DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. There are a lot of things we take for granted, and among them are our voices. We sing. We laugh. We yell at ballparks. And we talk all the time - on the phone, in the office, on street corners. And in doing so, we can damage our voices. Our guest, writer John Colapinto, has had his own experience with that, which you'll soon hear about. And he became interested in the voice, which is the subject of new book, "This Is The Voice." It's an exploration of the astonishing complexity of our vocal apparatus - how we form words, how babies learn to speak, how accents arise and how different kinds of voices affect us, which ones sound authoritative or sexually appealing or politically persuasive. Colapinto argues that the development of our prehistoric ancestors' vocal structures may have been the key to humans becoming the dominant species on the planet.
John Colapinto is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker. He's the author of the bestselling nonfiction book "As Nature Made Him" and the novel "About The Author." He joined me from his home in New York City last year to talk about his book, "This Is The Voice," which is now out in paperback.
