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Hey, everybody. It's your old pal Josh. And for this week's Spy Selex, I've chosen How Auto Tune Works came out in August of 2015. And it's one of my Under the Radar favorites because it looks at something that's worked its way into every crevice of popular culture, but that none of us really has any idea about how it works or where it came from.

And this episode is a special listener mail roundtable with us. And Holly and Tracy, from stuff you missed in history class, all about sexism. It's super interesting and really kind of out of left field after the auto tune episode. So it's a nice combination and I hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Step, you should know a production of ancient radios, HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Cartouche, Charles, David, Chuck Bright, yep, there's Jerry. Yep.

And this is stuff you should know. Oh, that was great. Thanks, Ben. Do I sound like Cher sound like to paint Josh to Josh or Snoop Dogg?

Does he do auto tune? He factors into this big time later on. Oh, well, I don't even know about that. So I'm oh, I've got something on my sleeve.

This is kind of fun.

I don't know how much we're going to do that because people are probably like, stop it right now.

Oh, Chuck, I think we should do it. Are you done? Yeah, I'm good. All right. Um, we could have just auto tune this whole thing. Yeah. You know, maybe we should. Maybe we should. Maybe from this moment forward, we should just auto tune the rest of the episode.

Yeah. Starting now, let's sabotage our careers.

Uh, you got an intro for this fancy intro. I think we just did it, buddy.

OK, well, let's get in the Wayback Machine then, my friend. OK, we're not have to go back that far because I know where we're going. It's going to be a short trip. Let's go back to, oh, summer of 1998. Boom.

I'm you and I are in the club, we're hanging out, we're drinking rum and coke, you can find us in the club and we're dancing and we're getting down and grooving due to Cher's latest jam. Believe, believe it's a hot jam, a hot, hot, hot jam that's released in the summer. It's summertime, as you can tell, because it's hot in the club.

And I've got on my my my short pants.

I'm dressed like I'm out for a night at the Roxbury. That's right. I'm wearing a see through mesh shirt. So I notice actually.

How could you not. Well, yeah, the third nipple really stands out.

So we're in the club, we're jammin and Cher's song is on. And something happens at about 35 seconds into the song. And you and I are just like, whoa, daddy, did you just hear that?

It changes everything. It changed the whole tone of the club. Like the club was like, OK, and now it's bang and.

Yeah, oh, look. Yeah, because of a little something called auto tune, what sounded like a little electronic glitch was very purposeful and it was the first time the auto tune had been used in this way. So what Josh is auto tune was quite a setup.

Yeah. Uh, can we do the rest of the episode in the club.

Yeah, why not. OK, just keep those rum and coke coming. OK, that's cool. Um, so Chuck, let me let me stop you for a second. Right.

OK, because the way you described it, you made it sound like everybody was like, oh sure. Just used auto tune. No, no, no. Everybody said what was that. Yeah that was awesome. Uh, although some people were like, what was that? Don't ever do that again, I'm sure. But most people were like, wow, Cher just released her biggest hit of her entire career and there's a pretty long career. Yeah, she just came back like that, just established her comeback.

Was this track. Yep. And it actually became one of the greatest best selling singles of all time. Yeah.

And I think I mean, it would have been a probably a big song anyway, but I think most definitely auto tune kicked it into the stratosphere, gave it just the extra something and it became part of the the, the talk.

Everyone was talking about it.

So everybody went to her producer and said, dude, how did you do that? We want to know how to do that. And he's like, vocoder. Yeah, he lied.

He lied. He lied big time. He lied in person to other producers. He lied in interviews. He lied, lied, lied about how he made that track because he wanted to keep it to himself. Yeah. Because it was so huge and it became so huge, Chuck, that at first auto tune was called the Cher Effect.

Yeah. Even the company that produced auto tune Integris, which we'll talk about in a minute, called it in their instructional book, The Cher Effect. They probably still do, don't they?

They don't mention it any longer. Really? Yeah, OK. But the the so it was it was a huge deal. And this guy lied and kept it under wraps and for many years it was very mysterious.

Yeah. Let's actually if you live under a rock, well let's go ahead and play that clip of the very first. Thirty five seconds into that song where Cher says, I can't break through.

You keep pushing me. You I can break. It can take years. Yeah, right there. Some thought their music changed from that point forward.

OK, so for what this guy was a producer was saying was vocoder. Vocoder is something that's been around for a very long time. If you've ever listened to any Pete Frampton, Peter Frampton, anything. Do you feel like we do. Yeah. That whole long guitar solo or whatever.

He's breathing into a tube connected to his guitar, which is electrifying his voice. Vocoder been around for a very long time.

Yeah, but there's different ways of doing it that that was definitely the the the tube effect through the guitar. But you can also just use it, you know, make your voice robotic like Beck. Sure. Two turntables and a microphone. Right. Or Mr. Roboto with sticks. Yeah. But all different ways to use it. This thing just sounded different.

The sheer effect. It was a little different. Sure. And I wonder how this guy talked his way out of, like, the lie. Yeah. I mean, like if if a producer is like, OK, well, show me how you did it on vocoder. If he was like over here and then just like, ran out of the room, I don't know.

I don't think he talked his way out of it. I think he was just another lying music producer, OK? And he was just like, oh, OK, well, busted.

OK, so apparently along the way, people figured out here, there what this guy did in 1998 with believe and they started using it themselves very, very sparsely.

All right. So Josh, what is auto tune? Oh, all right. I'll answer your question because I'm going to keep asking it. All right. So Auto Tune is a plug in, originally released in 1997 for the audio editing software, Pro Tools.

Yeah, it's a software piece that allows you and the original intent and how it's still mostly used is to pitch correct singer's voice.

Right. So when you when you or I go into the studio to record those albums, that will never release, but we just record for fun. Mm hmm. We have flat notes here. There. Oh, not me. I have perfect pitch. I hit flat notes here. They're have perfect pitch and everybody does.

It's a normal thing. Sure. For most of eternity, music producers would say Blue Eyes Chairman, I need another take. That was a great take, but you had a couple of flat notes. Give me another take just like that one.

And Frank would finish his scotch, put out a cigarette and say, you get one more shine head.

What was the. Oh, you didn't even see Spinal Tap, did you?

Yeah, you finally saw it finally. OK, but I don't remember any Frank Sinatra Jr.. Yeah, that was when Bruno Kirby is the limo driver he talks about Sammy Davis is book. Yes, I can. And he says what they should have called it is yes, I can as long as Frank says it's OK because Frank called the shots for all those guys. I do remember that. Yeah.

So Frank would sing one more take and this could be like take 12 or 15 or 20. Oh, yeah.

Depending on like how how much, how much the person was feeling it.

The singer was feeling it at the time and would be happy to hang around the studio. Whatever was keeping the singer there at the studio, as long as that was around the singer, the singer was happy to give it one more try.

One more try. Right. Like drugs maybe.

OK, or if they had like a really good candy bowl. Sure. Who knows. I got to stay for the Skittles. So the editor then or the music producer would then take all these different tracks and we'd go through and I can't imagine how awful this would be.

Take the best part of this track and edit it together with the best part of that track. Yeah.

And like we're talking like pre digital era. So like they're splicing together tape. Sure. From what I understand.

Yeah, right. To get the best possible complete take.

Right. Pieced together from many different peaks. Yeah. Right.

So OK, that's, that's what they did all of a sudden in 1997. There's this new software that just runs through a take and says, oh well I see what note or what key the singer singing in. But this, this particular notes just a little out. So I'm going to nudge it into the key that the singer was going for.

And now all of a sudden, one take is all it takes.

Yeah, I mean, what it did was it cut down on studio time, which is super expensive. Yeah. Which is very appealing because now you could churn out songs that are more rapid rate and a cheaper rate. And it was a it was a little sort of a secret tool that they didn't intend to, like, get out to the public. I don't think they wanted everyone to know this stuff. You know, it was meant for professionals.

Yeah.

And basically, it was just a it was the musical audio equivalent of cosmetics. Yeah, Doctor, it was invented by Dr. Harold Andy Hildebrand and he likened it to makeup in The New Yorker, likened it to like getting rid of a red eye in a photograph.

Exactly. It was just you use it just enough so that you can't tell it's there. But it makes for a more pleasant overall composition, right? Yeah. What Cher had done or what Cher's producers had done is take this thing and used it to the nth degree. Yes.

Supposedly it was just a joke. And Cher was like, I love that. But that's like I don't know if that's an urban legend or if that's fact.

Well, from what I read that her producer, she was she wanted like she had heard like some telephone effect that she was interested in using, like she wanted something. OK, and I guess the producer had stumbled upon that and played it for what it was like. You're not going to like this, but listen to this weirdness. And she was like that. I want that. Nice. That's what I read.

Well, I think it's due to her giving it the green light then that was truly like foresight, like a masterful move by Cher. Right. You know. Well, she has a lot of foresight. You know, they say don't don't doubt Cher and Cher has a lot of foresight.

Never bet against Cher. Yeah. So when she did make that decision, it changed. Like you said, it changed everything.

And we'll well, I we can't talk enough about this, but we're going to take a break and then come back and talk more about it right after this is.

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All right, Josh, what I found most interesting about this while researching what was what Andy Hilderbrand did before he did this, he was a musician. He was a played flute professionally since he was a young teenager, even went to University of Illinois, go fighting a lineI. Yeah. On a music scholarship. Yet he chose to work for Exxon Mobil for 17 years looking for oil.

Yeah, he's crazy. The two weren't too terribly far apart.

Well, as we will find out. So who's a professional flautist? Classically trained flyer? It's a good one. From what I understand. Flowtown is flute. Yes. And he went to college to get an electrical engineering degree, I think. And basically, when he went to work for the oil companies, it was an oil exploration. Yeah. And he figured out a programmer.

He designed a software that when you set off an explosive charge underground, it measured the pitch of stuff of the sound waves that that were created. Right.

So as they travel through rock, different types of rock, adjust the pitch basically in the software, like analyze the pitch that was coming through and could create a subsurface map of the rock below. And oil companies have long known that this type of rock is associated with oil and this type of rock is not. Maybe you'll find natural gas in this type of rock. So with this guy creating an audio visual map of the subsurface area, oil companies no longer had to just drill and drill and hope that they found oil.

He would say this is a pretty, pretty great place to drill because this kind of rock is there.

That's right. It's called autocorrelation. And it saved Exxon a lot of money. And he somehow made a lot of money. I thought it was going to be one of those things where, like, Exxon was just like, thanks, you work for us. Here's your 45000 dollars a year.

But apparently he earned enough money to retire by the age of 40 thanks to this innovation. And in the early 1990s, he got out of the oil business and found it like it's just a popularity contest.

Yeah, he founded Integris Audio Technologies and kind of near Silicon Valley in Scotts Valley, California. And I think still they only have about ten employees. I think it's a pretty small operation.

It's all centered around him and his ideas. And and, yes, he is the main inventor. One of the first things he invented was something called Infinity, which is a program that, uh, where you could loop samples over and over and over, like seamlessly. Apparently that was a necessary thing. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah.

Think about it. We're talking like early 90s. That was like the eight O8 acid house revolution. Yeah. But I just didn't realize.

I guess he made it easier. Probably is my guess. Yes, I think he enabled it. He enabled techno. It was the impression I have. Oh really.

Yeah.

Interesting looping samples together seamlessly.

Well but you could already do that. What I'm saying is, is he clearly found a way to do it better in. More efficiently, right? He didn't invent looping. No, he made it better. Yeah, exactly.

Uh, another thing he did was invented the microphone modeler. Modeling is a big thing in music. You can get guitar amplifiers. That model basically means imitate other amps. Right. I have a modeling input you don't use anymore because it's not very good, but it models. There's like 12 different classic amps. It models supposedly. Oh no.

But he invented the modeling microphone, which means you could mimic like classic microphones or like a harmonica mic and vintage mikes like the Elvis Presley that cool look and make sure that was on there.

Oh, is that the silver kind of rounded rectangular one? No. Got one on his desk. Yeah. Yeah. That's associated with Elvis Presley.

Well, I mean, just the music of that time I guess. But I always picture Elvis.

Yeah, you know what I mean. I can see that. Yeah. Have you ever seen his grandson, by the way? Quick sidebar. No. His name is quick sidebar.

Quick sidebar. But it's weird name. Yeah. But, you know, Lisa Marie was his mom, so. Oh, yeah.

Um. That was very funny, by the way, he just look him up. I think what's his name? I can't remember his name. His last name is the father's name. Lisa Marine's first husband is who she had him with. OK, yeah. Just look at Elvis Presley's grandson.

It is creepy, dude. Looks exactly like Elvis at that age, huh? Like scary, scary, eerily similar.

Can you thing that I don't know.

Does he use auto tune that I do know if he sings, he probably uses auto tune, probably because 90 percent of singers apparently use auto tune and even higher than that. Really. Yeah. How about that 90 percent. Admit it, you know.

Yeah. There's the thing about auto tune where you deny that you use it even though you're totally aware that everyone uses it. I read an article where apparently this one producer said that. He's worked with two artists that have haven't used it. Everyone else has, and it was Neko Case and Nelly Furtado. And then apparently later after that, Nelly Furtado released a single that had tons of auto tune on it.

Neko Case remains solid.

She may be the only artist in the world who hasn't used auto tune, either subtly or to the Nth Degree.

Oh, well, that's certainly not true. I think there are plenty of indie artists.

But if you're talking, you should read this article. It basically lays it out like, no, everyone uses this. Even if so, apparently producers don't even necessarily tell the band that it's being used right then because there's a live function. Yeah. So that the monitors or the headphones that the band is hearing is being run through auto tune. So what they're hearing is already corrected. So they think they just did a perfect take.

Yeah, I'm just wary of any time someone says out of 20 million singers, one person doesn't. That's just very dubious claim.

I don't know.

We're talking music industry here, especially when a lot of people are making their own music in their own homes. Well, that's another thing.

They're not part of the pop machine. Right?

They don't have stats on that, you know. Yeah, I'm just saying that sounds like a load of garbage to me. OK, I'm sure more than one person doesn't use just one.

Um, so auto tune came about. Apparently this is the tail because of a dinner that Hilderbrand was that he was having lunch with a sales rep and the wife said something funny like, hey, Andy, can you why don't you invent something to make me sing in tune? And he went a little great idea.

There's a great Hilderbrand. We should have auto tune that maybe we could maybe maybe it was maybe it just happened.

Uh, and so he said, you know what, if I can tell Jed Clampett where the oil is, that I can make you sing in tune.

And he did. And he did. He created auto tune. And, um, we kind of mentioned how it works. Basically, it takes it takes that take of a singer's song. It takes the vocals of a song and you select what key you're singing in. And then auto tune goes through and makes this map of the audio of the vocal track. And it goes through and says, uh, this one's a little flat, this one's a little low or whatever, and it just nudges these things into tune into into the key that it's supposed to be in.

So all all of the notes that the singer hits in that take are within the correct key, meaning that they all sound great. It's a perfect take, right?

Well, yeah. And the key there is it's in the original tone and inflection of the artist. Right. So you can't tell it's happening.

No. And there's actually if you look if you look at the auto tune product demo videos. Yeah, it's amazing. So there's a there's an automatic version where like it's just you select the key and auto tune, do its thing and it does a pretty great job. Yeah. One of the one of the ways that it does this is ads like millisecond pauses in between notes. There's little spaces between notes, which gives it a natural feel. Yeah.

There's other selections that you can make like throat length. You can select gross how long the singer's throat is and you can do that note by note so you can make the whole thing even more natural until basically what you've done is taught auto tune how to simulate a particular singer's singing style and voice so that when and when it adjusts that no, it does it within the same exact range that the singer would have done had they hit it correctly. It's pretty amazing in advance.

Oh, totally.

What when normal people think of auto tune like you and me who are not in the music biz, we we think of this thing that's called the zero function. Yes. And you know what? Let's take a break and we will explain what the zero function is right after this.

You already know that the challenge is the most heart pounding competition show on television, but do you ever wonder how challenge competitors are selected or which challenges were too dangerous for TV? Well, you can learn all that and so much more on MTV's Official Challenge podcast hosted by your girl Tori and me. Ainissa, we're giving you the inside scoop on the brand new season of the challenge. Let's go, baby.

Listen to MTV's Official Challenge podcast on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. You know, you should, you know. All right. The suspense is killing me.

You're going to get us killed.

All right. Zero function. That was essentially what the share effect was, OK, right?

Yes. Go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead, no, no, go ahead. You just set up in your chair like you were about to arm wrestle. I know I've been. Do you go ahead. You talk about it pretty well.

What Otterton does in terms of the zero function is, is it gets rid of all of that space. And when Cher's voice changes, it's immediate. Yeah.

All of those notes go right up against each other. Yeah. And it creates this robotic sounding voice. Yeah.

There's no, like, rise. It's not like a what's the word I'm looking for. It's it's not like a normal vibrato that you would get. Right. Because in a normal vibrato there's there's pauses. There's space in between the notes. Yeah. There's this, it's not, you know, all pressed up against each other. Yeah. Compressed way. And that zero function is what, what it takes any spaces out between the notes and creates that robot sound.

Yeah. Because I think auto tune has a range of numbers to make it flow more seamlessly. And when they took it all the way down to zero, which means there's nothing there. Yeah. I created that weird effect that they're like now share your listen to this. It's weird. Yeah. And she's like I like weird. It's great baby. I hear a number one hit in my future.

No, you got it. It's it's great baby.

I know that was, uh that was Jack from Will and Grace. Oh. Do you remember when he thought he was talking to a Cher impersonator? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he's like, no, if I could turn back to, uh, he was teaching her how to say it, sing it correctly. I thoroughly enjoyed Will and Grace. Oh great. Good stuff. The grades up really well. Agreed. All right. Where are we.

Well you were talking about the Cher effect, right? Yeah. And that's what it was called again. And Taris called this zero function the Cher effect for many years and and over time, remember, her producer just kept lying and lying and lying. Yeah. Over time, other producers independently figured out what he had done, that he had used the zero function, which is a really obscure tool on a software suite that not everybody knew about. Right.

So it took some some brainpower and some experimentation. But little by little, some producers figured it out. This one producer did a remix of a Jaylo song and used it. And he, I think, was the second person to use it publicly. And for a brief time, it became known as the Jaylo effect. Oh, of course, anybody who used this without fessing up to it. At first in the early 2000s, it was called the whatever effect.

Yeah. And there's this producer, rapper down in Florida named TI Payne.

Oh, boy. In TI Payne, this Jaylo effect. He loved it.

He went on a mission to figure out what this was and he finally apparently took him years to figure it out. He finally figured out that it was this zero effect on this Pro Tools plug in. And he started using it and just went crazy with it. Like up to this point, it was used to, like, tweak or it would maybe make a track of just a little weird over here or something like that.

Yeah, he used it as often as he possibly could. Yeah. He basically said the zero function in t pain are one in the same. Yeah.

And it became known as the T pain effect. Really. Yeah. Because when people asked him how he did it, guess what he said. Vocoder. Did he really.

Yes. No. Yes he did.

And for years he managed to make a mint because the whole thing was in hip hop or in pop. If you wanted this t pain effect, TPA needed to cancel at least if not produce your record.

That was like ten years after the Cher effect. I did not know that. I he he managed to pull it off for years and years and years.

Good for t pain is what I say.

Yes. You know, yeah. I mean, he apparently was like I guess on a plane ride, Usher was on the same plane and asked to speak to him and Usher was like, I've got to get something off my chest. You really screwed up music like big time. Well, he was like I made a bunch of money doing this and people seem to like it, so I'm not going to stop.

Hilderbrand has been vilified by many and he said, you know what, I just make the car. I don't drive it down the wrong side of the road.

Yeah, it's a great quote this because a lot of people hate auto tune and think the worst thing to happen to music. A lot of people like it and say when you use it for what it's supposed to be used for, it can really help out because, you know, it's not like everyone uses it all the time. I'm sure some people need it way more than others. Well, even if you're using it as a, like, cosmetic touch, like Hildebrand originally designed it for, a lot of people say, no, we shouldn't even be doing that.

Yeah, because if you go back and listen to things like Bob Dylan or the Beach Boys or. Just a lot of these original artists that didn't use these kind of effects on their voice when they sang and their recordings made it through the studio, there were still flat notes here. There. Oh, yeah.

But it was their music. It was their voice. It was their vocals in these tracks. And everyone came to know and love them. But now because everything is auto tune perfectly. Yeah. Even the stuff that you don't you can't hear it's auto tune because they're not using a zero function, but just the fact that it's been run through the auto tune. This stuff sounds really rough by comparison. Sure. A lot of people are like auto tune has ruined music.

It really is music that people love for decades because now by comparison, it seems rough.

Well, but it also like a good ear can tell if something's auto tune.

It has this weird quality that it doesn't sound natural. So I think there will be blowback and a and a reversion back to older methods. OK, I bet you Jack White has an auto tune that's the most purest of pure guys.

Know he uses all sorts of weird vocal effects on his stuff. No, but as far as like that, he has ask him or he wouldn't admit it.

Apparently, that's par for the course. Yeah. So with t pain, if we can go back to the history of this, buy you a drink. So t pain really hit. He's huge. Like he's just everything he drops is just blowing up all over the place. He's getting invited to consult and produce on Kanye his album. Yeah. Which ultimately had a lot of auto in every track, had auto tune on it by the time he got done with it right now.

Have you heard his queen, Bohemian Rhapsody live? No, dude. Is it good? Oh, no. Oh, no. It's there's a video that someone spliced of him and he and Freddie Mercury. It's one of the worst things I've ever heard on a on a stage. Oh, I've got to check it out. It's terrible. OK, all right.

I got to see that, yeah, it's good, so the pain in effect. Yeah. And if you wanted this effect, you had to have pain. Well, Snoop Dogg says that's enough of that. Oh, finally. And he releases something called Sensual Seduction. And it's one of the better rap videos you've ever seen. It's pretty good. Yeah, there's a stereotype in it. So, you know, I love it.

So Snoop releases this using the T pain effect to great degree. But he didn't consult with T pain. Pain had nothing to do with this record. So Snoop kind of opened the floodgates saying if you guys want to use this, go use it. But what's interesting, if you watch that video, when Snoop is doing like the the T pain effect or the auto tune stuff, yeah, he's actually got a tube going to a synthesizer to make it look like he's using a vocoder.

Oh, interesting. Weird. Yeah. That is like in his video. Yeah.

But anyway, are you sure that wasn't a marijuana smoking device.

It may have been I it may have been, I think about it but Snoop changed everything in in that he took pain out of the equation and really opened the floodgates for anybody and everybody to use this stuff simultaneously. Jay-Z was trying to close those floodgates and push all of it back in.

Yeah, I think Jay-Z clearly jumped the shark at a certain point. You know, when major ad brands are making ads using the latest and greatest that it's years late, first of all. And that means it is definitely jumped the shark. And in 2009, Wendy's had a frosty possie commercial where a gang of office workers belted out auto tune rhymes while searching for Frosties. I don't remember that idea. I know, but I went and watched it, of course.

How is it? Pretty great. It's what you think. It is pretty great. It's awesome. OK, I know it's terrible.

And Jay-Z apparently saw this and was enraged. And so he wrote a song called DOA Death of Auto Tune. I know we're facing a recession, but the music making going to make it the Great Depression. Get back to rap. You paint in too much. Let's call. That's calling someone out. Yeah. Hard. Yeah, but other auto tune. Auto tune. The news was a big YouTube hit. Oh yeah. Man that the bed intruder song.

Yeah. Let's, let's play a clip from that from 2010. It was a local news footage from Huntsville, Alabama of Antoine Dodson. Delivering is an awesome human being. Yeah. About a neighborhood intruder and someone auto tune that the Gregory brothers did.

That's right. Let's hear that. Oh, we got your the question. So you really got to wait out. The man got away, leaving behind evidence. I was intrigued by the findings. So, so dumb. So dumb. So he's slamming your window, snatching your people, trying to rape. Is the case that your wife had your case?

Why have you lost that recently? Right now it's pretty great.

Yeah. Yeah. But again, that was in 2010. And I think that even kind of had a pretty short shelf life. Right. Unless they're still doing it. Well, what do you say the Gregory Brothers. The Brooklyn Soul Band. Yeah, they started out doing auto tune the news. Yeah. And they would take the news and just auto tune it and turn it in, like just produce it over, produce it. And they did that with the Bed Intruder song and that actually became the number one video on YouTube of all of 2010.

I looked the original the original video has one hundred and twenty eight million views right now. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty impressive stuff at the same point, like now, auto tune has become a parody of itself. Yes, it's it's being used in ads. Sure. Here's the progression. Something starts out. Someone uses it artistically. Yeah. Someone comes along and overuses it. Then everybody starts to overuse it. Then Wendys makes it commercial using it.

Yeah. Newsweek finally gets around to writing an article about it. And then years after we record a podcast on it and then the thing finally dies.

Yeah.

And then 15 or 20 years after that, it becomes hip again. Yes. You know, that's the progression. So the point that we're at, though now, Chuck, it's not so cut and dry, man. It's not as cut and dry as Jay-Z would like to have, you think? No, because he came out with this death of auto tune track in like 2009. Auto tune is still around. Yeah, very much. And now it's getting to the point where if like the verge and I can't remember the other article I read, they're both on this podcast page.

If they're to be believed, they're credible sources and they certainly seem like it from these articles. Yeah, there's a there's this growing question of, um, is auto tune here to stay? Yeah. People are starting to compare it to the initial reaction that people had to the electric guitar. Sure. It was a lot different from the original guitar and people. It took a lot of getting used to or like when Bob Dylan went electric. Yeah, a lot of people didn't like that Newport.

But then look at what happened now with the electric guitar. A lot of people tried different stuff with it and it became a standard. Some people are wondering if auto tune is going to fulfill the same destiny. I think most people are hoping that it does not. Yeah, well, I mean, sweetening vocals is nothing new.

Like Reverb is a tried and true thing for years and embraced.

Does it sweeten vocals? I thought that was always used to make it weird. Now it's it's sort of like gives it a echoey like you're singing in a big empty church hall or something, but it makes it sweet and it doesn't like correct anything. But when I say Sweeten's it, it just makes it sound a little better. I guess reverb is a great tool. Right.

The point is it's artificial. Yeah. It's not natural. Yeah.

It's they tried to replicate like singing in a big empty echoey hallway with an effect.

And it worked in another argument in favor of auto tune that is seen as simply taking a human voice and recording. It automatically makes it artificial. Like if they're not there in the room with you singing to you at that moment, anything else is artificial.

True. So what's the problem?

So just to let people know, I put out two text during the episode to musician friends Jack White. Now, I texted Lucy Wainwright, our buddy. Yeah, Jerry, from our TV show. She's not answered OK, which means she's used auto tune Gidding and our buddy Joe Ekra from the Henry Clay people, formerly of Henry Clay, people now with fakers. And he said, I think there were a few harmonize oohs and ahs on one of our old records where we did some pitch correcting.

But that's it. I think maybe so.

Definitely is going to be mad that I said thank you for being forthright, Joey. Yeah, good guy. Sure.

You got anything else about it? Yeah, just a really quick um. This is from a great website. Ten artists that are essentially computer programs. They just have the most auto tune people. They have pain. Kesha, Chris Brown, Maroon, five Black Eyed Peas, Daft Punk, Paris Hilton, who I forgot actually had a song, uh, the cast of Glee, Katy Perry.

And No one was Owl City, who I don't even know what that is.

There is a huge outcry, apparently among Glee fans for Glee to stop using so much auto tune.

I think the deal is they're like, well, these are actors. Yeah, like, yeah, yeah. And there's another there's a big scandal with the UK's Got Talent or something weird like that. Yeah. Um, where they were using a lot of auto tune for the auditions.

Oh it's like come on, come on, get well anyway, man, that's not a very surprising list. So this has been grumpy old men.

I don't feel like we've been grumpy. We haven't like, condemned it outright. No. Neko Case, she's my lady. She condemns it outright. Yeah. Emily, I have an agreement about Neko Case that we could both marry her, OK, if she was ever available to us, she's right behind you.

Oh, my God. So we have a very well known finish up here.

Deal. Sorry, I just jumped the gun. Thank you.

You don't have anything else about. Auto tune? No, I was just teasing. We have a special listener mail with guests. Well, let me finish first. OK, OK. Well, since Chuck doesn't have anything, it's the end. And if you want to know more about auto tune, you can type those words into the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. And this article, I have to say, by the way, was the most definitive article about auto tune on the Internet.

How about that? It's a good one. So you can go look that up. And since I said definitive, it's time for a listener mail and it's a special one, like Chuck said.

That's right. Today, we got a joint listener mail to ourselves into Holly and Tracy from stuff you missed in history class.

Yep. So we're going to bring them in, right? Yeah, we're going to read the email and we're going to talk about its implications. Let's start now.

So without further ado, we actually have Holly and Tracy of stuff you missed in history class with us with.

Hi and Tracy, we have actually not with us. She's with us in spirit and voice from Boston.

I know it's pretty it's pretty interesting when it comes in through your headphones, but the other person somewhere else, it's kind of awesome. Yeah. And this is how you guys do the show now, right?

Yes. We also have like an online you know, we have a Google Hangout where we both are.

So you can see each other as well.

Well, that's neat. We should have done that, Tracey. And here with their little video image or like a hologram over there, be pretty cool, too. That's true.

All right. So I think the first thing I should do is have a picture of me like our old boss. Oh, well, I do have a picture of you and I have the wallet size that you gave out.

So I think the first thing we should do is just read I'll read the email here and then we will discuss like adults about that. Why. So, like I said, already set it up that we both got an email from a listener and she says the following. And this is from Amanda Lyons. Hey, guys and gals.

She didn't say that. Of course I just did.

Well, you should read it. OK, Josh Chuckers, Holly and Tracy, and of course, a hello to Jerry and Noel. Yeah, I'm a social worker from Portland, Oregon, with a passion for human equity and respect, one of the original members of the Army in a more recent listener to MTT in history. Yeah, I binged for about five months before I got all caught up. So how about that?

I'm concerned about something I've heard a few times on the History podcast, and I was wondering if you guys would be willing to get together. We are and look into something to fulfill my curiosity. When Josh and Chuck receive correction's, they thank people for being nice and frequently ask people not to be jerks when correcting them. When Holly and Tracy talk about correction's they receive, they ask people to be nice and have referred to correction's on several occasions as hate mail.

My concern is that listeners may be more disrespectful to Holly and Tracy because they are women. And even if listeners are rude to Josh and Chuck, they may rein it in when making corrections because their men could be completely off base. But if I'm right, I feel like the discrepancy should be addressed on the podcast to raise awareness about how people treat men and women differently, and even to address people's tendency to feel protected by the anonymity of the Internet and say things online they wouldn't say to someone's face.

And so, Amanda, we did talk about it via email and now we're going to talk about it like regular human folks.

And Tracy really has the wealth of information because of her job and what, you know, she's been responsible for in the past. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it sounds serious. Yeah. I was part of the management team of the website for several years before I started actually being on a podcast. And for a chunk of that time, most of the podcasters reported to me. So even though I wasn't managing the podcast program, I was sort of keeping tabs on the iTunes reviews for everybody. And there was a definite, definite trend in that the podcast that had women on them got disproportionately more vicious comments about what their voices sounded like versus the podcast with men on them, which got less of that.

So this is news to me, misogyny on the Internet.

I had not I wasn't aware that that was the thing that was beautiful blind spot of all time. No, I.

I can imagine. And I know, Tracy, you've like, pointed some of these out before for us.

It's like, yeah, we'll get hate mail every once in a while, but it's kind of easy to dismiss because even if it is directed at us, it's not necessarily directed at our gender or whatever it is, it's not personal or even if it is personal, it's dumb. It's just it's just dumb stuff. It's easy to not take personally, even when it's meant to be personal. Sure. But that's me speaking is like white male age 18 to 49, you know.

Yeah. So I can imagine that, like, when someone attacks you just just based on your gender or even worse, if they're coming after you and they don't even realize that they're being driven by this, this disdain for your gender, that has to make it a lot harder to just dismiss.

Yeah, well, yeah. How you can go. I was going to say for me, I mean, I am lucky in that I really give very few damns about what most people think. Like unless you're sitting in my lap or paying my paycheck like it's great if you like me, but if you don't, that's cool. Do you like everybody? Do your thing. But eventually, like the landslide builds up and you're not it's not so much that I'm like heartbroken or traumatized, but it just wears you down after a while or you're like, why am I doing this just to get more of this crap.

Yeah. Yeah, well, and we definitely have what we have been called slurs based on our gender before. We have been called the C word over the. Serious, right? Yes, unbelievable. Yeah, well, and then I told you about that we were discussing the email in our email conversation. I told you about the person who wrote to us and said they didn't understand how I could be in the same room with Holly without strangling her. Like, that's the kind of stuff that people will write to us and be really awful.

But we do get a whole lot of them that I don't think people are consciously being misogynistic, but they're talking to us and about us in a very gendered way. So people tell us that we sound shrill or that we sound bossy. And those aren't words that people would use to describe men most of the time.

Well, no, because men are so bossy, right?

Exactly. Yes.

And all of the articles that had come out lately about especially vocal fry and other things that people criticize about women's voices, that they don't generally criticize about men's voices. Every single time I read it and I'm like, I could have written that about my job and my experience being a woman talking on the Internet.

So which one? Which one it hits home the the most like one that's just a direct personal attack or the ones that or the person's just being unconsciously misogynistic, which to me would seem more entrenched.

Yeah, to me, the second one is worse and it's especially worse because a lot of the implicitly gendered criticism that we get is also from women. Oh yeah, that was the hardest part. Yeah, that's the hardest part for me to deal with. Yeah. When they're real specific, for example, like the person who wants me to be strangled at the end of the day, I'm like he's working through his own stuff, like I have really have very little to do with.

So I may have been the trigger that, you know, caused this little outrage bomb, but really it has very little to do with me.

I think almost 100 percent of the time that is the case. These are people who have their own gripes in life and are probably angry, unhappy people.

Yes. But then, as Tracy said, when you get those ones that are like they they're not even conscious of how it's playing out. Yeah. You realize how much it is a bigger sort of systemic social problem. Yeah, because most of those people are not evil. They don't intend to be misogynistic. They're not conscious that they're separating the two genders and judging them differently on different criteria. So, yeah, those are, as Tracy said, a little more disturbing because you realize that it's kind of like the silent creep, the Underlay's, everything.

Absolutely.

Well, we do get a lot of emails that are great from people who are great. And the majority of the email that we get is great. So, like, I don't want to make it sound like every person who writes to us is awful. And we talk about corrections on the episode a lot of times from people who write it and everything is fine and everything's very respectful. So to me, a correction is you said this person died in 1918, but really it was 19, 27.

That's a correction and that's fine. But then we'll also get ones that are like, I can't believe you didn't even bother to look this up. You completely butchered it. I don't know why you don't even put more thought into what you're doing, because it's really important that you represent yourselves well. And that's why I'm like, that's hate mail. Well, we do.

Yeah, we get those. Yeah, we get a lot of those. But I never feel like those are like have anything to do with my gender. Yeah. In those cases, absolutely.

I mean we get the same exact emails where it's just like you guys are total idiots, like how could you drop the ball this badly. And it's like we basically said exactly what you're saying, we just said it slightly differently. It definitely doesn't warrant this kind of reaction, you know?

Yeah, I, I why do you think there is a gender bias or gender? Why is it worse for you guys being women, do you think?

Not just in comments from the history of the world, but I know like how long do you have to think. But I mean like even even beyond comments, like, why is the Internet so geared toward hating women? I mean, what's what's the deal with that? You guys? Is there is there a general understanding or idea behind lonely angry men is my guess?

Well, I think it's it's super complex, right? There's no one simple answer like some of it is that we have reached an age where the disparity in terms of gender equality has shrunk at the same time that a lot of people have this outlet readily available to them. So there's progress being made, but there are also the people who are still kicking and screaming as they get dragged into a future they're not comfortable with.

Oh, yeah, but then there's also just a thing that, again, I don't think people are even conscious of it where it is new for many people and even people that are younger and have maybe grown up in a more kind of old school traditional environment, be it household or community, where they're not even conscious of why they're more upset at women. There's just something about women, you know, sharing knowledge or being assertive or being confident that just rankles them.

And yeah, they don't even register that. It's because it's a woman. They just know there's something about that person I hate and it's something they're just not used to.

And they haven't kind of made the the mental a customization to oh, sometimes people that aren't dudes have stuff to say as well. Right.

Do you think that same experience is extrapolated on the race as well as gender and.

Oh yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, I know it is, but I mean, is it almost like a step for step do you think?

I think it's pretty similar models. Yeah. Yeah, well, speaking like as as as a white person in a room of white people who are on the phone right now, the worst days I have ever had managing our Facebook page, our days when we talk about something that has to do with systemic racism, and we will get a flood of similarly implicitly racist comments from people who really don't know that the view that they just put out there is racist.

Like that's sort of the same thing. Like a lot of people do things that are misogynist, not really consciously being misogynist, that just it comes out and they're not consciously aware of it. And we see the same thing on our Facebook posts in subjects that are related to race really pretty often.

So at the end of the day, when you guys get a bunch of these, say, on a just a particularly bad day, what do you do? I mean, do you battle this? Do you just brush it off and be like these guys are idiots? And whether they like it or not, they are going to be dragged into the future against their will, you know?

Do you do a combination of both or do you look at your status as a perennial top 20 podcast and say that clearly who cares what they say?

Because we're really good at what we do because we're very successful.

I do a combination of things.

I have kind of a library of links about vocal fry and whatever anyone writes directly to us to complain about vocal fry, I kind of send them, hey, why don't you listen to this, uh, this American Life segment all about vocal fry in which IRA Glass has vocal fry the entire segment, but nobody complains at him about it. So, like, I specifically will address that. I will specifically address things that people say on our Facebook page in public, because I feel like our role as a podcast about history does not include allowing people free reign to be racist in public and have that not be challenged.

But when it comes to the like, the email that Holly and I got, that was that was so bad pretty recently, that was the person who was basically advocating me murdering Holly. I was actually traveling. I went down to the hotel bar and had a drink. There you go, read a book and tried to chill. Yeah, I tried to chill out about it.

There's the booze, cocktail fixes, everything.

Well, thank you both for addressing this. Yeah, I'm sorry we didn't solve this problem here in the Listener segment.

Thank you for having us on the show. Of course, if anyone out there and stuff you should know, land is not checked out, stuff you missed in history class, you definitely should because it is super awesome and as are both of you. And I don't want to strangle you, but I want to hug your necks.

You say in the South any sort of way, you know, you better have. And now she don't move. No, no.

But thanks for coming in. And we should do this more often. You know, we should we should have a whole show where we just get together and do roundtable stuff.

We can have a happy powwow party time. That would be fun. Oh, yeah.

Well, if you have something to say about all this, we're sure you will. We want to hear from you. You can tweet us as well as podcasts. You can tweet the stuff you missed in history class at Atomistic History.

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