This Is Why Your Voice Sounds So Weird To You

Have you ever listened to a recording of your own voice and thought, “Whoa. Do I really sound like that?” Well, it’s time to face the music. You really do.

As it turns out, there’s a simple explanation for why your voice sounds so different (likely higher) to you than to other people — check it out in the latest episode from the Youtube series SciShow in the video above.

“When you hear your own voice as you talk, you’re really hearing a couple of different things at once,” Hank Green, host of the series, says in the video. “You’re hearing the sound thats coming out of your mouth… but you’re also hearing the sound bouncing around inside your own head, which is conducted by your flesh and bones directly to your inner ear.”

That fleshy stuff, according to Green, is better at transmitting low frequencies than high ones, which makes you think your voice sounds lower than it does to other people.

Now you know.