Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff with all your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: what is your relationship with ventriloquism? How do you how
Speaker 1: think you view ventriloquisms and their dummies, their act the
Speaker 1: the art form of ventriloquism is kind of a subset
Speaker 1: of the puppetry storytelling medium. Well, I love puppetry, as
Speaker 1: you know, so I have a soft spot in my
Speaker 1: heart for ventriloquists and the dummies and the puppets. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it is a wonderful art form. However, I
Speaker 1: do recognize that a lot of people think it's creepy,
Speaker 1: uh for good reason, because you have this inanimate object
Speaker 1: that you're bringing to life. Yeah, but then, of course
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of all of puppetry. And granted you
Speaker 1: have individuals who claim to be creeped out by all puppets,
Speaker 1: which I find tends to be more of a like
Speaker 1: a frailty of the imagination because you're you're cutting out
Speaker 1: an entire storytelling medium that is that is, you know,
Speaker 1: almost as old as humanity. I've we've been telling stories,
Speaker 1: uh for so long, and a lot of the time
Speaker 1: we've been using inanimate objects to tell them it's true. Um.
Speaker 1: And actually this is really interesting. In ancient times, ventriloquists
Speaker 1: were actually thought to be able to speak to the
Speaker 1: dead and predict the future, and then the voices seemed
Speaker 1: to come from their stomachs, and that was the thought
Speaker 1: to be the voice of the dead. And this continues
Speaker 1: today with the work of Jeff Dunham. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: By the nineteenth century, ventriloquism became a form of entertainment
Speaker 1: and then people started to use dummies, but before that
Speaker 1: they were just throwing their voices. And in fact, in
Speaker 1: some parts of the world, such among the tribes of
Speaker 1: the Zulu, Inuit and Maori, ventriloquism is still used for
Speaker 1: religious in ritual purposes. So there you go, just in
Speaker 1: case you thought that ventriloquism was just a throwback to
Speaker 1: you know, of this early twentieth century art form, the
Speaker 1: creepy wooden doll head. No, it's been around for a
Speaker 1: long time now, that the creepy wooden doll head, and
Speaker 1: then the vaudevillian act of ventrol equism is probably what
Speaker 1: still resonates with most people, and probably not so much
Speaker 1: the actual acts. I think most people when you when
Speaker 1: people think of ventriloquism, they're not even necessarily remembering any
Speaker 1: kind of actual ventriloquistack that they've seen. And I've seen
Speaker 1: some some good ones here and there. I don't actually
Speaker 1: actively seek it out, but occasionally, yeah, and but occasionally,
Speaker 1: in the course of of just going about your day life,
Speaker 1: you're going to run into a ventriloqual stack. And and
Speaker 1: some artists make go at being lively with it and
Speaker 1: creative and doing something interesting. But over the years, of
Speaker 1: course they they've also factored into a number of horror
Speaker 1: films and uh and and creepy interpretations. A few that
Speaker 1: come to mind. There was a nineteen sixty four film
Speaker 1: called Devil Doll, which is probably most known today as
Speaker 1: as having been used in an episode of Mystery Science
Speaker 1: Theater three thousand. But it is even even with the
Speaker 1: silhouetted figures at the bottom, with the with the mike
Speaker 1: and the bots riffing on it and making fun of it,
Speaker 1: it's like a legitimately creepy film. It's one of these
Speaker 1: where it's where there's magic and there's a there's this
Speaker 1: tug of war between ventrilo was Dummy and uh and
Speaker 1: and puppet Master about who's in charge of who. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those films where the film quality is
Speaker 1: so poor, the acting is so weird that it almost
Speaker 1: feels like some sort of a documentary. You almost get
Speaker 1: this this feel feeling like you're peeking through a keyhole
Speaker 1: and at something that's actually happened. And I find it
Speaker 1: to be a really unsettling film, despite it being kind
Speaker 1: of boring and and and despite always having seen it
Speaker 1: with people making fun of it. You know why I
Speaker 1: think that is because I think that even though there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of misdirection and illusion used in ventriloquism, there
Speaker 1: is a truth to it, meaning that there's a relationship
Speaker 1: between this puppet and the master, which means to say
Speaker 1: that that is a splintering of the ventriloquists personality. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's just another version of them. Yeah. So a lot
Speaker 1: of these these horror tales basically come down to this
Speaker 1: idea that there is some deeper connection between between puppet
Speaker 1: and puppet Master. You see that in the Dummy episode
Speaker 1: from UM the Twilight Zone. You see it in Magic,
Speaker 1: which started Anthony Hopkins to the Ventriloquist. Uh, you see
Speaker 1: it in the Batman Villain the Ventriloquist, where it's the
Speaker 1: ventriloquist dummy that's like a little mobster kind of character. Um.
Speaker 1: Then there was an episode of Tales from the Crypt
Speaker 1: that I strongly remember as well, called The Ventriloquists Dummy,
Speaker 1: in which this character is played by Bobcat Goldway, who
Speaker 1: is this up and coming ventrol aquist who wants to
Speaker 1: get some tips from this older master played by Don Rickles.
Speaker 1: And the big reveal here is that Don Rickles character
Speaker 1: it's not really a ventriloquist dummy. It's like a parasitic
Speaker 1: twin that's monsters little creature on the end of his
Speaker 1: his hand. What which that just wears a mask? What
Speaker 1: is the name of this film? This is the Ventriloquist Dummy.
Speaker 1: And it was an episode of Tales from the Crypt
Speaker 1: that has everything I love in it. And I think
Speaker 1: I have mentioned before shamefully that I really really do
Speaker 1: like Don Rickles. His his humor. Oh well, he's an
Speaker 1: insult comic really yeah, yeah, And he's acting in this
Speaker 1: he's he's actually really good in this, and Bobcat's fun
Speaker 1: as well. It's it's one of those, uh, those episodes
Speaker 1: of Tales from the Crypt that is at once like
Speaker 1: Tales from the Crypt at its best and worst, depending
Speaker 1: on exactly what you're expecting from that show. So anyway,
Speaker 1: and then of course today we have Jeff done him,
Speaker 1: which which I find kind of frightening and horrifying as well.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I mean he's incredibly popular, and the thing
Speaker 1: is is that he's not incredibly popular because ventriloquism is
Speaker 1: incredibly popular. He just uses it as a medium and
Speaker 1: has been successful at it. But I really wanted to
Speaker 1: bring up Nina Conti. She is a ventriloquist. She has
Speaker 1: a documentary called Her Master's Voice. It is wonderful. We'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that as we sort
Speaker 1: of unrolled this podcast and the science behind ventriloquism. But
Speaker 1: what I like about her act is that she she
Speaker 1: can do the sort of straight up um insult comic
Speaker 1: jokes visa be her her puppet Monk the Monkey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's the that's like low level ventriloquism humor, the idea,
Speaker 1: it's not me. That's awful. It's this little guy. I
Speaker 1: can't well what he just said. And that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: They can really get away with saying a lot of
Speaker 1: things that they normally wouldn't be able to and there's
Speaker 1: a sort of power in that, right um. But she
Speaker 1: also has a very serebral part of her act in
Speaker 1: which she's sort of making a comment on the human condition,
Speaker 1: and in one of her bits, she pretends as though
Speaker 1: Monk has taken over her body and has possessed her,
Speaker 1: and Monk is very cute just to see just we're
Speaker 1: just just looking at a still image of in but
Speaker 1: menacing and see that's the interesting thing is she really
Speaker 1: does struggle with her relationship with this puppet and whether
Speaker 1: or not she should continue with it. So it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's like something that she had gets a lot of
Speaker 1: pleasure out of, but also at the same time doesn't
Speaker 1: She feels completely nnacled to this as a profession. So
Speaker 1: in that context you see her being possessed by Monk,
Speaker 1: and there's some very dark undertones there that are expressed
Speaker 1: and that we all sort of feel, you know, we're
Speaker 1: tethered to something in our lives that we feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't escape it, well, you know, and it also
Speaker 1: brings to mind some of the issues we talked about
Speaker 1: in the episode we did about the Shadows self and
Speaker 1: about uh and well we did the episode of two
Speaker 1: about pro wrestling where we talked talking both of them
Speaker 1: about what happens when we take on other personas in
Speaker 1: one way or another, be it as part of an act,
Speaker 1: if you're an actor, you know, a wrestling persona, or
Speaker 1: you're going undercover as a as a as a vice agent, um,
Speaker 1: all these these different roles we take on. What does
Speaker 1: that do to us? What does what does what happens
Speaker 1: to us when we sort of pour a portion of
Speaker 1: our soul or our mind into this artificial creation and
Speaker 1: and it sounds like this, uh, this, this uh, this
Speaker 1: film explores some of that territory as well. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: absolutely does. And it's funny that you brought that up
Speaker 1: because I thought the same thing when I was watching
Speaker 1: enough that this is a lot about um, you know,
Speaker 1: what sort of personality you put out there. And then
Speaker 1: this Monk character is really fulfilling aspect of her personality
Speaker 1: because she says in the film, I feel kind of
Speaker 1: bland as a person, but Monk feels makes me feel
Speaker 1: as though I can express things that are hidden within me.
Speaker 1: It falls in nicely with the because on one hand,
Speaker 1: we have the more or less perceived reality of ventriloquism,
Speaker 1: where it's that's somebody in a puppet saying a bunch
Speaker 1: of awful stuff through it, and then we have this
Speaker 1: fictional interpretation of it where it's like, oh, what if
Speaker 1: there's something more significant it's taking place between puppet and
Speaker 1: puppet master, And then the closer you look, you realize that, yes,
Speaker 1: there is something more significant taking place In many cases. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another aspect of this film that gives it another level
Speaker 1: of oddness is that um and I won't give it
Speaker 1: all away, but basically she has been bequeathed six puppets
Speaker 1: her ex lover, and these are bereaved puppets and she
Speaker 1: has to do something with them, and uh, one of
Speaker 1: them is based on her ex lover. It's it's the
Speaker 1: face and um and she can't quite make his voice work,
Speaker 1: and so it's weird because she's trying to sort of
Speaker 1: like resurrecting him and her relationship with him through this puppet,
Speaker 1: because in a way, these puppets were him. They were
Speaker 1: all pieces of him that that he brought to life
Speaker 1: with his own energy, and now he's gone, but these
Speaker 1: puppets remain, and with certain extent she can reanimate them
Speaker 1: and make them live again. But she also sort of
Speaker 1: is burdened by these puppets, and one of them is
Speaker 1: a grandmother puppet. And I won't go into it, but
Speaker 1: there's a very creepy pool scene she takes the grandmother swimming.
Speaker 1: It's very nice, right you think, Um, so yeah, it
Speaker 1: does sort of uncover these these weird feelings that she
Speaker 1: has about maybe that she's been burdened with this. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, very interesting film. Let's get into the technical
Speaker 1: aspects here of how ventriloquists fool our brains. Okay, well
Speaker 1: this this is really interesting because it really comes into
Speaker 1: the way that we interpret what we're seeing, the way
Speaker 1: the way we the sense data enters our brain and
Speaker 1: it's turned into conscious thought. Um. And this applies when
Speaker 1: when you're when you're thinking of this, think of the
Speaker 1: ventriloquist and the dummy, but also think of your television
Speaker 1: set and it's speaker system, think of any kind of
Speaker 1: puppetry or just the ability like I have a dinosaur
Speaker 1: the stuff dinosaur on my desk. I can pick it
Speaker 1: up and I can kind of talk and go, like,
Speaker 1: got on with this podcast. It's going kind of along,
Speaker 1: and you kind of buy into I buy into the
Speaker 1: fact that he's talking even though I'm the one talking.
Speaker 1: You know, just stop real quick. You just said something
Speaker 1: that maybe you wouldn't normally say. Right, this is going
Speaker 1: a little we're kind of going off the tracks here
Speaker 1: again the power of the puppet. Maybe that's why he's here.
Speaker 1: He's here to keep me on track. So he's looking
Speaker 1: at you meaningfully. But the older idea was that we
Speaker 1: have the five senses and is an actuality. There more
Speaker 1: than five senses, but but the five primary senses are
Speaker 1: entering our brain in a separate part of the brain
Speaker 1: is dealing with each so side hearing, smell, touch, taste, uh,
Speaker 1: the ideas. The old idea is that each part is
Speaker 1: governed by its own corresponding region of the brain, but
Speaker 1: not so. According to a two thousand seven Duke University
Speaker 1: Medical Center study. So they were studying monkeys and they
Speaker 1: found that auditory and visual information is processed together before
Speaker 1: the combined signals make it into the brain's cortex, where
Speaker 1: all the analytical stuff is going on. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the sound the ventriloquist voice, and the image the ventriloquist
Speaker 1: with the moving mouth, and the and the mum mouthed puppeteer,
Speaker 1: the audio and the visual combine before it reaches the
Speaker 1: part of the mental factory where we have to make
Speaker 1: conscious reason, reason thought out of it. Yeah, certainly in
Speaker 1: instances where your brain sort of makes an assumption, right,
Speaker 1: because you have the um, the inferior colliquelus, the tiny
Speaker 1: round structure in their brain which is carrying visual and
Speaker 1: auditory signals, bungling them all together. So if you're watching TV,
Speaker 1: as you say, you're you're looking at the mouth and
Speaker 1: thinking that the voice is emanating from the mouth speakers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's kind of it's handled in another department
Speaker 1: before it reaches the uh, the really analytical portion. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to the study they found it about six of
Speaker 1: the neurons in the inferior colliculus can carry visual as
Speaker 1: well as auditory signals. So again, visual and auditory information
Speaker 1: gets combined early before the brain can process it in
Speaker 1: the thought. Um, you know, it's like the brain is
Speaker 1: where the smart guys hanging out but he has all
Speaker 1: these underlings that are dealing with the actual sense data,
Speaker 1: and so the sense data guys out there and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all this, uh, this little dummy made out of wood,
Speaker 1: and he was totally talking what do you make of that?
Speaker 1: And You're like, oh, okay, well what was he saying?
Speaker 1: That's what I'm going to focus on, because I trust
Speaker 1: you to tell me when there's a piece of wood
Speaker 1: talking to me. You know, I was thinking about how
Speaker 1: ventriloquous and UM magicians are so similar because they're both
Speaker 1: relying on these little quick tricks to try to trick
Speaker 1: your brain right, And I was thinking about the vanishing
Speaker 1: coin trick, where you know, you see the coin in
Speaker 1: one hand, you see it disappear, But really what's happening
Speaker 1: is is this thing called persistence of vision. The audience
Speaker 1: well actually see the coin in the left palm for
Speaker 1: split second after the hands separate, for instance, And visual
Speaker 1: neurons don't stop firing once you have a stimuli like
Speaker 1: that UM, and it's no longer present. So our perception
Speaker 1: of reality lags behind reality about one one of a second,
Speaker 1: which is just enough for a magician to exploit. So again,
Speaker 1: this same idea that the way that you're processing you know,
Speaker 1: auditory and visual signals could be bungled up, and and
Speaker 1: you know, puppeteer could take advantage of that same idea
Speaker 1: magician and a coin trick. Yeah, I mean, I hate
Speaker 1: to to in any way support the the idea that
Speaker 1: the mind body can action. Idea of the of of
Speaker 1: our brain is the is the rider on a horse.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of like the brain is in this
Speaker 1: dark box and uh, and then there's reality on the outside,
Speaker 1: and we are given, as you say, a perception of
Speaker 1: the reality. And and it is the fact that we're
Speaker 1: dealing with the perception of the reality rather than the
Speaker 1: reality that allows for a lot of these tricks to
Speaker 1: take place. I don't even get me started about how
Speaker 1: reality is just a three D computational model that we've
Speaker 1: constructed these blueprints in our brain. We're not even really
Speaker 1: paying attention. So much of what we're perceiving is an
Speaker 1: illusion anyway. Um, but in our ability to to look
Speaker 1: at a puppet and listen to a puppet and then
Speaker 1: really feel like that that creature is alive, like in
Speaker 1: a way, that's kind of a glitch in the system
Speaker 1: that could not have possibly. I mean, it's just it
Speaker 1: ends up becoming an artifact of our development. Well. And
Speaker 1: then of course, uh, the ventriloquists also directs your attention
Speaker 1: to the dummy, so that takes the attention away from
Speaker 1: their mouth or from seeing their vocal courts moving right. Um,
Speaker 1: And they are not, as we have learned, ruaring their
Speaker 1: voice at all. They're adjusting the volume. Uh, but they are.
Speaker 1: They are again just sort of adding to this idea
Speaker 1: that that's actually the puppet talking. Your brain knows puppets
Speaker 1: not talking, and yet it sort of accepts that. And
Speaker 1: plus we're going to buy into it because we want to.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're going to a ventriloquist or a
Speaker 1: puppet show because you don't want to believe, then you're
Speaker 1: in the wrong. Uh, You're you're in the wrong place
Speaker 1: for your entertainment. It's true. And but even if you
Speaker 1: don't want to believe it, you end up to at
Speaker 1: least the subject matter. Right. Another thing that ventriloquists do
Speaker 1: to sort of perfect the art form is to make
Speaker 1: substitutions with certain letters. Because certain letters like B, F, M, P,
Speaker 1: the plosive P, V and W all rely on moving
Speaker 1: your lips. They're called labial sounds. So what you have
Speaker 1: to do, is a ventriloquist, is to then substitute other
Speaker 1: letters or sounds that don't rely on you moving your
Speaker 1: lips around. So something like an M you can substitute
Speaker 1: with the end, which is more like an. It makes
Speaker 1: more sense when you're the ventriloquist doing it. Um. So
Speaker 1: if I say, hikin, guy, guy, I'm really using an
Speaker 1: N in there, right Yeah. If I really listened closely
Speaker 1: to it, you're saying Donny okay, joy Johnny right um,
Speaker 1: so much creepier in person. By the way, well look
Speaker 1: for the video because you do. We have a video
Speaker 1: on the web Science on the Web episode coming up
Speaker 1: that explores some of this ventral equism stuff. Then you'll
Speaker 1: get to actually see clips of examples of it, and
Speaker 1: you'll get to see Julie's fabulous parlor trick that she does.
Speaker 1: Oh you've got a nice one to them, I do.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well that one involved a little bit of
Speaker 1: an additional cinematic magic, but still it's a wonderful ventriloquist voice.
Speaker 1: Kids love it, though, like they're at a certain age.
Speaker 1: I enjoy um pleating the two dots on my my
Speaker 1: hand and doing the hand puppet. The senior wins. This
Speaker 1: type guy. I tend to not have him talk though.
Speaker 1: I just have him chew and kind of like look
Speaker 1: at the kid and then eat things like, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever is around, actual food if possible. And then also
Speaker 1: I have him turned into a crab and crawl around
Speaker 1: on the table. That's always fun. Do you ever have
Speaker 1: him dipping tobacco? No, we can't really dip tobacco. He's
Speaker 1: kind of just all he can do is crawl around
Speaker 1: on the table like a crab and then ball back
Speaker 1: up into a talking fist. But kids at a certain
Speaker 1: age love it. So all right, well, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break, and we are going to talk about an
Speaker 1: extreme example of this technique of letter substitution and muscle
Speaker 1: control of a mismatch between your face and your lips.
Speaker 1: Really amazing stuff. But let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. All right, we're back. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Vince Trilloquism. We've spoken about the creepies side of
Speaker 1: ventriloquis stomach the will, the fictional creepy side, and then
Speaker 1: the arguably creepy real life complications that occur when we
Speaker 1: breathe life into an unmoving object. It's true. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't really mention the etymology of the
Speaker 1: word ventriloquist, but it comes from the Latin words ventire
Speaker 1: stomach belliar womb. That's what that means, and low key
Speaker 1: to speak, so it means to speak from the stomach.
Speaker 1: But it's not necessarily the stomach here that that is
Speaker 1: the key. It is really the ventriloquist brain and specifically
Speaker 1: this act of bifurcation, of course, bifurcation meaning to split.
Speaker 1: In the documentary Kevin Johnson A Wonderful, Wonderful Ventriloquist explains
Speaker 1: how uh you have to take command of your facial muscles,
Speaker 1: and he says that the ability to form words with
Speaker 1: your tongue and then restrain the muscles that correspond with
Speaker 1: the sound necessitates that the performer bifurcate their attention. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the thinking really really hard about what
Speaker 1: they're saying. But at the same time they're trying to
Speaker 1: rain in the muscles around their their mouth that naturally
Speaker 1: want to move to the rhythm of speech. Of course,
Speaker 1: and then sometimes they have to do something completely contrary
Speaker 1: to what they're saying, right, they have to plaster this
Speaker 1: expression on their face. That's the opposite of the emotions
Speaker 1: that are being performed, because it really is like performing
Speaker 1: yourself yourself and then a version of yourself at the
Speaker 1: same time. And you might even be drinking water. That's
Speaker 1: a favorite trick of course, Yeah, drinking water. Um. He
Speaker 1: also has a beautiful opera voice is pretty amazing. Um.
Speaker 1: He gives an extreme example of this by talking to
Speaker 1: the camera and miss Matt purposely mismatching his mouth's movements
Speaker 1: to the words that are coming out. So it's probably
Speaker 1: one of the weird It looks like like the video
Speaker 1: and the audio have become out of sync, but he's
Speaker 1: creating the effect just completely organically by moving moving his
Speaker 1: lips at one speech and then speaking at another. It's
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Yeah, it's like there's a five second delay
Speaker 1: on it. And he did say to Nina Conti like,
Speaker 1: I can't look at you while I'm doing this because
Speaker 1: it takes so much concentration to try to pull this
Speaker 1: trick off on myself essentially. Um. But another expert that
Speaker 1: she interviewed that I thought gave a great example of
Speaker 1: how puppeteers are creating a solution. Is Nacho Estrata best
Speaker 1: name ever by the way, Um he's a distant voice expert,
Speaker 1: and he was showing Nina Conto how throwing your voice
Speaker 1: is really just a matter again of misdirection and then
Speaker 1: controlling that volume of the voice as well as the direction,
Speaker 1: so you can sort of speak in a direction to do,
Speaker 1: you know, trick the ear. Um. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: play this clip for for you guys out there because
Speaker 1: although you can't see it, you can hear the differences
Speaker 1: of when he's quote unquote throwing his voice. So let's
Speaker 1: check it out. As he uh describes someone being I
Speaker 1: believe they are stuck in a cup a teacup, they
Speaker 1: say through your voice. But I'm fooling your hearing. So
Speaker 1: I can do something like I throw my voice in here,
Speaker 1: but I'm not really throwing. It's a misdirection. So I said, hello,
Speaker 1: say so it things like it's nothing in there. But
Speaker 1: I'm just fully I'm using this to show you different
Speaker 1: you're directing your attention here. Yeah, I love that dead
Speaker 1: It's just you kind of have to see the video
Speaker 1: to get the full effect because he's doing the whole
Speaker 1: thing where he's putting it into the cup, and then
Speaker 1: he's covering the cup up and it's just kind of
Speaker 1: this kind of juggling of this sound and the and
Speaker 1: I feel like his his you know, his hand movements
Speaker 1: are important as well, because he's in the same way
Speaker 1: that the addician says, hah, the coin is here, because
Speaker 1: that's how I am moving my hand. He's doing the
Speaker 1: same thing with this voice that he has taken out
Speaker 1: like it's a physical object and put it into another object.
Speaker 1: And what I like about this is I feel like
Speaker 1: he has elevated the art form of ventriloquism to such
Speaker 1: a height that he really is able to manipulate eight
Speaker 1: uh the voice so well that it does really appear like, hey,
Speaker 1: that voice is stuck in his his cup, which which
Speaker 1: is not even a cup, but his hand representing a cup.
Speaker 1: And it's such a well done like throwing your voice,
Speaker 1: when it's actually done by someone who knows how to
Speaker 1: do it, it's such a convincing act that that everyone's
Speaker 1: interpretation of the act uh is completely wrong. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: when you encounter people throwing their voice in cartoons or
Speaker 1: or you know, comedy shows, or or even in movies,
Speaker 1: such as when a stranger calls back a horrible psychological
Speaker 1: thriller in which the killer um perpetrates his crimes by
Speaker 1: sneaking into people's homes. Uh, look like I guess early
Speaker 1: in the morning or something, then stripping down and painting
Speaker 1: himself so that he resembles a complex brick wall or
Speaker 1: something like. It's not it's never as simple as I
Speaker 1: look like the white wall now and I was standing
Speaker 1: as a white wall. It's always something really elaborate that
Speaker 1: there's no possible way he could have painted himself to
Speaker 1: look like that does. Then he'll stand they're unseen and
Speaker 1: throw his voice around so that it sounds like he's
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the room. But of course it's just completely stupid,
Speaker 1: because part of the the whole idea is that is
Speaker 1: that you need to see the person who's throwing the
Speaker 1: voice like that's an essential part of that direct it
Speaker 1: somewhere so in reality, not just I can make it
Speaker 1: seem like the corner is talking, and you know it's
Speaker 1: just in reality you'd be like wise the dude who's
Speaker 1: painted up sitting there talking to right right. But I
Speaker 1: feel like it's all because the act is so convincing
Speaker 1: and and the magic of it is is literally less
Speaker 1: understood than other forms of puppetry and uh and and
Speaker 1: voice manipulation, that we even though we know it's a trick,
Speaker 1: we still don't really understand what's happening well. And one
Speaker 1: of the things about that the tricks that are pulled
Speaker 1: up is that it takes a ton of practice, years
Speaker 1: and years of this to get really good at it.
Speaker 1: And of course that means that this inanimate object that
Speaker 1: you work with, you you really do begin to deepen
Speaker 1: that relationship because it is sort of a therapeutic aspect. Right,
Speaker 1: continue to talk to this puppet, you say things to
Speaker 1: yourself that you normally wouldn't say. Right, you have a
Speaker 1: fairly deep relationship with it. At least this seems to
Speaker 1: be the case, um with what Nina Conti presented when
Speaker 1: she interviewed the ventriloquists and so puppet master are pretty
Speaker 1: wound together. So what happens when a ventriloquist passes away, Well,
Speaker 1: that is a bereaved puppet, and it has to find
Speaker 1: a home, and it does in the form of the
Speaker 1: event Haven Museum, Okay, which will take bereave puppets in
Speaker 1: Fort Mental Kentucky. It is the world's only public collection
Speaker 1: of materials related to ventriloquism. There are seven hundred ventriloquist
Speaker 1: dummies arranged in three buildings, some sitting in rows as
Speaker 1: if waiting for a class to begin. That's a place
Speaker 1: that I want to be in by myself. For the
Speaker 1: most have been hours in that room by myself. Um.
Speaker 1: There's some really unusual creations, including a head carved by
Speaker 1: German prisoner in the be At Pow camp from World
Speaker 1: War Two. Um. The vent performed for fellow prisoners as well,
Speaker 1: is for the cook to get extra food. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of history that goes into this museum. It's
Speaker 1: not just you know that the puppets are sitting, they're
Speaker 1: gathering dust. But more importantly, vent Haven actually hosts a
Speaker 1: convention every year where four hundred and fifty ventriloquists converge
Speaker 1: on Fort Mitchell's restaurant. Scenes You're really talking nine hundred
Speaker 1: at least participants. Though that's true, that was insensitive of me.
Speaker 1: I just kept thinking about the town, like you know
Speaker 1: that all the restaurants are probably, oh boy, pretty soon
Speaker 1: the restaurants are gonna be filled up with people sitting
Speaker 1: at their table talking to their puppets. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: understand that this convention, like other puppetry conventions, you have
Speaker 1: people there with their puppet, and they're often they're communicating
Speaker 1: with their puppet. They're communicating with other people via their puppet. Um,
Speaker 1: like the link between puppet and puppet, puppeteer and puppet
Speaker 1: becomes such that that it's just part of communication when
Speaker 1: at least when you're in group. Well, you probably won't
Speaker 1: be surprised to find out that most people who practice
Speaker 1: ventral looquism or introverts and speak through their puppets. So um,
Speaker 1: without the puppet, I think it's it's a lot harder
Speaker 1: to communicate. So it's sort of it's odd because you
Speaker 1: have false extroverts milling around in the in the crowd,
Speaker 1: or maybe not false at that moment. All right, So
Speaker 1: I think we've covered it pretty well. But Robert, I
Speaker 1: wanted to know from you, if you were forced to
Speaker 1: get a ventriloquist dummy, what would yours be? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: well I would I would not want to go with
Speaker 1: the you know, traditional ventriloquist dummy, that's for sure. I
Speaker 1: would want, you know, something the one that the bow
Speaker 1: Tai one. That's the one I always think of, the
Speaker 1: more traditional one with the dork hare. I don't know,
Speaker 1: does anyone have a mommy ventrolus dummy ventrol aquist mummy?
Speaker 1: Is it were? That would be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Oh you could. There's so many mummy mommy jokes there.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what I oh, I know what I
Speaker 1: would do. Okay, So this would be the whole get up.
Speaker 1: The idea is that a Victorian explorer happened to just
Speaker 1: you know, you know, during the tomb plundering period of
Speaker 1: of colonalism. Um. He's he discovers this tomb and breaks
Speaker 1: open the sarcophagus, but then the mummy overpowers him, which
Speaker 1: is places with him and then locks him in. So
Speaker 1: then the so the the actual mummy uh runs off
Speaker 1: and you know and is still alive enjoying a wonderful
Speaker 1: life in uh in England, while um, the Victorian gentleman
Speaker 1: is is trapped in the sarcophagus for another hundred years.
Speaker 1: And so my puppet would be essentially a British Victorian
Speaker 1: mummy who would talk, So we'd be talking in a
Speaker 1: you know, a nice British accent, but he would be
Speaker 1: a mummy. That's fine. I think first of all, I
Speaker 1: really want you to do this. Second of all, did
Speaker 1: you just think about off the top of your head? Yes,
Speaker 1: but but largely it was it came to be because
Speaker 1: I was thinking, Mommy, Evnentrokas puppet would be great. But
Speaker 1: I don't know what an ancient Egyptian accident would consist of.
Speaker 1: But I love British accents, so that's what I would do.
Speaker 1: You've got it all figured out. You've got to do this.
Speaker 1: We know this, right, yeah? Okay? Uh. The other thing,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think we mentioned this, but comic
Speaker 1: timing is incredibly important to this um to ventriloquism because
Speaker 1: you can be a master at the voices, um you still,
Speaker 1: but you still need to pick and make people laugh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because otherwise it's just sort of like, oh that's interesting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You gotta know your audience. You gotta taylor your act.
Speaker 1: You're honest. We okay, well how about you. You. Let's
Speaker 1: say you had your dream ventral equist to me, what
Speaker 1: would your act be? I don't know. I mean an
Speaker 1: animal comes to mind, um, and I think just a
Speaker 1: foul mouthed one. I'm going to have to say. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think that comes as a surprise probably one
Speaker 1: that's interested in schatology. This is not an act I
Speaker 1: think anybody wants to see. Maybe maybe you'll go with
Speaker 1: some sort of extreme prehistoric mammal, which is going to
Speaker 1: be the topic of a couple of upcoming episodes. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's something in there, I think, so, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: perhaps it will mammoth. All right, Well, there you have it,
Speaker 1: Ventriloquist Dummies explained. Hopefully everyone has a little more a
Speaker 1: little more respect for the art form and a little
Speaker 1: a little more of an understanding about what's going on
Speaker 1: when someone is when you're watching a puppeteer use a
Speaker 1: puppet and buying into the act, what's happening when somebody
Speaker 1: is actually throwing their voice? Um, how we're all brain roubes.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, essentially, and you know, the the puppetries is awesome,
Speaker 1: but it just kind of a glitch in our our
Speaker 1: perceptions of reality. So if you have something you would
Speaker 1: like to share about this, I'm sure we have some
Speaker 1: puppeteers out there as we're listening to the show. If
Speaker 1: you are a puppeteer, if you are a ventriloquist, if
Speaker 1: you can throw your voice any of these things, or
Speaker 1: if you just really appreciate the art form or are
Speaker 1: terrified of the art form. Really, whatever your thoughts are,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear about them. You can find us
Speaker 1: online as always at the Mothership stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com, but you can also find us on
Speaker 1: Facebook and tumbler. We are stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: on both of those. You can find us on Twitter,
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Speaker 1: us a line at below the Mind at Discovery dot com.
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