This recently published audiobook discusses social aspects of the human voice. It has a friendly and humorous tone. It sounded to me more like a Radio 4 documentary than an audiobook:¹ it’s certainly not something that would work as a printed book.

Bell explores many aspects of her topic, but there were two that stood out to me.

In one ‘chapter,’ Bell has a detailed discussion of the ‘sexy baby voice,’ an affected way of speaking in the manner of the cartoon character Betty Boop. This became common in popular culture in the 2000s, and Bell explores her own complex feelings about it. On one hand, Bell argues, people should be able to express themselves however they want. On the other, Bell acknowledges her visceral negative reaction to this type of voice, seeing it as anti-feminist. She invites Malcolm Gladwell to interview her about her conflicted feelings, which turns into an insightful conversation which I enjoyed.

The second section which struck me was Bell’s exploration of voice and politics. We’ve all heard how Margaret Thatcher had training to lower the pitch of her voice during her political career in an effort to appear more authoritative. Like one of Bell’s interviewees, I’ve long thought that—to modern ears—this seems absurd. Surely, these days, we listen to the words people are saying more than the voice they are using? Bell challenged my view by having people with a variety of different voices read sections of notable political speeches. I can’t deny that this revealed my own biased prejudices, which were previously entirely unconscious. Now that I’m aware of it, I can make extra effort to overcome it in future.

I heartily recommend this audiobook.

1. It’s interesting, I think, that Radio 4 was the connection I made while listening to this—rather than a documentary podcast. I’ve certainly listened to the latter more often than the former in recent years. I’m not sure what it was about this production that said ‘Radio 4’ specifically, but something definitely did. ↩