Hearing Stranger’s Voices

You know when you read something, and you typically hear your own “inner voice” reading the words? Well, I’ve noticed something recently about the voices that read text aloud in my head. I’ve noticed less and less of the words being read by my own inner voice, and often find the words being read by strangers.

After more than a year of regularly listening to the podcasts of Mitch Joel, Jay Baer, CC Chapman, Chris Penn/John Wall, and others, I now hear their blogs, tweets, and attributed quotes in their voices. And even more recently, listening to The Work Talk Show with DJ Waldow and Nick Westergaard has impacted how I hear their tweets, and even how I read the content in a Nick Westergaard slide deck. It seems that it’s not a longevity thing. It’s a podcasting thing.

The reason this bothers me is that there are people that are a lot closer to me, that I spend significant time around that this doesn’t happen with. For example, when my Mom emails me I don’t hear her voice. When I get a text from my wife, I don’t hear her reading the words. Again, I don’t believe there’s a tipping point of total conversed hours (longevity) that drives it for me. It’s all about the podcast.

Why is it that the people that are closest to me don’t have their own voice in my head, but these gentlemen that I’ve never met have custom audio programmed into my brain speakers? I don’t know the answer, but I find it completely strange.