 Okay, let's remind ourselves how we're going to get into the larynx in the first place. Remember, air travels in through the nose or the mouth. It travels into the cavity. It goes through the pharynxes, the nasopharynx, the oropharynx, and then the amazing laryngeal pharynx. And then the air is going to travel into the larynx. And I think it's helpful to see that the larynx is basically this cartilaginous structure that is pretty much the opening of the trachea. Now this right here is your trachea. This tube is your trachea. And hopefully you all are familiar with your trachea and you're being nice to it because you're not smoking. And superior to your trachea is a bunch of cartilage, probably all the way up to here, up to this piece of cartilage. And that whole thing is your larynx. And we're going to look at the larynx from some different perspectives. This little structure, I don't know if you can tell, it's like a little flappy. Look at this one. See that little flappy? That might be next to the auditory tube. That might be my favorite respiratory structure. That thing is called the epiglottis. And the epiglottis literally is a flap. And when you swallow, there are muscles that cause the epiglottis to flop over the top of the larynx. And they prevent food. They, the epiglottis, prevents food from entering your larynx and your trachea. And that is so awesome. What a great setup. So here comes your food. Flop goes the epiglottis and blocks off the trachea, the larynx, so that food can't go down there. And instead, the only place that food can go is down in my friendly esophagus. That's really handy and really nice. Now, the epiglottis is made out of cartilage. It's made out of an elastic cartilage, it's a little bit floppy. And below, inferior to the epiglottis, are more cartilages that make up the larynx. It's your voice box. So we're going to look at how the larynx actually makes sound. And now I want you to see like how, this was my sagittal section, but I want you to see a different view of the larynx. Here's the larynx attached to lungs. And you can see that the larynx and the trachea, and then the trachea bifurcates into your lungs. Guess who that little guy is? That's your epiglottis. So let's look closer at the larynx, just the larynx. This is your larynx from the anterior perspective. I say that this whole thing is your larynx. What is this? That's not your larynx, that's your trachea. This is your larynx. But what's this? Who's that guy? That looks like a bone, because it is. That's the hyoid bone, my friends. And it kind of floats up here, posterior to your mandible. It's kind of random. It's actually attached to the biggest cartilage in your larynx, which is the thyroid cartilage. Thyroid cartilage. Thyroid cartilage is attached. You can see kind of a ligament here. It's attached to another cartilage called the cricoid, cricoid cartilage. And I feel like cricoid cartilage doesn't have an H in it, which is why I didn't put an H in it. If you look at it from the anterior surface, the thyroid cartilage has this bump on it, and you can kind of see that bump. And that bump is called the laryngeal prominence. Laryngeal prominence. And guess what? The laryngeal prominence is your Adam's apple. Now, of course, on a quiz or an exam, if you say Adam's apple, the answer is wrong. You have to say the laryngeal prominence of the thyroid cartilage for the most specific and fantastic answer. There's something else that I wanted to tell you. Okay, so look at the larynx from the backside. From the backside, this is the cricoid cartilage. This is the thyroid cartilage. And then you can see these little guys, the little twangers. Oh, and they twang. These are called the aretinoid cartilages. Aretinoid, because they're so annoying, but they're not, well, they can be. Sometimes they're really annoying cartilages because they are attached to basically your vocal folds or your vocal cords, and they are so cool. They actually rotate. What? The aretinoid cartilages are rotating like crazy mad right now, causing my little vocal folds to vibrate, which is how you hear anything I'm saying at all. Does that just shock you? I mean, it seriously is like, blow me away cool. And who's this guy? I know, that's your epiglottis who also do, what would you do without your epiglottis? All right, you think that's phenomenal, and it is, but wait till you see this. What the hell? I can't draw on it. This is your trachea. You're looking down into the mouth, into the larynx of someone. And guess what? I wish I could draw on this. These are the vocal folds. And the aretinoid cartilages are attached and they're going to rotate. Are you ready? I kind of feel like I want to make her not make any sound. But let's just watch. Okay, so this is called a laryngeoscope. Seriously, and they do it with a strobe light. So they stick, I think they go through your nose and stick a camera down through your nasal cavity into your nasal pharynx. This is an awesome external brain question. External brain laryngeoscope. What are we going to go through first and what are we actually going to look at? So you go through the nasal pharynx, through the oral pharynx, and probably hang out right about in the laryngeal pharynx and look down through the larynx and into the trachea. And when she opens her vocal folds, you can totally see the trachea and its little rings of cartilage in there. And the vocal folds, the aretinoid cartilages are vibrating causing those little tissues, your vocal cords to flack together. Really? And that makes sound. I mean, that's unbelievable. So then they shine. Ew, that guy's weird. But ignore him. They shine a strobe light in there. Don't ignore him. There he's come back. He came back. The strobe light is in there and that's why it looks like that kind of slow motion. It's because the strobe light makes it and controls what we can see and how fast we see it. The longer the vocal folds, and I don't know which way it goes, but you can change your pitch by changing the length of those vocal folds. And do we even think about it? Do we even know how it works? Like, ever unless you take anatomy and watch that guy's laryngeoscope and some lady's larynx is so cool. All right, I'll try to relax. We're going to Trachea Land next.