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

