字幕表 動画を再生する
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(Beatboxing) Yo, what up?
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My name is Tom Thum,
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and I've got to say it's a pleasure to be back at TEDx.
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When I first stepped upon the Sydney stage in 2013
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as a starry-eyed boy from Brisbane,
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I had no idea that I was about to deliver the most watched TEDx presentation ever.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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But you know, I was stoked because it was completely unexpected.
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However, standing before you today
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as a slightly inflated, time-battered version of myself five years later,
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I'm very confident.
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(Laughter)
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Confident that I'm about deliver
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the most instantly switched off and walked-out-on,
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vomit-inducing talk of all time.
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I'm about to show you things
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that I think you'll find hard to unsee,
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but all in the name of science.
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First, for those unfamiliar with what I do,
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I guess if you distilled it right down to its essence,
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you would call me a beatboxer.
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(Beatboxing) Yo, for example ...
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here's a sample:
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(Beatboxing)
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(Rhythm changes)
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(Hums a tune)
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(Applause and cheers)
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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And being a beatboxer,
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it means that professionally,
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I am 100 percent reliant on the --
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(Beatboxing) flexibility of the unfiltered human voice.
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And for years, my contemporaries and I have been fielding questions like,
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\"Oh my God, that's so cool.
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When did you figure out you could do that?\"
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After I practiced for thousands and thousands of hours --
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(Laughter)
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\"And what do you do for a real job?\"
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\"I'm a full-time beatboxer, Your Honor.\"
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But there is one question that I get quite a lot
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that's a little bit more difficult to answer,
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and that is how are you doing it --
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how are you making those noises?
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And I mean, I know muscle memory dictates where I position my lips
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in order to --
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(Beatboxing)
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but I have no idea about the inner mechanics of everything.
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You know, all the flappy bits and kind of dangly things
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and how they interact in --
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(Laughter)
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in a way that allows me to --
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(Beatboxing)
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To put it metaphorically,
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I know how to drive,
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I just don't know what's under the hood.
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So I decided to find out
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and invite 5,000 captive strangers,
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a few uncomfortable cameras,
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everybody watching online and their browser history
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into a place where not even the most intimate of encounters have been ...
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my throat.
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And to help me do that,
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I'd like to introduce to the stage a very specialist guest
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from the Queensland Voice Center,
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a man that's been in my mouth more times than I'd care to admit,
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a legend of the larynx,
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ENT doctor and laryngeal surgeon,
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Matthew Broadhurst.
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(Applause and cheers)
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MB: Thank you, Tom, thank you.
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And a very good evening everyone.
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It is a pleasure to be here on the TEDx stage tonight.
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(Laughter)
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Whoo.
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(Laughter)
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TT: He's not warming up his hands.
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It doesn't get that intimate.
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MB: We set out a little while ago to try to go deep into the world --
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and the throat --
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of this beatboxer extraordinaire
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to try to understand how such a vast array of sounds are humanly possible.
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And what we found --
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these are going in the mouth by the way --
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and what we found was something absolutely amazing.
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Even after my two years of laryngeal surgery
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in Harvard Medical School
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with world-renowned professor Steven Zeitels,
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we never saw anything as extraordinary or fascinating as this,
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and that's what we're going to show you tonight.
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(Laughter)
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Alright, so for those of you who might be a little squeamish,
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the next 10 minutes or so will get incrementally more graphic
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and stomach-churning,
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so let's get into it --
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TT: Feel free to use the bucket.
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(Laughter)
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MB: So when we make sound,
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we use the vocal cords to take air from the lungs
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and then turn it into a vibrating air column in the throat.
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If you think of it like a trumpet,
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we've got the mouthpiece -- that's the vocal folds --
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and then the horn section is the throat.
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If we took your head off,
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took a bit of your neck off
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and left you as a torso with just your vocal folds vibrating,
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this is what you'd sound like.
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(Flatulent sound)
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TT: (High pitch)
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MB: Pretty hard to communicate, but fortunately we've got a throat.
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We've got all the soft tissues,
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and that actually gives you all the incredible dynamics of sound
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that you'll hear tonight.
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Now, this is a rigid laryngoscope.
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TT: Hmm, spicy boy.
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(Laughter)
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MB: I know, I know.
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(Laughter)
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10 millimeters in diameter,
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it gives us the highest resolution image of the larynx we can get.
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And we teed up with a stroboscope here
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and a trigger microphone.
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The mic will pick up the frequency
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and that will allow us to show you how this all works.
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So, if we can have the lights down?
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TT: (Low pitch)
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MB: Turn the light on here.
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TT: (High and low pitches)
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MB: So I've got the frequency of sound matched with the stroboscope.
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That's the light you're seeing flickering in the cup.
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TT: (Low pitch)
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MB: And that's at about 80 hertz or so.
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So what we can do then is we can take that
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and put the phase of the strobe and the sound just out of sync.
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That lets us capture real-time, slow-motion activity of vibrating tissues.
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When we apply that to the larynx,
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we get this fluid, slow-motion of the vibrating vocal folds.
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So that's what we're going to get on and do.
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Alright, you ready?
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TT: Yup.
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(Laughter)
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MB: OK, so here we go.
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We're going to have a look at the voice box.
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(Laughter)
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It's very hard not to gag with this.
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Say, \"e.\"
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TT: (Singing) E --
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MB: So down the bottom you see the vocal cords,
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the little cord-like structures.
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(Laughter)
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And now just look at the skin on the neck
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and you'll see how strong the light is to penetrate the skin.
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Alright, so if you'll have the lights back on?
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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Alright, so just give us a comfortable \"e.\"
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TT: (Singing) E.
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(Laughter)
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TT: (Singing) E.
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(Audience gasps)
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MB: So that's the vibrating vocal folds;
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about 120 hertz.
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Means they've collided 120 times a second
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just to make that sound.
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And we can also see that they're absolutely, perfectly normal.
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So all his beatboxing, all those sounds for years
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with Tom's way of doing it --
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absolutely no damage whatsoever.
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That's really remarkable.
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Well done.
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OK.
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TT: (High pitch)
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We've got this.
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MB: So watch now as the vocal cords go from high pitch to low pitch.
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You'll see them go from long and skinny to short and fat.
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Really think \"e.\"
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TT: (High to low pitch) E.
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MB: Right.
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TT: (High to low pitch) E.
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MB: And what you can see is that his vocal range is so extreme --
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much more extreme than any other performer I've worked with --
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the machine actually can't capture the really high pitches.
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TT: (High pitch)
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MB: So we know that whistle register is somewhere around 2,092 hertz.
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That means the vocal cords,
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well over 2,000 times a second,
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are banging together just to make that sound.
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That's really extraordinary.
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If you think about them, they're only 15 millimeters long,
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so that's barely the width of your thumb.
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That's incred --
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(Laughter)
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That's amazing this organ can do such a thing.
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So now we're going to swap over to the flexible laryngoscope.
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This is a little more graphic.
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TT: He bought it at SEXPO.
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(Laughter)
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MB: That wasn't in the script.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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TT: Secondhand.
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(Laughter)
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MB: Now, we've had to time this bit perfectly
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because of the requirement for local anesthetic.
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You've got to numb the nose, get the camera in.
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It doesn't help for producing a lot of the sounds,
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but it gives us a really cool view of what's happening.
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So hold onto the stomachs, and let's see what we can do.
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(Audience gasps)
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So we're going to the back of the nose.
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And there you can see the soft palate.
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A lot of the sounds we make from day to day,
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even the simple ones,
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are incredibly complex.
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The sound \"kh\" for example.
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It's the soft palate sealing up precisely against the back of the nose.
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So if you say it loudly five times,
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feel your own soft palate snapping against the back of the throat.
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Kh, kh, kh, kh, kh, kh.
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Alright, so this is what it looks like when Tom does it.
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TT: Kh, kh, kh, kh, kh.
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A cacophony of cackling kookaburras and cockatoos in Kakadu
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couldn't quite quit ketamine.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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MB: Alright, now in the beatboxing world,
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of course, they can use that for all sorts of different effects.
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I can help you.
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TT: This is fine, we're professionals.
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(Laughter)
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(Beatboxing)
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MB: Alright.
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(Applause and cheers)
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Now we're going to slide down a little further.
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If you'll just have the lights off
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and just see if you can see the light in the mouth somewhere.
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You'll be able to see exactly where the camera is at.
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(Laughter)
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TT: (Singing)
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Surprise.
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(Laughter)
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MB: Alright.
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(Audience gasps)
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So what you can see there, that's the base of the tongue.
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The side walls of the screen,
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that's the pharynx.
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All muscle walls,
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and in the deep, dark decks is the larynx.
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TT: Oh, should we have the lights back on?
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I think it's a good idea.
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It's getting a bit creepy with them off.
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MB: Turn the lights on, thanks.