present, but you don't seem present.
So ideally you have a blend of the two. That
may be something that would be useful for her to
practice before the next time that, you know, she has
to speak in front of people or on recording. And
there are some sort of simple exercises that mostly have
to do with kind of jumping around and dancing and

(33:18):
just like breathing at the same time and making sounds happen.
There's basically only three things you need to do ever
to warm yourself up vocally, three categories. The first one
is to get yourself breathing, whether that is running around
the block or you know, dancing to Beyonce or lying
on your back on the floor and actually just trying
to get your um body to sort of relax and
and you know, actually use itself well about it then

(33:41):
kind of get tight um. Then then the second thing
is connecting breath to sound. So whether that's often that's
like if you are lying down on the ground, then
you start to get up, you start to roll yourself up,
you start to move your body a little bit, huh.
And then the final thing is articulators. That's your lips,
your teeth, your tongue, your jaw. Just seeing, liked, I
have some jaw attention? Okay, yeah, I'm a human, so

(34:04):
I have show attention and seeing does your tongue have
some tightness? Right? You can pull your tongue out. Some
people even like to hold onto their tongue. Some people
hate that totally fine other way. But if you hold
onto your tongue and try to count to ten, none
them right, you really realize that all those that your
tongue is a huge muscle. It goes down to your
neck and uh, and often it's it's really tightened the

(34:25):
back and loosening that up gives you so much more
flexibility and you know, ability to communicate with all of
your tools at your disposal. So that's really it breathing
into connecting it to sound, which can help with this
mask in this chest resonance stuff if you're just moving
around and vibrating a little bit, and you know, you
can even tarzan uh all right, really getting sound into

(34:47):
these places that sometimes it's just stuck and hasn't gone
into for a while, and then connecting that with you know,
abc D E right, So any of that stuff is
going to put her in a better position than just
not doing that stuff. You know, that's for all of us.
This brings me to my next question from Karen. She says,

(35:08):
how should we respond when a male coworker or supervisor
treats us in a sexiest way but is either unaware
or is choosing to be unaware of their actions. How
should we coach our male coworkers on their problematic jargon? Yeah, girl,
I hear you know. I mean, this is obviously a
collective thing, and it's a bummer that, you know, it

(35:30):
feels like an individual thing because you know, those of
us who are alone in offices with people who don't
look or sound like us. UM, you know, inevitably half
like added on s on us to solve the problem
or to suck it up, And that's a bummer, UM,
if you're interested in really solving it, which you don't
have to be, you know, I mean, you can also
just like suck it up or leave the job or

(35:53):
or you know, have a closet to scream in. But
if you get to the point where you really are
committed to doing something, UM, you know, everybody's office is different.
If you have an ally who you know fits the
description you're you're talking about, that's obviously the first person
to talk to to get feedback from them on how
to talk to the others. UM. But the main thing is,

(36:15):
you know, Shaunta told such an amazing story about a
woman who said something sort of accidentally racist, and it
was Shaunta's decision whether or not to call that out UM.
And I think, you know, listen back to her episode
to see how she dealt with it. But I think
this strength and warmth thing really works in this context
as well. Assured and assuring right finding UM an opportunity

(36:41):
you know, to be very clear to say, like I'm
going to I would like to gather a few of
us together to talk about something that's really been making
my workspace feel less productive for me, which you know
obviously frames it like this is about work, and this
is about all of us getting on the same page
about how to make something the productive it can be,
and then saying you may very well not be aware

(37:03):
of it. And I'm you know, sort of like pleased
for you that no one else has ever had to
tell you this, that it must be nice, but um,
there are certain ways that you're interacting with me that
makes me feel like I can't bring my full self
into the space, And if you're interested in what those are,
I'd really like to tell you about them so that
you can, you know, think about ways to make some changes.

(37:27):
And then you know, you're appealing to people's like best selves,
and if they're not interested in bringing their best selves
to the table, you know, it's a it's a longer
term process. And you know, the other thing I'll say
is that conversation will go better if you've done all
the other things I've talked about today. I guess beforehand,

(37:49):
if you've danced it out, if you've worked on your breathing,
if you've worked on speaking from a you know, in
a way where it feels like the content and the
body language and the tone of voice are all in alignment,
because God, it's hard to have a difficult conversation, and
especially in a work context because obviously, you know, there's
certain intimacies and then certain elements of mistrust or of

(38:11):
just lack of you know, being on the same page
with people, and there's an element of, you know, my
livelihood is at stake. So what you're saying is don't
call them a sexist asshole. You can do that part
to your friends as you're processing what you should say,
you know, or you can, I mean whatever, like try that.
I don't know. I mean, like really the point of

(38:32):
use your voice to get what you want is like
literally what works? I don't I'm not really interested in
in what sounds like it would be flowery but won't work.
You know, Like that's fine, try it out, go for
you know, call people whatever you want. You know, I guess,
But the reality is if what we're really trying to
get what we want, then we're trying to be heard.

(38:52):
And you know, there's all kinds of common ground lessons
online you can look up like how to build common ground.
Often it's about said the ground rules of we're all
trying for the same thing. You know, your intention is
to you know, your the random do that you work with.
Your intention is to get this project done as efficiently

(39:14):
and as you know, easily as possible. That's my intention too,
So that it's not you know, you're a bad person,
because look, so many of the dudes in our lives
who are not as evolved as we'd like them to
be are just products of their own ship right there,
products of the same societal stuff we've had to deal with.
So you know, yeah, it might be satisfying to call

(39:37):
them out and say you're a sexy stasshole, but it
probably will be more useful to say, I bet you
want this to be as productive as possible. Me too.
You know, here's something we could work on together, right,
And I think that creates long term change instead of
an immediate reactive response. And I will say also to
bring it back to the Shanta story I started with.

(39:59):
You know, the book White Fragility, which everybody who's not
a person of color should read, is really valuable for
holding up a mirror to the ways in which we
all get fragile when called on our stuff. And I
bet that there's a sort of a sideways way into
talking to the sexist people in your life by reading

(40:21):
that book and thinking about the ways that we can all, um,
you know, sort of communicate in a way that doesn't
just ryle defensiveness right away, And with that, we're going
to jump to a quick break. We'll be back in
just a minute. So we're back. This is a question

(40:45):
from Nicole. She says, how do you deal with imposter syndrome?
I was at a conference once and the woman who
is the president, former president of Princeton University, who's the
first woman president of any Ivy League school. She's like
a decorated biologist, amazing woman. She raised like multiple billions

(41:07):
of dollars for Princeton during her time there. Um was
asked when she felt like she was enough, and it
was on this stage in front of three thousand women
at a luncheon where we were all sitting at like
circular tables, and she her answer was this. She literally

(41:28):
took the longest pause in the history of the world,
and it was like the penny just dropped for all
of us. We were in these circular tables looking at
each other across the table going oh, this is just
a thing, and it's I've read it's not even just
a woman thing, you know. I think there's something so

(41:52):
freeing about the fact that imposter syndrome is as universal
as it is. And the you know, the more we're
doing something challenging, the more we whatever it comes up
for us and we think we're not worthy of that place.
And to just hear that that voice and say, oh, hi, hi, hi,

(42:13):
you know, I hear you, I see you. I'm not
going to believe you, you know. And it doesn't necessarily
solve it in the moment, but it does allow us
to begin to have a relationship with that voice that
isn't antagonistic, that's just saying, oh, you're probably trying to
protect me, you know. Anyway, that's my feeling about imposter syndrome.

(42:34):
This question is from Michelle. I like this question a lot.
I like all these questions, but this is great when
the show must go on and you're entering a space
where you have to speak to a large crowd, or
maybe have a weird, awkward conversation with a boss or
a co worker, or go on stage to perform your
stand up routine, but you have massive anxiety, or you're
coming out of a conversation or a moment where the
brain space that you're in is not in your calmst

(42:56):
most ideal space. How do you change your state so
that you can deliver your message clearly and effectively the
moment before anything that's really high stakes. It's so valuable
to take a second alone, to meditate for a second
if you'd like to breathe um with no thoughts, but
then to also have some really deliberate ones to think
about the people who bring you so much joy, to

(43:18):
think about what makes you feel more confident, not less,
and to also do something with your body, you know,
whether it's listening to you know, your favorite empowered woman's singer.
I actually I was thinking about this. I would love
for people to send in what their favorite music is
right now, and maybe we can make like a Spotify
playlist of people's favorites, like, um, you know, as you're

(43:40):
going onto the stage, like what's your you know, theme song,
and it can keep changing whatever, but um, you know,
dancing around a little bit like loosening up. I mean
this can't not sound sexual, but loosening up your hips,
a little loosening up the space under your arms. When
we're really uncomfortable, we often sort of, uh, you know,

(44:00):
pin our elbows to the sides of our bodies if
we create a little space there. What we're really trying
to do is um the word trick came to mind.
It's not quite as manipulative as that, but trick our
bodies into remembering that open is just as much of
an option as closed, and closed feels like a you know,
a go to place when we're scared, but open as

(44:22):
a go to place when we're when we um, when
we really want to show our hearts. And the gamble
that I think many of us um can work our
way into taking. Whether it's a difficult conversation with one
person or you know, a complicated talk in front of thousands,
the gamble is, is that more open version of me,

(44:43):
with that my heart revealed, going to get what I
want more? And the answer is probably yes, because probably
what you want is for people to you know, really
hear you, whether it's about your product or about yourself
or about them. So know, what can we do in
that moment before where we're feeling all that anxiety to

(45:04):
just get our body to actually do some like opening stuff.
I mean this is also where like the Amy Cutty
power pose comes into play, Like, yeah, it's pretty delightful
to put your hands on your hips and try to
be wonder woman. But that's also just a thing that
opens up that exact space I was just talking about
between your body and your you know, under arms, like
just finding a way to go. Ah, I will reveal

(45:26):
myself instead of conceal myself, or I will be open
instead of closed. And we can do that with all
the parts of our body, and we can do that
with our fingers. We can do when we get when
we get really anxious, everything closes up. So you know,
on a physical level as well as a mental level,
we can think about opening. That's all it really is.
And the other thing is a little bit of nervous

(45:48):
is okay we've all heard at this point, Like you know,
you can reframe nervous to be excited. Sometimes that works,
you know. But also just know that we live in
a society that is often telling us it's for to
care less. And I'm really interested in changing that, you know,
changing our mindset around that because we love to see
people care, we do it. We'll all lean in when

(46:10):
we see that someone cares. And nerves is another way
of saying I care. We can be nervous about something
that matters to us. We don't have to apologize for it.
I mean, I've I've definitely heard a lot of speeches
that start with I'm so nervous. I don't know if
it actually helps to say I'm so nervous, or to
say who, I'm excited to be here, like everyone knows
what that means. It means like, wow, I got lots
of big feelings in my body. We can totally embrace

(46:32):
I got lots of big feelings in my body. Hi, Hi,
Hi everybody. Um. And then and then the other thing is,
you know, if this is if we are talking about
a talk, then uh, something that I love to remind
people of. Um, you know, obviously different for different contexts,
but if there's any way that you can make the
first thing that happens in your talk be a way

(46:53):
of engaging your audience, asking them a question, asking for
a show of hands, or for applause, or for you know, odds,
if you know who's here because you know who just
read about blah, blah blah, just getting everybody to be
in the same room together and to know that like
we're all sharing a space, we're all breathing together, and
we're all, you know, part of what's about to happen.
We'll also calm our nerves because then it's less about

(47:16):
us and more about them. I took this amazing online
class from a woman I'm going to have on the
pot at some point called Feminist Business School. And the
first rule of Feminist Business school is you have a body.
There's so much to be said there, but I just
remind myself of that a comical amount of times. You know,
I think all of us have the ability to accidentally

(47:36):
live too much in our heads and to try to
sort of think our way out of stuff. And often
our body has way more wisdom than we give it
credit for, and we don't have to think we can
like feel our way out of stuff. You know. We
got some great questions that I think we can kind
of jam through. Here a Samarrow speed round if you will. Okay,
so this is from Brandon. How do you know so
many different dialects? Have you traveled a lot or something? Um? So,

(48:00):
the secret with being a dialect coach is that you
learn every accent as you go. It is not about
keeping a billion of them in my head at once.
It's about, um, knowing what the project in front of
me requires and then doing like a little bit of
delightfully nerdy research. You know. I did a project most
recently before everything got shut down for coronavirus, where I

(48:20):
was working with two actors who were not from the
US on a nineteen fifties North Carolina African American vernacular
accent from two people who were educated and ambitious but
living on a farmhouse. So that's not like, oh I
got that one in my back pocket, you know, I

(48:41):
mean on purpose. The derive, the derive, the whole really,
the whole idea of our voice reflects our life experience.
Is that every single person, and this goes for all
of us, every single person sounds different from every other person.
And that's you know, really liberating. Especially I have to
say when I work with actors for whom English is
their second language, or who are British working on an
American accent, which you know is the other other half

(49:03):
of of of the dialect work. Um, you know, if
there's not one right way to speak, American English. We
all know this because we don't sound exactly like our parents,
and we don't sound exactly like our best friend. And
that is fine, it's cool. I mean, it's revealing of
how much we are all you know, globalized in terms
of what we're seeing on our on YouTube, if not
you know, traveling ourselves, certainly not traveling right now. Um.

(49:27):
But yeah, so it is about breaking down all the
sounds of a native speaker. I find that seems like
it's really telling the right story for the project at
hand and breaking down those sounds using something called the
International Phonetic Alphabet, which is delightfully useful and a bit
of a secret code. I think that you actually one
time wrote my name out in this way or sounded
my name out in this way. Maybe that's something we

(49:47):
can share. What's really cool about I P a international alphabet,
not the beer beers great too? Uh? Is that? Um
it takes all the guests work out. So you know,
there's twenty six letters in English. But if you look
at the letter A in a word you don't know, say, um,
it literally could be a like apple, all, like father,

(50:08):
a like long a. It could be about or it
could be all like, all, how cute. That's five different
sounds with one symbol. So International Phonetic Alphabet solves that
by having five different symbols. So it's really annoying to learn.
But once you know it, you can break down every
single you know, sound word phrase in this UM secret code,

(50:33):
and you know it's share able across cultures and linguists
learn it. Dialect coaches learn it, a lot of actors
learn it. UM you know, opera singers. I guess I'm
uh speech pathologists. That's another place that UM International Phonetic
Alphabet comes in handy and it's so cool. I mean, yeah,
there's a learning curve, but so is like learning music
and then you can play music. Okay, Next question from

(50:58):
Leslie do you have a mom voice and if so,
what is it and why? And do you have any
tips on how to speak with your children in a
clear and gentle manner but also stand in your power
when times get wild, especially in these days. Well, I
did talk about a lot of that before, UM, but
what can I add? I try as hard as possible
to make my mom voice and my not mom voice match.

(51:20):
I really have a physical discomfort with UM talking to
kids in a voice that feels really young. Uh, there's
something biological, like they're like, there are studies that show
that across cultures people talk to babies in the same way,
and our voice goes up and we make you know,
a little little cute sing songy sounds, so like whatever.
I do not mean to demonize any of that, but

(51:41):
when we're at the point where we're trying to communicate
with them, like people, I think it's really valuable to
not just ask them to speak in their strong voice,
but to use our strong voice back to them. And
you know, I use the strong voice quote unquote because
that was, you know, something that I picked up along
the way. Now I should probably call the strong and
warm voice. Right, So let's bring us to our next question,
which has to do it children, which has to do
with Gavin's question, do you think that birth order plays

(52:04):
a role in the way that we speak and use
our voice? Now? Am I not? Totally? It's the same
thing as part of the I should I should add
that to my list of stuff I rattle off when
I say that, you know, your voice is a reflection
of your life experience. Of course, how did you need
to get hurt when you were a kid, Literally, what
did you need to do to get hurt if you're
an only child? The answer is just different, you know.

(52:25):
Next question Tomorrow's best opening lines for dating apps like Bumble,
where the woman messages first, Oh, I like that. I
just love I just love that. I'm like, suddenly the
expert in this is. But I will say I met
my husband online dating, so um, I'll take it. I'm
clearly an expert. Um. I think that I would love

(52:49):
to get feedback from people who are on those dating
apps right now to see what feels really empowering when
you post an opening. But um, I know that what
worked for me, and that feels like it's very much
like in keeping with my my ethos when it comes
to all this other stuff is I would state my
intention and also leave it very open ended. I would
say something like, you seem really great, check out my

(53:11):
you know whatever, my stuff, and tell me if you agree.
So that you're you are being vulnerable up talk. You're
saying I'm interested, but you're also saying, hey, you know,
take a look at me. If you're not interested in
me whatever, I've moved on already. So there's a nice
sort of give and take of being vulnerable, but not
so vulnerable that you feel like you've given all your
power away. And I think that's the whole idea with um.

(53:32):
You know, for steps of a dating app is to
say I'm I'm open, but I'm not so open you
can walk all over me. Permission to online date, I say,
go for it, but not permission to like, you know,
let it come to fruition quite quite yet, UM, So like,
maybe don't make your opening so good that you know
you break your your your social isolation. UM. Truly, I

(53:53):
love these questions. I love that people are thinking about
their vocal drama. Obviously there's a possibility I did not
solve every single person's problem UM with this, But I
also I mentioned that not to apologize, but to say that, UM,
even having a space to talk about this stuff to
sort of um validate that this stuff is real, I
think is very is very valuable because a lot of

(54:15):
us just worried that we're the only person who's ever
wondered about our voice and its power. So you are not.
I am thinking about it all day every day. UM No,
but but truly, UM, I'm thrilled to have you guys
on this journey with me and Cat. I'm thrilled to
have had you. Um I want to say in my studio,
but obviously um only in my in my mind. Thank

(54:38):
you for joining me for this in your zoom chat.
Yeah yeah, you zoomed with me so hard. Well, thank
you for having me, and thank you. Yes to all
of our listeners, please keep your questions coming, they're so relevant.
You're in this together. We're all in this together, and
this is a space where we're creating a real community
around our voice and how we sound and standing in

(54:58):
our power. And it's important more than ever or to
to feel connected and heard and we hear you and
we we see you. And thank you tomorrow for being
such a great voice and for sharing all your tips
my pleasure. I feel like you know what this what this,
what this time has really felt like for me is
a reminder, especially when some of our nations leaders are

(55:20):
making so little sense and are so untrustworthy. It's really
been like such a lesson in how leadership just is
not about the title you have. It's about what you're
doing with your you know, communication, who you're bringing along
with you, what information you're getting out there for other
people and you know, just too for all of us
to feel like Um, whether it's because of crisis or not,

(55:42):
no matter who we are, we all get to say
I can be of use to somebody, and I can
be of used to myself by being of use to somebody.
And whether we're doing that on Zoom or on you know,
I G t V or whatever right now, to the
people in our own lives and our in our small spaces, Um,
I just want everybody to feel like we have your back.

(56:03):
We have your back, and what I love about some
are all of your comments are built upon kindness, and
that right now is so important to stay kind. So
stay kind, stay healthy, stay sane. Permission to Speak Who,
Thank you to everybody who sent in questions, and thank
you all for listening. I'm throwing a bunch of stuff

(56:24):
we referenced in the show notes this week, and as always,
check us out at Permission to Speak Pot on Instagram
or at Permission to Speak pot dot com to submit
questions for a future mail bag episode, or to submit
good quotes for the opening, or just to tell me
what you're feeling. Thanks as well to Sophie Lichtman and
the team at I Heart Radio My family and cohort

(56:47):
and all of you. We're recording this podcast at various
locations around Los Angeles on land that used to belong
to the Tongva indigenous tribe, and you can visit us
d A C dot us to learn more about honoring
native land. Permission to Speak is a production of I
Heart Radio and Double Vision, Executive produced by Katherine Burke

(57:07):
Canton and Mark Canton. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
listen on the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your favorite shows, Jack, Mommy and Daddy.
You're reporting, Oh hell well,

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