Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And it's become clear to
Speaker 2: me that I used the slide whistle on the wrong episode.
Speaker 2: This is stuff you should know. Oh, would they have
Speaker 2: gotten annoying to you?
Speaker 1: I think the slide whistle work perfect. And this isn't
Speaker 1: about slide whistles.
Speaker 2: No, it's about whistle whistles, which means your mouth with
Speaker 2: your lips pursed. That's right, So let's just go out
Speaker 2: of the gate. For the three people who don't know
Speaker 2: what whistling is, Whistling is the act of making a
Speaker 2: sound by forcing air through your mouth through a narrow passage,
Speaker 2: typically with your lips pursed. And that is actually a
Speaker 2: specific kind of whistling, as we'll see, called pucker whistling.
Speaker 2: There's other kinds, but that is by far the most
Speaker 2: common form of whistling. If you can move your tongue
Speaker 2: a little bit, you can start to get pretty good
Speaker 2: at whistling. One other thing to start set everything up.
Speaker 2: There is no genetic basis for not being able to whistle.
Speaker 2: It's just a lack of practice.
Speaker 1: Do you whistle right out of the gate, let's hit
Speaker 1: me with that info. You bet, I don't mean. Can
Speaker 1: you whistle? Yes?
Speaker 2: I find myself more going like that, Like I'm not
Speaker 2: trying to do a song. I don't even know I'm
Speaker 2: doing it. I like realize I'm doing it as I'm
Speaker 2: doing it. It's just something to occupy the space around me.
Speaker 2: I guess. Okay, what about you, Chuck? Do you whistle? Chuck?
Speaker 2: Are you a whistler?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I whistle sometimes. I wonder if I annoy people
Speaker 1: by whistling.
Speaker 2: Oh, you've never annoyed me by whistling. I can tell
Speaker 2: you that.
Speaker 1: But back when, you know, in the early days of
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot com, when we worked in a big office
Speaker 1: with you know, fifty people, I used to wonder about
Speaker 1: stuff like that, like, well, yeah, you know, am I
Speaker 1: whistling around the office? Is that annoying to people? Kind
Speaker 1: of like remember the guy who walked around in his
Speaker 1: sock feet? Oh my god?
Speaker 2: Why did that bother me so much?
Speaker 1: Because he walked around in office with sock feet, including
Speaker 1: the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Yes, including the bathroom. That's why urinoal in socks it was.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know that that's just objectively wrong. But
Speaker 2: I don't the rest of it. I never understood why
Speaker 2: it bothered me so much.
Speaker 1: But you just you don't do that. You don't do that,
Speaker 1: that's why.
Speaker 2: But you're also not supposed to whistle around the office
Speaker 2: to FYI.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think I literally kind of was like,
Speaker 1: I probably shouldn't do that around here, because that was
Speaker 1: the first office job I ever had.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, I know for a fact I've noticed
Speaker 2: you whistling before, but I can tell you it's never
Speaker 2: bothered me. Ever.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I'm a pretty good whistler, so I
Speaker 1: like to whistle songs and things.
Speaker 2: You are a very good whistler.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. So well, you know, maybe I'll try
Speaker 1: a little bit out here and there.
Speaker 2: Jerry whistles too. You just can't hear it.
Speaker 1: Oh she's whistling right now.
Speaker 2: Way to go, Jerry, you're champ.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned the pucker whistle. That's the most common,
Speaker 1: you know, whistle that most people walk around doing.
Speaker 2: That's this.
Speaker 1: That that's right.
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to demonstrate them all, so you
Speaker 2: go through them all, demonstrate them.
Speaker 1: Okay, that sounds great. Okay, my good friend Eddie whom
Speaker 1: you've met before. He does what's called the palettal whistling,
Speaker 1: which is sh that's right, except it makes a whistle
Speaker 1: sound right, and that is when you put the tongue
Speaker 1: on the roof of your mouth. I can't do it.
Speaker 1: Eddie does it really well, so it's always kind of fun.
Speaker 1: And I'm a big it's just a nostalgia last for
Speaker 1: me when whenever Eddie breaks out the pal little whistle?
Speaker 2: Can he spit like that too? You know how you
Speaker 2: can do like a little little thing of spit like
Speaker 2: really fast from your mouth by by touching your palette
Speaker 2: with your tongue.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, gleaking?
Speaker 2: Yes, can you do that?
Speaker 1: I can gleek, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: If Eddie can, well, then I'll bet you could pallette
Speaker 2: whistle and I can't. All right, what's the next?
Speaker 1: The old finger whistle? It's like uh yeah, except again caveat,
Speaker 1: except it makes a whistles sound.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: I've never been able to do this. There are different methods,
Speaker 1: number of fingers where you place them, and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: The old taxi whistle, that's a that's a finger whistle.
Speaker 1: Usually I've always been jealous of people who could really
Speaker 1: bust out a loud finger whistle. I could never do it.
Speaker 1: Are you jealous the finger whistlers? I mean that's very
Speaker 1: low on the scale, but sure a little bit.
Speaker 2: Ok, all right, I mean they're putting their fingers in
Speaker 2: their mouths, yeah, and walking around New York City.
Speaker 1: Yep. That's really loud, though.
Speaker 2: But if you could just Pallett whistle, you can usually
Speaker 2: whistle as loud as a finger whistle.
Speaker 1: In my oh, aren't very loud.
Speaker 2: It's like this right?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I think you're thinking of two different things.
Speaker 1: Are you thinking of a palette whistle as like a
Speaker 1: taxi call without fingers?
Speaker 2: Uh? Yeah, it's the kind of where like your your
Speaker 2: lips kind of press back in your in your face
Speaker 2: a little bit and your teeth cairt explosed and your
Speaker 2: tongue goes up to the roof of your mouth.
Speaker 1: I think we have a different version of palette whistle.
Speaker 1: Then maybe I can get Eddie Eddie to record his
Speaker 1: Pallett whistle.
Speaker 2: So I know what you're talking about. Then I've seen
Speaker 2: video of that. Yes, it's coming. It's almost like it
Speaker 2: comes from the back of the throat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I wish I could do it. When
Speaker 1: I try to do what he does, it's just nothing
Speaker 1: comes out.
Speaker 2: At all palattle whistling except to mix this sound.
Speaker 1: And then there's throat whistling, which is a very strange
Speaker 1: looking whistle because your mouth is open. You're you're not
Speaker 1: you don't have like a puckered purse lip.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's what I'm thinking of. I don't know what
Speaker 2: palattal whistling is.
Speaker 1: If it's not, you know what, I'll at the very
Speaker 1: least I'll get Eddie to send me an audio thing
Speaker 1: that I'll text you.
Speaker 2: Okay, can you text him now? Sure, I'll talk you.
Speaker 2: Just text for a minute.
Speaker 1: For the throat whistling. I would want to recommend did
Speaker 1: you watch those videos I sent you? By any chance
Speaker 1: I didn't, chuck, I'm sorry. Oh man, that's all right.
Speaker 1: You have to though, you owe it to yourself, okay,
Speaker 1: because they're just go to YouTube and type in Ralph Whistler, guys,
Speaker 1: I guess g I E. S. E. On Kelly and Company,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, and just witness the beauty of this
Speaker 1: guy Ralph doing his throat whistling to Georgia on my mind,
Speaker 1: which got about a half a million, five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand views. Then right afterward, in fact, you'll be
Speaker 1: proddedge to watch the next video, which is best singer
Speaker 1: ever Whistler redub which is somebody who redubbed him with
Speaker 1: his strange facial movements. As actual we won't even call
Speaker 1: it singing, but other mouth noises. That has gotten two
Speaker 1: and a half million views. Nice and I watched it
Speaker 1: seven times a day and laughed just as hard every
Speaker 1: single time. It's man, got funny, It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll definitely watch it, so Chuck. We can't actually
Speaker 2: say when whistling started. Some people say that it actually
Speaker 2: was a proto language, which I find is absolutely fascinating totally.
Speaker 2: We do know that the that well back into prehistory
Speaker 2: and the Neolithic Age, people were using maybe even Neanderthals too.
Speaker 2: We're using bone whistles, the grimmest kind of whistle, which
Speaker 2: would indicate that we were already familiar with whistles. We
Speaker 2: probably had figured out how to whistle by then. There's
Speaker 2: a bioacoustician named Julian Meyer who says the muscles it
Speaker 2: takes the amount of brain power it takes to whistle
Speaker 2: is so much less than it is to speak and
Speaker 2: to use words and creative vocabulary like that. That it
Speaker 2: just makes sense that we would have evolved to whistle first,
Speaker 2: at the very least, to get somebody's attention, right, and
Speaker 2: then once you have somebody's attention, you want to express
Speaker 2: an idea that just inherently follows. It's almost inevitable that
Speaker 2: we whistled before we learn to speak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there have been legitimate whistling languages discovered on every
Speaker 1: continent on planet Earth. And then once we move on
Speaker 1: to recorded history, we know for sure that Greeks and
Speaker 1: Romans and ancient Greece and Rome whistled because they whistle
Speaker 1: like to jeer from the audience, like people still do
Speaker 1: in Europe, at least Europe. I'm sure they do that
Speaker 1: in other countries, but we boo here in the United States,
Speaker 1: But in the UK and Europe they whistle when they
Speaker 1: want to express displeasure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was also so Herodotus in his histories described
Speaker 2: a community in Ethiopia that lived in caves and spoke
Speaker 2: like and you know the term troglodites. These were the
Speaker 2: original troglodites. Yeah, and it's been taken her Auditus has
Speaker 2: to be taken with a grain of salt because he
Speaker 2: himself was relying on probably a lot of unreliable sources.
Speaker 2: He sounds like somebody who would have really bought the
Speaker 2: stuff that he read on Facebook and put a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff onto Facebook if you were alive today. But
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that there was not like some kernel
Speaker 2: of truth. And this the Troglodites who spoke like bats
Speaker 2: has been taken to mean that they had a whistle
Speaker 2: based language.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were all over the place. People just took
Speaker 1: took whistling and his buddies, Hey, look at this mastad
Speaker 1: On over here. Let's take this thing down. He says
Speaker 1: that all in a whistle.
Speaker 2: He's like And also, have you heard the new Mastodon album?
Speaker 1: By the way, shout out to Mastodon. I was just
Speaker 1: the for the second year running the Celebrity Judge quote
Speaker 1: unquote Celebrity Judge and the Chicken Wing contest for the
Speaker 1: Kirk with Spring Fling, and one of the other judges
Speaker 1: was Braun, the drummer of Mastadon Awesome, and he was
Speaker 1: a super cool dude.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm sure, how could you not be if you're
Speaker 2: in Mastadon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'd said there and ate chicken wings together and
Speaker 1: very seriously reviewed them and rated them.
Speaker 2: So I'm sure you'd take that seriously. I would too.
Speaker 2: I would be very disappointed if you just took that
Speaker 2: as like a lark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sixteen chicken wings, wow, lucky. Yeah. Well I didn't
Speaker 1: eat them all. I ate a house to like four
Speaker 1: of them, and then most of the rest were just
Speaker 1: a bite or two.
Speaker 2: Okay. Do you like smoked wings like you know the
Speaker 2: Fox Brothers ilk?
Speaker 1: Yeah, smoke. I have a love hate with smoke on
Speaker 1: any food it can it's okay, But the same with mezcal.
Speaker 1: I like it and just little bits and blasts.
Speaker 2: M uh yeah, I'm with you. Uh. With the smoked
Speaker 2: wings though, that's that's kind of what I'm on right now.
Speaker 2: I can eat a lot.
Speaker 1: Of those those. I mean they the Fox Brothers wings
Speaker 1: are great.
Speaker 2: Well, nothing compliments and is complimented by Ranch more than
Speaker 2: a smoked wing. To me, It's even better than like
Speaker 2: a regular straight ahead buffalo wing. As far as the
Speaker 2: Ranch combo works, I.
Speaker 1: Don't need buffalo anymore at all. I'm a dry lemon
Speaker 1: pepper guy. Oh all right, These.
Speaker 2: Days, I always associate that with sports betting and watching
Speaker 2: like sports on Sunday for some.
Speaker 1: Reason, well, I do a bit of both.
Speaker 2: Speaking of dude, have you seen Sorry to all the
Speaker 2: people who are new to every podcast, have you seen
Speaker 2: the roast of Tom Brady?
Speaker 1: Oh? I saw parts of it, but there's no way
Speaker 1: I could sit through that in earnest, it's so bad.
Speaker 2: Like the stand up comedians and some of the podcasters
Speaker 2: did pretty well, Nicky Glazer won the night easily, handily,
Speaker 2: but when you finally get to Tom Brady's part, it
Speaker 2: like like it's unwatchable. You just can't you can't look.
Speaker 2: It's so it's so bad. He's like so going with
Speaker 2: the joke of how he's the greatest that it becomes
Speaker 2: kind of painfully clear that he's actually being dead serious
Speaker 2: at that point. It's not joking at all. It's really tough.
Speaker 2: I would actually recommend just watching like the first minute
Speaker 2: and a half of it and see if you can
Speaker 2: make it that far.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I could, but shout out on
Speaker 1: the key Glazer one time stuff you should.
Speaker 2: Know listener at least yeah, that one time.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if she still is. In
Speaker 1: other words, I know what you mean you're just joking.
Speaker 1: All right, Can we get back to whistling. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: all my fault. We can move past the history. People
Speaker 1: get what's going on here.
Speaker 2: Well, we need to talk about when whistling was like
Speaker 2: a big deal though in history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was getting to. Okay, we're talking Initially,
Speaker 1: you know that ancient history stuff was like hey, look
Speaker 1: over here, Hey what should we do? Hey, we're communicating.
Speaker 1: But if you're talking about whistle why you work? Musical
Speaker 1: whistling and other words, it's kind of tougher to trace
Speaker 1: that history because there's nothing, you know, there's no fossil
Speaker 1: that would indicate anything. But Linda Hamilton, who is a
Speaker 1: historian and loves whistling, has definitely referenced whistlers in the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. My bet is that it goes back even
Speaker 1: further because if people learn to whistle, I believe people
Speaker 1: are inherently musical, then people are, in my mind, whistling
Speaker 1: for enjoyment and pleasure.
Speaker 2: Pleasure. Yeah. Well, even in the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer says
Speaker 2: the young squire spends his days singing and whistling. So
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, that's yes, I agree, I think the
Speaker 2: first time somebody realized they could whistle, it immediately kicked
Speaker 2: off the human I guess pastime of whistling for pleasure. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: so yeah, they were like, hey over here, Hey, I
Speaker 2: like that a lot. I'm just going to keep saying
Speaker 2: hey over here a bunch of times. That was the
Speaker 2: first time it happened.
Speaker 1: The first song written by a whistle was called hey
Speaker 1: over here.
Speaker 2: So there were actual songs. There were professional whistlers late
Speaker 2: nineteenth century vaudeville that makes sense, like Vaudeville of George.
Speaker 2: They had so many acts doing so many different things.
Speaker 2: Of course there were whistlers, but it caught on, and
Speaker 2: in the first pretty much half of the twentieth century,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of whistling acts, whistling performers. They
Speaker 2: have names like Ronnie Ronalde, Muzzy Marcellino, just perfect names
Speaker 2: like that, and they were big enough that I think
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty nine Ronnie Ronalde sold out Radio City
Speaker 2: Music Hall for ten weeks and he was a whistler.
Speaker 1: Every night for ten weeks.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, not just like once and then ten weeks later,
Speaker 2: I mean like every night for ten weeks.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's a six thousand cap venue.
Speaker 2: He was a whistler.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I mean that just so was how big
Speaker 1: it was. It was usually people. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: had a whistling act, you were doing one or you
Speaker 1: were doing usually both of two things, which is whistling
Speaker 1: songs and things and then mimicking song birds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's still a thing. I watched Pucker Up,
Speaker 2: the documentary on whistling. Did you see it?
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 2: It's great almost in the way that it starts out too.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is indistinguishable from an episode of documentary. Now,
Speaker 2: like the first half hour, it really was not tell it.
Speaker 1: Apart, Yeah, except there was no Fred Armiston her Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I was just waiting for him to pop up.
Speaker 2: It was like that go on. But it's a really
Speaker 2: really sweet, charming documentary and all the people involved are
Speaker 2: pretty great. But one of the first people, I think,
Speaker 2: the first whistler they introduce you to a guy named
Speaker 2: Joe Siddano. He as doing bird impressions out in the
Speaker 2: woods and the birds are responding to him. It's really
Speaker 2: neat to see. You're like, wow, this guy's communing with
Speaker 2: the birds right now out in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's talking better watch what you say though, buddy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. So it was going on pretty well, whistling
Speaker 1: very very big in vaudeville, like you said, in a
Speaker 1: popular act just period, so much so that there was
Speaker 1: an academy. In nineteen oh nine, the Agnes Woodward, California
Speaker 1: School of Artistic Whistling opened up, and she had some
Speaker 1: pretty high profile clients, including John Wayne. I guess wanted
Speaker 1: to learn how to whistle really well, Pat Boon, Bing Crosby.
Speaker 2: If you're in a Western, you better know how to whistle.
Speaker 2: That's my guess why John Wayne needed to learn at.
Speaker 1: Least whistle for your horse at the very least.
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, your horse loves to hear you whistle.
Speaker 1: That's a funny joke though in a Western, it's like
Speaker 1: the cowboy who can't whistle probably feels pretty bad about himself.
Speaker 2: Probably that reminds me of the singing horse in Top Secret.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was just on an episode of Scott
Speaker 1: hasn't seen, so that's fresh in my mind.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, good, So you remember the singing Horse.
Speaker 1: I remember that, and that it just made me remember
Speaker 1: how funny that movie is. It is really is.
Speaker 2: So I think you were a kind of getting to
Speaker 2: this point where all of a sudden, almost overnight, every
Speaker 2: whistling act just went away. The world said, we're done
Speaker 2: with whistling. Stop whistling, And very interestingly, whistling is like
Speaker 2: not just a musical act, but just kind of as
Speaker 2: a pastime, something that people just generally did. Went away
Speaker 2: at the same time too, And I saw that it
Speaker 2: was chalked up by some people to the advent of
Speaker 2: the transistor radio, and then eventually the walkman and the
Speaker 2: iPod I think it was somebody on Pucker Up kind
Speaker 2: of made this case. And it really makes sense because
Speaker 2: one of the reasons people would whistle before is because
Speaker 2: you're just keeping yourself occupied, you're keeping yourself entertained, you're
Speaker 2: creating music for yourself to enjoy. And that need for
Speaker 2: that went away when we were able to carry around
Speaker 2: things that could do that for us, starting with the
Speaker 2: transistor radio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. It also had a bad reputation, even
Speaker 1: in certain instances in the eighteen hundreds in the UK
Speaker 1: there were stores that banned whistling because it was used
Speaker 1: as a sort of language basically between pickpockets and thieves
Speaker 1: to warn each other. It is still sort of sort
Speaker 1: of a trophy shorthand for someone that's up to no good,
Speaker 1: usually somebody trying to play it off as if they
Speaker 1: are carefree. Oh yeah, like if you were, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you were doing a sketch, a comedy sketch about a shoplifter.
Speaker 1: Every time the shop owner looks over at the shoplifter,
Speaker 1: they would probably like look up at the sky, and
Speaker 1: that would kill absolutely. And it's just become sort of
Speaker 1: a trope. Is a shorthand again, just another sort of
Speaker 1: weird use for whistling.
Speaker 2: So it's just like roller skating. You remember how like
Speaker 2: roller skating was huge in the late seventies and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, just overnight, it went away, But like
Speaker 2: Black culture was like, nope, we're still roller skating, and
Speaker 2: roller skating continue to be a thing. That kind of
Speaker 2: happened with whistling. The world was like, we're done with whistling,
Speaker 2: but a subset of people were like, no, we're going
Speaker 2: to keep whistling and kept the dream alive of whistling
Speaker 2: over the years. And I say, we take a break
Speaker 2: and we come back and talk about a few contemporary whistlers.
Speaker 2: Let's do it, okay, Chuck, So we're talking about people
Speaker 2: who whistle today sometimes for a living. There was an
Speaker 2: artist in the nineties named Marge Carlson who whistle a
Speaker 2: lot of saccharine Christian songs and was known as America's
Speaker 2: Sweetheart of bird songs. She was quite a good whistler,
Speaker 2: but she had albums like she released albums where rather
Speaker 2: than singing, it was all instrumental, and one of the
Speaker 2: instruments was her whistling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's still a thing. I'm sure you looked
Speaker 1: at these videos, Josh, but there is big things to Anna,
Speaker 1: by the way, who put this together for us, very cool,
Speaker 1: robust article. But she found Molly Lewis, who is a
Speaker 1: contemporary professional whistler, just a wonderful whistler, releasing that She
Speaker 1: has an EP called The Forgotten Edge. She performs live
Speaker 1: in concert. There's a very fun YouTube with Molly on
Speaker 1: one of those Sunday morning shows.
Speaker 2: I can't remember, yes, Sunday Morning. It was good little segment, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Very good little segment, like you said, and she just
Speaker 1: Molly just seems terrific, very enthusiastic about whistling.
Speaker 2: Yes, she's a whistler, but at the same time she's
Speaker 2: like bewildered that she's actually making a career of whistling,
Speaker 2: like she's able to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's kind of laughing about it, and not like
Speaker 1: in a put down way. You just kind of like,
Speaker 1: I'm good at this weird thing and it's just kind
Speaker 1: of crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: She's got some contemporaries too, a lot of I think
Speaker 2: actually Molly competed too, a lot of the people who
Speaker 2: you would have heard of as whistlers at least now
Speaker 2: if you really dig into whistling, you'll end up hearing
Speaker 2: about him like Chris Olman, Yurt or sorry hert Chatrow,
Speaker 2: who's just an amazing person. Apparently they competed in like
Speaker 2: the International Whistling Finals, And as you kind of start
Speaker 2: to dig into the world of whistling, some names kind
Speaker 2: of bubble up to the top. And that's because they're
Speaker 2: essentially competitive whistlers. There's whistling competitions that are held over
Speaker 2: the years, and some people who are just the best
Speaker 2: of the best at whistling will compete. So in addition
Speaker 2: to Molly Lewis, you'll run across the guy named Chris Olman,
Speaker 2: who's a champion whistler, a guy named hert Chatrow, who's
Speaker 2: another champion whistler, and they're just amazing and if you
Speaker 2: if you listen to them, it's like, especially if you
Speaker 2: just just go watch Pucker Up the documentary. I think
Speaker 2: it's even on YouTube for free. Yeah, like you'll start
Speaker 2: to realize that people have their own style, their own techniques.
Speaker 2: It's not just like there's one way to whistle. People
Speaker 2: have figured out a bunch of different ways to whistle
Speaker 2: in different combinations of those ways to whistle, and they're
Speaker 2: keeping it alive.
Speaker 1: Like I said, that's right. I mean, Sammy Hagar may
Speaker 1: say there's only one way to rock, but he will
Speaker 1: also say there's a lot of ways to whistle.
Speaker 2: That's right. And he said for those about to rock,
Speaker 2: we salute you, and.
Speaker 1: We salute Sammy because he just got a star on
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Speaker 2: Oh really, congrats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, way to go, Sammy. So if you are a
Speaker 1: great whistler and you, you know, maybe compete in these
Speaker 1: competitions and you're like, well, not popular enough to get
Speaker 1: my album out there, like Molly Lewis, you probably could
Speaker 1: find a home. It sirked us Ola because they have
Speaker 1: had quite a few whistlers over the years perform with
Speaker 1: them as circus is a bit of a modern day vaudeville,
Speaker 1: and they have all kinds of fun things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we go every year here in Atlanta. It's a nice
Speaker 1: fun tradition for the fam. You can also whistle on
Speaker 1: songs and soundtracks. Molly Lewis whistled on that Barbie soundtrack.
Speaker 1: That's so great. Of course, who can forget the good,
Speaker 1: the bad, and the ugly Sergio Leoni's famous famous spaghetti
Speaker 1: Western in which Alessandro Alessandroni did that very sort of
Speaker 1: iconic whistle for that movie.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's iconic for sure. I mean it signifies anytime
Speaker 2: somebody is you're suddenly like potentially in danger because an
Speaker 2: extraordinarily capable killer has showed up?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'd described that.
Speaker 1: Correctly, No, like if the s was about to go down?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: And as a refresher, of course, Clinty Sort was a good,
Speaker 1: Lee Van Kleep was a bad and Eli Wallach was
Speaker 1: the ugly anyway, I know, do you want to bust
Speaker 1: that one out for us.
Speaker 2: Like that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That was great.
Speaker 2: I got another one too. There's actually a name you
Speaker 2: know that whistling part where eld Driver is going to
Speaker 2: kill the bride at the very beginning of Kill Bill
Speaker 2: Volume one. Yeah, that song is called Twisted Nerve and
Speaker 2: it's like the creepiest song you've ever heard in your life.
Speaker 2: And it's from a nineteen sixty eight British thriller called
Speaker 2: Twisted Nerve. You know the song I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I mean, i'd probably recognize that it's been wat since
Speaker 1: I've seen that though.
Speaker 2: It's just creepsville. And for some reason, I think it's
Speaker 2: because it's whistled in part is why it's creepy. It's
Speaker 2: a creepy song.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll have to check that out. You want
Speaker 1: to take a stab at it her?
Speaker 2: Now? Sure you know the song?
Speaker 1: No, but I feel like applauding.
Speaker 2: I think we should overdub the actual song where I
Speaker 2: start just impress everybody.
Speaker 1: That'd be pretty great. Of course, we have to name
Speaker 1: the fact that sometimes people will whistle as a character.
Speaker 1: Let's say, if you're Woodstock in Peanuts, Jason Saranus did
Speaker 1: the Woodstock whistles. And there's got any Percy Edwards who
Speaker 1: is an animal impressionist and he voices whistles for a
Speaker 1: lot of animated characters.
Speaker 2: He also was the voice er I guess the character
Speaker 2: of Fiz Gig in the Dark Crystal. Essentially that one
Speaker 2: of the pets.
Speaker 1: You just whistled, And what did I just whistle? What
Speaker 1: did I do? I indicated something, didn't I?
Speaker 2: You expressed emotion, in this case admiration or being impressed.
Speaker 1: That's right, And what we're talking about is why people whistle.
Speaker 1: And we've kind of poked around here and there. You
Speaker 1: know first about the fact that there were languages and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. If you lived in a mountainous region,
Speaker 1: A very good way to communicate over a longer distance
Speaker 1: like that and maybe give a direction is to have
Speaker 1: some whistles that you agree on. Rather than try and
Speaker 1: get someone to understand you saying you know, there is
Speaker 1: wood over here, you might have a whistle that can
Speaker 1: indicate that a little more clearly. Over a great echoe.
Speaker 2: Distance, there's also yes. And that's the whole point. Echoe
Speaker 2: distances are basically the basis of what are known as
Speaker 2: whistled languages, and they're a whistled version of your local language.
Speaker 2: So like if you were saying there's wood over there,
Speaker 2: you'd be like, right, and it actually works, like your
Speaker 2: whistle can travel way farther. I saw something like five
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty meters on like a nice spring day,
Speaker 2: compared to forty meters for just speech one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty meters for shouting. One hundred and fifty meters is
Speaker 2: what your whistle will carry. And there's like neurologists and
Speaker 2: linguists are just fascinated by this, Like how could you
Speaker 2: kind of imitate a sentence in whistle and the receiver
Speaker 2: here's the sentence essentially in the same way as if
Speaker 2: you spoke it. Like it goes to show like there's
Speaker 2: a lot that you can strip out of speech and
Speaker 2: still get the point across. That's what whistle languages to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, there's only
Speaker 1: a handful of words that you might want to communicate.
Speaker 1: You don't have to say, hey, we have firewood over here.
Speaker 1: You just have to be able to say fire here
Speaker 1: or or vegetable here, you know, And you can just
Speaker 1: combine very rudimentary expressions to one another informative expressions. What
Speaker 1: would you call that? Information? Sure, an informative expression.
Speaker 2: I like that, actually, I like that a lot more
Speaker 2: than dumb old information. Also, the other person says, what
Speaker 2: kind of a right, the initial person says tomatoes, and
Speaker 2: the second person goes tomatoes a fruit, and the initial
Speaker 2: person says, is it? And it just keeps going on
Speaker 2: like this. But imagine people doing that whistling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'd be pretty great. We have the legendary wolf whistle,
Speaker 1: which of course is the that originated they believe as
Speaker 1: a call like shepherds was used. Would use that to
Speaker 1: communicate that there are wolves about, and then that evolved
Speaker 1: to something that you know, a street manhole repair cover
Speaker 1: person in New York City might do to any woman
Speaker 1: that walks by.
Speaker 2: Still supposedly, in twenty eighteen, France banned wolf whistling with
Speaker 2: a seven hundred and fifty euro fine on the spot.
Speaker 2: You would be like, you need to pay this on
Speaker 2: the spot, And that fascinating because it's a it's a
Speaker 2: form of sexual harassment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look at France.
Speaker 2: And I saw that the or furthest back that a
Speaker 2: wolf whistle in that context can be traced to is
Speaker 2: that nineteen forty three Tech Savery cartoon Red Hot Riding Hood,
Speaker 2: where the cartoon wolf is like watching Riding Hood like
Speaker 2: perform on stage and just completely loses his mind.
Speaker 1: Any wolf whistles, that's right, you know earlier the old uh?
Speaker 1: I mean that can that one in itself can mean
Speaker 1: several different things. You could be impressed by something and
Speaker 1: go like that, or you could use it sort of
Speaker 1: derisively if someone did something really embarrassing or bad at
Speaker 1: a party.
Speaker 2: True, you just made my stomach turn? Wow? Well yeah,
Speaker 2: effect of a whistle in certain contexts.
Speaker 1: And usually like an eye roll and something along with
Speaker 1: it will help indicate that expression. But it's just really
Speaker 1: fascinating how many different sort of you can express disappointment
Speaker 1: or excitement, Like, how many different things you can do
Speaker 1: from just a simple whistle.
Speaker 2: Wonder where your car is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, how would you do that? Wait? I thought that
Speaker 1: was vegetable here.
Speaker 2: And one other thing we have to talk about. We
Speaker 2: mentioned communicating with animals, and we talked about this in
Speaker 2: I think They're communicating with animals episode appropriately enough. The
Speaker 2: greater honeyguide, which is a type of bird found in
Speaker 2: Tanzania Mozambique that honey foragers. Human honey foragers have learned
Speaker 2: to communicate to whistle to the greater honey guide to
Speaker 2: get them to come out of the trees and lead
Speaker 2: them to a beehive.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: I love that. Communicating with animals, I think is just fantastic.
Speaker 1: It's the best. Maybe we'll take a break in a sec,
Speaker 1: but we'll go over some quick superstitions involving whistling, and
Speaker 1: you know, instead of going through all these I think
Speaker 1: they can all almost be lumped into. Whistling in a
Speaker 1: certain place or at a certain time can bring bad luck.
Speaker 1: It seems like Polynesia, Iceland, Hawaii, Mexico, Hong Kong, Scandinavia.
Speaker 1: There's so many countries where if you whish, like I said,
Speaker 1: in the wrong place or at the wrong time, it
Speaker 1: can be a bad omen. It can mean there's ghosts about,
Speaker 1: or there's spirits about, just sort of depending on when
Speaker 1: and how it's done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, usually it's whistling in the dark or after dark.
Speaker 2: Is a terrible idea in a lot of these cultures
Speaker 2: around the world, and that the bad luck that you're
Speaker 2: going to bring yourself is summoning spirits, demons, that kind
Speaker 2: of thing who will snatch your soul essentially. But I
Speaker 2: find it fascinating that whistling in the dark or whistling
Speaker 2: after nightfall is like almost a universal superstition.
Speaker 1: Well, I've never heard of that.
Speaker 2: I hadn't either, but I mean all of the different,
Speaker 2: like widespread cultures that share that belief, it suggests that
Speaker 2: it's a very very very old superstition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So you want to take that break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll take the break and we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: whistling and basically how you do it right after this. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we're back with promise on teaching you to whistle.
Speaker 1: It is very cute when you have a kid and
Speaker 1: they try to learn to whistle and think and claim
Speaker 1: that they are whistling when they are not. At least
Speaker 1: that was my case early on, when Ruby was trying
Speaker 1: to learn how to whistle, she'd be like, Daddy, I
Speaker 1: can whistle. Oh, let's hear it. And what can you
Speaker 1: say besides hey, that sounds great, keep at it.
Speaker 2: You were like, and gave Brad and iyrol exactly and
Speaker 2: she was like, what is that?
Speaker 1: That is not even a whistle. But it does take
Speaker 1: some time to learn how to whistle. Some people never learn,
Speaker 1: but you can teach yourself. What you're doing basically is
Speaker 1: creating your mouth becomes an instrument and becomes a chamber.
Speaker 1: Basically where you are passing air from one small opening
Speaker 1: from your lungs where the air comes from out of
Speaker 1: your puckered lips. And you do that with the standard
Speaker 1: pucker whistle by placing your tongue. And you might even
Speaker 1: realize at first, I was like, wait a minute, the
Speaker 1: tongu's not on the roof of your mouth. But the
Speaker 1: tongue is absolutely at the roof of your mouth. The
Speaker 1: very back of your tongue is at the very back
Speaker 1: of the roof of your mouth, not the front of
Speaker 1: your tongue. The front of your tongue is pressed against
Speaker 1: the bottom row of teeth. And that's what you do.
Speaker 1: You just start blowing. You form that O shape with
Speaker 1: your mouth and just practice, practice.
Speaker 2: Practice, Yeah, it's really neat. It's called the Helmholtz chamber
Speaker 2: that you're forming, which is a type of resonance chamber.
Speaker 2: And because you're forcing air through a large from smaller
Speaker 2: holes into a larger hole back into a smaller hole
Speaker 2: and your tongue's there by moving your tongue, you can
Speaker 2: adjust like all sorts of weird currents that you're creating
Speaker 2: in the air pressure and that creates the vibrations that
Speaker 2: make the sound, which is why when you move your
Speaker 2: tongue around, you change notes and pitch and timber and
Speaker 2: all sorts of crazy stuff. And that's whistling. That's pucker whistling.
Speaker 2: That's what you're doing. I love it. I love that
Speaker 2: there's like an explanation that makes total sense. It's deeply
Speaker 2: satisfying to me. It would suck if we're like, we
Speaker 2: still don't know how we whistle. I think I would
Speaker 2: lose my mind if that were the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, when we're saying things like moving
Speaker 1: your tongue around and the tongue is pressed against the
Speaker 1: top of your mouth, like if you don't know how
Speaker 1: to whistle, and that's frustrating you and you're just moving
Speaker 1: your tongue all over the place, it's they're very very
Speaker 1: subtle movements. Like I said, I didn't even realize my
Speaker 1: tongue was a against the back of the roof of
Speaker 1: my mouth. I didn't either until I started whistling and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, wait a minute, I guess it is.
Speaker 1: And then the back of my tongue, very subtly moving
Speaker 1: back and forth against the back of the roof of
Speaker 1: my mouth is what creates the different tones and pitches
Speaker 1: and warbles and what have you. So it's not it's
Speaker 1: just all just very, very slight movements. You're going to
Speaker 1: frustrate yourself if you don't know how to whistle and
Speaker 1: you're trying just all these crazy things with your tongue
Speaker 1: in your mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Chris Olman, that champion professional whistler, he spoke with
Speaker 2: Vox and said, I'll give you four steps to whistling. First,
Speaker 2: form and O with the shape of your mouth. Second,
Speaker 2: press the tip of your tongue to your teeth, usually
Speaker 2: the bottom row of the inside of the bottom row
Speaker 2: of your teeth. And then he said, blow gently. This
Speaker 2: is important. You want your air to be focused and constant,
Speaker 2: not necessarily hard. The hearder you blow, it's actually it
Speaker 2: makes it more difficult to whistle. You just wanted to
Speaker 2: kind of blow concertedly but not hard. And then lastly,
Speaker 2: you just keep practicing. And the way that he put
Speaker 2: it is you practice each one of those steps in secession.
Speaker 2: So you just keep forming an over and over until
Speaker 2: you've got the mouth position going.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel good because my steps were exactly like
Speaker 1: the pros.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess you just intuitively knew how to whistle.
Speaker 2: You just taught yourself like that? Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I'm saying the way I described it
Speaker 1: how to do it was. Oh, of course he's.
Speaker 2: A pro, So you're a pro podcaster.
Speaker 1: So should we talk a little bit about famous whistling stuff?
Speaker 2: I think so. I mean, at the very least, we
Speaker 2: have to talk about to Have and Have Not?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, the I mean take it away.
Speaker 2: Then, okay. So there's an adaptation of a Hemingway novel
Speaker 2: To Have and Have Not, with Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart,
Speaker 2: and there's a very famous line where Bacaull says, you
Speaker 2: know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put
Speaker 2: your lips together and blow. And that's probably the most
Speaker 2: famous movie line about whistling ever. Uttered everybody knows that one.
Speaker 2: Then you might not know a movie it's from or
Speaker 2: who said it, but you've heard that line. Don't even
Speaker 2: kid yourself.
Speaker 1: The very famous whistle while you work from Stow White
Speaker 1: and the Seven Doors. Of course, the Andy Griffith Show.
Speaker 1: I remember very distinctly when my brother, when I first
Speaker 1: visited him in Los Angeles in the early nineties, he
Speaker 1: drove me up and up and around, and finally I
Speaker 1: came upon through the Hollywood Hills and I came upon
Speaker 1: this weird lake and I was like, well, what is this?
Speaker 1: And he just started whistling Andy Griffith and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: He's like, yep, this is it. I knew it wasn't Mayberry,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know really anything about how movies were
Speaker 1: made at the time. Sure, so it was just surprising
Speaker 1: to see that, Like the bat Cave is the Hollywood
Speaker 1: Hills and the Andy Griffith Lake is right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, same with the Hills in mash the Hills of Korea. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of songs too. We gotta we gotta
Speaker 2: name check a few of these songs that have whistling
Speaker 2: in them. Yes, there's walk like an Egyptian. It's a
Speaker 2: good one, precisely, Okay, Yeah, demonstrate them all. Otis Redding's
Speaker 2: Dock of the Bay very nice.
Speaker 1: My whistle is very dry. Right now, I'm not at
Speaker 1: my top.
Speaker 2: Form Scorpions, Winds of Change.
Speaker 1: I can't think of that one. I know that song?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right, Yeah, it's good. There's also a bunch
Speaker 2: of others. Me and Julio down by the schoolyard, Don't worry,
Speaker 2: be Happy. Maybe the iconic whistling song, that one sudden
Speaker 2: part where Axel Roses starts whistling in patience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was on my list. That's a great whistle.
Speaker 2: Lile, I Love You The Pixies song.
Speaker 1: Uh huh yeah, yeah, I'm going to see them next week.
Speaker 2: You're going to see the Pixies yea where.
Speaker 1: They're playing Chastain with Modest Mouse.
Speaker 2: Oh neat, So is Kim deal back with them yet?
Speaker 2: Or no?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, she's she's never coming back.
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 1: And not only that, they kicked out pause their their
Speaker 1: bass player that they've had for the past eight or
Speaker 1: nine years.
Speaker 2: Wow. We black Francis is going on a tear.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah. I don't want to speak out of school
Speaker 1: about why that may or may not have happened, but
Speaker 1: it seems fairly disappointing from what I've read. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm still going.
Speaker 2: Uh, what else was there? Oh? Mariah Carey is a
Speaker 2: famous whistler.
Speaker 1: Well, eh, I know you're kidding around there. Mariah Carey
Speaker 1: is noted for singing in what's called the flute register,
Speaker 1: or the whistle register, which is a vocal register. It's
Speaker 1: the highest one in the vocal register, higher than falsetto.
Speaker 1: Even that very very few people can do. And they
Speaker 1: call it the whistle register or the flute register because
Speaker 1: those pitches can generally only be made by flutes and
Speaker 1: whistles rather than a singer like Mariah.
Speaker 2: Once you hear it described as the whistle register, and
Speaker 2: you hear those notes that she's sitting, you're like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, that sounds exactly like a whistle. It's like
Speaker 2: a perfect name for it. Yeah, but she's singing it.
Speaker 2: It's absurd. Yeah, and all it should be essentially impossible
Speaker 2: what she's doing. She's not the only one. Minnie Ripperton
Speaker 2: is another famous one who hit the whistles register. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the famous seventies souls songstress. All those are the two
Speaker 2: of that come to mind. Okay, but that's I'm just
Speaker 2: impressed to no end by that.
Speaker 1: What about the what's the name Aguilera.
Speaker 2: Christina Aguilera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, she's got that whistle range. I've heard it.
Speaker 2: Does she really sure? Okay?
Speaker 1: I think she's there's a couple of younger artists. Actually,
Speaker 1: she's not one of the younger artists anymore either.
Speaker 2: Really No, we're pretty old chun Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: You mentioned those competitions. The I think granddaddy of them
Speaker 1: all was shuttered unfortunately in twenty fourteen. It started nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, the Louisbourg or louis Bourg, I don't know
Speaker 1: how they say it. They're in North Carolina, and it
Speaker 1: was a big one, and like I said, it shut
Speaker 1: down in twenty fourteen, and I believe it's now just
Speaker 1: its own event. It was part of the Louisbourg College
Speaker 1: Folk Festival and now it's the National Whistlers Convention. So
Speaker 1: it more morphed then shut down.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it just became so popular people are like,
Speaker 2: we want this to be its own event. Yeah. Somehow,
Speaker 2: for some reason in twenty fourteen, that was the last one,
Speaker 2: and that was the competition that's featured on Pucker Up
Speaker 2: by the way. That National Whistler's Convention, I think it
Speaker 2: was international. And then luckily a ficionaudo named Caroline Kaufman,
Speaker 2: who said, hey, we're going to keep this going, created
Speaker 2: the Masters of Musical Whistling competition in Pasadena, I think
Speaker 2: starting in twenty twenty. This year's and off year, but
Speaker 2: the website promises it's coming back in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: I love it. We should finish probably on some Guinness
Speaker 1: records because my friend, if we want to take the
Speaker 1: time and do a lot of paperwork, we could very
Speaker 1: easily hold our own Guinness World record, and I kind
Speaker 1: of think we should do it. What well, in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: there was a Guinness record for the most people whistling
Speaker 1: at the same time at a single venue, and it
Speaker 1: was a mere eight hundred and fifty three people at
Speaker 1: the Spring Harvest in the United Kingdom. We could bust
Speaker 1: that record at one of our live shows very easily.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we totally. That's a great idea. We got
Speaker 2: to get that in the works chuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which means who's going to do all the work,
Speaker 1: because we talked about about, oh god, how much work
Speaker 1: it is, and most people give up because there's so
Speaker 1: much work to officially get a record, you know verified.
Speaker 2: This feels like a jerry job. Oh yeah, right, what
Speaker 2: are we going to get everybody to whistle?
Speaker 1: Oh goodness, I mean probably the stuff you should know
Speaker 1: jingle theme.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good idea. I was thinking winds are
Speaker 2: change and we would invite the escorpions to sing a
Speaker 2: capella to the whistling.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea. We could just get up there
Speaker 1: and go what were you doing?
Speaker 2: I think it was a Christmas Carol. I don't know
Speaker 2: which one though.
Speaker 1: Wow. All right, well, as long as no one does
Speaker 1: what you do, we'll be just fine.
Speaker 2: I thought we harmonized quite nicely. Oh okay, Well, let's
Speaker 2: talk about some world records, because yes, I agree, we
Speaker 2: should break that one, and we'll ask Jerry to help
Speaker 2: us with that.
Speaker 1: We could do that everywhere, but probably DC, that's right,
Speaker 1: or Atlanta. Well, we'll get in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see. So in two thousand and four, this
Speaker 2: is insane. Okay, no, this isn't a saying. This is
Speaker 2: still pretty impressive. Marco Ferrera in two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: and then Luca Zoki or Zochi Nozoki in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: They hold the record for the world's loudest whistle. They
Speaker 2: each reached one hundred and twenty five decibels. Again, I
Speaker 2: don't remember what episode we were in, but that's like
Speaker 2: rock concert level decibels. I think it was our plane travel.
Speaker 1: That's that is amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, the one that really knocks my socks off, though,
Speaker 2: Is the one that Joshua Lockert broke?
Speaker 1: Oh the highest pitch? Yes, dude, I don't even know
Speaker 1: what that means.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he has the world record for the world's
Speaker 2: highest whistle in frequency ten five hundred and ninety nine hertz,
Speaker 2: which is almost eleven kill it hurts, right, go look
Speaker 2: up on YouTube eleven kill it hurts tone. And I
Speaker 2: played it and I had my volume up about halfway
Speaker 2: and it was just silent, and I was like, is
Speaker 2: this a prank? Is this a joke? Like somebody goes
Speaker 2: around and puts up like videos like they're playing a tone,
Speaker 2: but then doesn't put any sound to it. And I
Speaker 2: turned it all the way up and only then could
Speaker 2: I hear it. It was that high pitched. It was
Speaker 2: almost above like audible range of hearing. That's how high
Speaker 2: pitched it was. That guy did that with a whistle.
Speaker 2: It was It's amazing. I didn't hear it, but just
Speaker 2: from knowing what that tone sounds like, I can't imagine
Speaker 2: a human being doing that.
Speaker 1: I'm playing it right. Oh wait, turn it.
Speaker 2: Way up, but keep your wineglasses out of the room
Speaker 2: because they will shatter.
Speaker 1: I'm hearing nothing, right, turn it up. No, it's up
Speaker 1: all the way.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that's what I'm saying, like it's it's amazing,
Speaker 2: Like I finally did hear it. I can confirm it's
Speaker 2: not just a prank.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, I got it. Mm hm, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Somebody whistled like that.
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should just tell everyon We've been playing it
Speaker 2: this whole time, just to prove our point. You can't
Speaker 2: hear it because it's so high.
Speaker 1: Occasionally, ever since Ruby was a kid, I'll be in
Speaker 1: the car here and there, and I'll go, everyone knows
Speaker 1: I can sing lower than the new human, and then
Speaker 1: she'll try and sing lower, and then I'll go, and I.
Speaker 2: Can sing higher than any Oh, that's pretty high.
Speaker 1: She will always, but it's not singing, of course, and
Speaker 1: then she responds back fussly and is also not singing.
Speaker 2: Do any of you have the whistle register ability?
Speaker 1: Uh? No? No? And I feel bad that I really
Speaker 1: lamed out on whistling, because I'm a prettyod whistle. I
Speaker 1: can do some good warbles and stuff, but of course
Speaker 1: under the gun, I'm all dry mouth. It's just not happening.
Speaker 2: Were you nervous.
Speaker 1: Yeah that too. I'm not no, but I'm not even
Speaker 1: getting any warble.
Speaker 2: It's like a beautiful little lark flew into the room.
Speaker 1: As soon as we had stop, I'll be whistling like
Speaker 1: a songbird. I guarantee it. It just I'm locking up right now.
Speaker 2: I've got that last whistle was great. I've got one
Speaker 2: little fact to share.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So in one of the nineteen eighty four editions of
Speaker 2: the British Medical Journal, there was a case study about
Speaker 2: a patient who suffered a stroke and as they were recovering,
Speaker 2: there are only way to communicate. They couldn't talk. They
Speaker 2: had an elated mood. I saw it, described it so
Speaker 2: imagine a really happy person who could only whistle. That's
Speaker 2: how the guy was communicating as he came back as
Speaker 2: he was recovering from his stroke. Isn't that amazing? I
Speaker 2: couldn't talk. He whistled. He wasn't whistling in words. He
Speaker 2: would just whistle as if he were communicating. That is
Speaker 2: really sweet, I thought, so too. Yeah what else? Anything else?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else?
Speaker 2: Well then, everybody. That means, of course it's time for
Speaker 2: listener mail.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, this is a follow up on trash in
Speaker 1: the book plug this seems just like a wonderful thing. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: wanted to write in and give an extra big hat
Speaker 1: tip your recent New York City trash episode. What joy
Speaker 1: That episode brought me. I live in New York City
Speaker 1: and I have what one may say is an obsession
Speaker 1: with trash here Wow started during COVID as I was
Speaker 1: locked down with my partner who then lived on Roosevelt
Speaker 1: Island and his apartment head views of the East River
Speaker 1: the path of the container garbage barges from ninety first
Speaker 1: Street Marine transfer Station. I watched them, made efforts to
Speaker 1: identify them, film them, and eventually it led to me
Speaker 1: writing a children's book about New York City trash.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 1: It's so cool. Seeing the multitude of the garbage was
Speaker 1: jarring and all very fascinating. The book is about Gary,
Speaker 1: a city rat, and his adventures with Marge. The garbage barge.
Speaker 1: Is definitely not a full capture of the city's garbage,
Speaker 1: but a story of one of its many routes. I
Speaker 1: now live in Brooklyn with my partner, so I no
Speaker 1: longer have regular views of the garbage barges boo, but
Speaker 1: I still visit the river to look at them. Needless
Speaker 1: to say, I love your other previous garbage related episodes
Speaker 1: as well, and I want to say general thank you
Speaker 1: for your show. I've been a listener since twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: learn so much from you across so many topics. And lastly,
Speaker 1: I'm greatly looking forward to your live show in New
Speaker 1: York at the end of the month. That is from
Speaker 1: Jessica Chang in Brooklyn, New York. And Jessica's book is
Speaker 1: Gary meets Margethebarge.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Congratulations, Jessica. That's a great book idea. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I gotta get that one.
Speaker 1: So go go buy it, go to some independent bookseller
Speaker 1: of your choice or look it up online and it's
Speaker 1: port Jessica.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, just walk in and say I'll take
Speaker 2: one copy of Jerry meets Marche the Barge please, that's right,
Speaker 2: and they'll go.
Speaker 1: Another one.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Jessica and let us
Speaker 2: know about an awesome book you wrote, we would love
Speaker 2: to hear that. You can write about your book in
Speaker 2: an email and send it off to Stuff podcast at
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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