A large-scale study tracking over 800,000 adults has found that the human voice may begin to reveal the earliest signs of cognitive decline before memory loss ever surfaces. In the long history of medicine's search for dementia's first footprints, this research points to something as intimate and ever-present as the sound of a person speaking. The finding invites us to reconsider what we listen for — and who among us might already be trying to tell us something without knowing it.