Lake Bell to Release an Original Audiobook Project With Pushkin Industries In November

Actress, writer and director Lake Bell will publish an original audiobook with Pushkin Industries about the power of the human voice. INSIDE VOICE: My Obsession with How We Sound by Lake Bell (Pushkin Industries; on sale November 1, 2022) will be a fun and whip-smart exploration of the social science, cultural constructs, mechanics, and psychology of our voices. The project will feature contributors with iconic voices like Drew Barrymore, Susie Essman, Tracey Ullman and Jeff Goldblum, as well as a range of experts in the field such as linguistics professors, writers, dialect coaches, poets, and voice actors. INSIDE VOICE is Bell’s first book project.

Lake Bell first explored the power of voice in her critically-acclaimed and award-winning film about the voiceover industry, “In a World…,” which Bell wrote, directed, and starred in. Now, almost ten years later, she further unpacks her own obsession, and complicated opinions about voice, and how this vital piece of our identity serves as an x-ray of our personal histories, exposures, vulnerabilities, and conditioning.

With an experiential lens, Bell goes deep on what is arguably our most memorable albeit undervalued tool. She takes listeners through her own personal journey, while also investigating how society treats and perceives this most active muscle of communication. She talks about her own love of accents and dialects inspiring her career as an actress, delving into her own neuroses and regrettable judgments, only to come full circle. Bell aims to share with listeners lessons about how we not only project but also receive sound. 

INSIDE VOICE is humorous, unapologetically feminist, insightful, deeply personal, and in this format, Bell has chosen the ideal sandbox to play in. In five hours, she showcases the contributions of nearly 20 recognizable, expert guests, and a melting pot of everyday talkers on the street. The book includes interactive exercises and games, spoken-word poetry, self-narrated personal stories from the likes of the legendary Pam Grier, the outspoken transgender author and podcaster Samantha Allen, and a cornucopia of impressionists including Bugs Bunny himself, rounding out this exploration with a trove of quintessential archival audio from history, film and television. INSIDE VOICE is the newest addition to Pushkin Industries’ growing list of audiobooks, which include last year’s release of Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon by Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam, and this year’s releases of Heartbreak by Florence Williams, a newly recorded, sound-rich version of Michael Lewis’s iconic first book, Liar’s Poker, and Joshua Cohen’s novel The Netanyahus, the winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.