52 | OCTOBER 13 • 2022 B uck Showalter, manager of the New York Mets, went off on a weird tan- gent during a press conference in May. Instead of talking about baseball, he informed the press that he had changed the voice that gives him driving instruc- tions on Waze. He felt judged by the English-accented voice that he’ d been using because it seemed smug, criticizing him for his errors in driving. He felt better about using the voice of Cookie Monster, because “You can’t get mad at the Cookie Monster. ” In the end, though, Showalter chose the voice of Nathan because it reminded him of his son Nathan (according to the Wall Street Journal, 6/27/22). We know who the original voice of Nathan belongs to. Nathan Bigman moved from the Detroit area to Israel in the summer of 1998. Bigman, by profession a technical writer, has a hobby of songwriting. So, it happened that he bought some time at a recording studio in Ra’anana about 15 years ago. That was just about when a small group of Israeli engineers and entrepreneurs in Ra’anana were turning their navigation software into a start-up company they called Waze. “I didn’t know anything about Waze. It meant nothing to me, ” recalls Bigman, who had some personal music projects and found a local studio deal that was in a small one-story house with a citrus orchard behind it. “It was very laid back, ” he said. “The sound engineer was really helpful. He had a lot of useful suggestions. And one day they said to me, ‘We have a library of voices. Sometimes someone comes in here and wants particu- lar kinds of voice for something, and maybe that can be you. ’” They handed him a random magazine and said, “Here read this back; read this paragraph into the microphone. We’ll record it and put it in our library. ” After some time had passed, Bigman got a call. “They said, ‘There’s a company called Waze that needs to record an introduc- tory video, the audio for a little cartoon that will explain what Waze is. ” That was Waze’s first YouTube … a public introduc- tion to the company. Bigman read a script to explain the Waze community — how they track where you go, how the traffic is going and whether the police are there. Waze grew since that first YouTube animated video. Just a few years later, in 2013, Google bought Waze for nearly $1.3 billion. As for the video, Bigman sadly reports he cannot find it. “I’ve looked for it. ” He calls it “his first Waze opus. ” Sometime later, the studio was ready to record voices for the mobile app, and they called Bigman back to the studio. He made a recording of traffic directions in the presence of a representative of Waze. “She commented on every word I pronounced . . . ‘Don’t say it this way; say it that way. ’ I discovered that — for someone from Detroit or for someone whose parents educated them weirdly — I said “route” [rowt] . . . they wanted me to say ‘root. ’ So, I took their script and every place it said ‘route, ’ I crossed it out and wrote ‘root, ’ and I was set. ” Bigman recorded voiced snip- pets. “The sound engineer takes the voice snippets and labels them in a standardized way, adds some effects, ” he said. “ And who knows what they do to make the voice a little bit more palatable for the car environment. And that’s it. I spent maybe an hour reading those things into the system. ” Waze called him back a few years later because there were some snippets missing. Some of them were functional and some of them were things like “Drive safe” and “ Are you ready? I am. Let’s go!” Being a voice of Waze has con- sequences for Bigman. “People in the neighborhood got very excited to hear their neighbor’s voice, ” he said. Some people consider him an authority because his voice gives authoritative street directions. They might ask him for accurate information about the time of afternoon services, for example. Bigman’s brother-in-law had his Waze set for Nathan’s voice. “Once, I was riding with my brother-in-law, driving to Jerusalem, and he was using Waze with my voice, ” Bigman said. “I was in the backseat, with my sister on the front seat. My brother-in-law said, ‘I don’t think Nathan knows what he is talking about. Oh, wait he got it right!’” On another occasion, “Once I was driving with someone and they were using Waze and it was my voice. And I was unhappy about the direction that Waze was giving us . . . I said to them, ‘Don’t go that way; go this way. ’ “They said ‘But you know Waze is telling us go the other way. ’ So, I said, ‘Who are you going to listen to, me or me?’” When Bigman uses Waze, he does not use his own voice. His wife, former Detroiter Rachel Karlin, thinks it would be “creepy” for him to drive while listening to his own voice. What does “Nathan” have that makes it an attractive voice for Waze? One of the people at Waze told Bigman that “people like my voice because it sounds like someone just sitting in the seat next to you telling you which way to go. It kind of makes me happy that I sound friendly. ” The financial consequences of having recorded a popular voice for Waze are not extensive. Bigman recalls that “the studio paid me in free studio hours: three or four hours of studio time, worth maybe 150 shekel per hour. Notice that I don’t get any royalties. ” Nathan Bigman and his wife now live in Jerusalem. A Voice of Waze Native Detroiter provides a calming voice for people wanting directions. LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER BUSINESS Nathan Bigman