Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to be kicking off a multi
Speaker 1: part series about whistling. This is one of those topics
Speaker 1: I hope in in classic Stuff to Blow Your Mind fashion,
Speaker 1: we will be able to really surprise you how much
Speaker 1: weird and interesting stuff there is to learn about whistling
Speaker 1: around the world. That's right, I mean we will. We
Speaker 1: will make it weird. We will be weird in episode one,
Speaker 1: so strap in. Yeah. So. One of the first things
Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about, and I think this
Speaker 1: is something we'll have to revisit in multiple parts of
Speaker 1: this series is the idea of whistled languages. Much to
Speaker 1: my surprise after reading about this subject, there are multiple
Speaker 1: examples from around the globe of whistled languages, or at
Speaker 1: least whistled alternate versions of an existing spoken language and two.
Speaker 1: So to kick us off, I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: one particular example of a whistled language. I was reading
Speaker 1: about this in a classic linguistics paper from nineteen forty
Speaker 1: eight by George M. Cowen called Maso Teco Whistle Speech.
Speaker 1: This was published in the journal Language in nineteen forty eight. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's by this scholar named George M. Cowan who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen through seventeen. He was an expert on linguistics.
Speaker 1: He was associated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and
Speaker 1: apparently this paper is one of his most important contributions
Speaker 1: to the field. So it's an article documenting this fascinating
Speaker 1: type of communication practiced by the Mazo tech people living
Speaker 1: in Wahaca, Mexico. So what we're talking about here is
Speaker 1: an alternate form of the maze Teco language that is
Speaker 1: based entirely on whistles. Cowen writes that as of the
Speaker 1: nineteen forty Mexican Census, there were approximately sixty thou people
Speaker 1: in the Mazatec tribe, and almost fifty six thousand of
Speaker 1: them were mono lingual speakers of of the ma Azotecan languages.
Speaker 1: The Mazotecan languages are part of what Cowen here calls
Speaker 1: the Popa Loca Mezteco language family, so part of a
Speaker 1: broader association of languages found in this area. So Cowen
Speaker 1: spent several winters in the nineteen forties living among speakers
Speaker 1: of the Mezoteken languages to document uh these languages and
Speaker 1: eventually the whistle speech. And I want to begin by
Speaker 1: reading an anecdote that he just observed during his time there. Quote.
Speaker 1: Eusebio Martinez was observed one day standing in front of
Speaker 1: his hut whistling to a man a considerable distance away.
Speaker 1: The man was passing on the trail below, going to
Speaker 1: market to sell a load of corn leaves, which he
Speaker 1: was carrying. The man answered Eusebio's whist with a whistle.
Speaker 1: The interchange was repeated several times with different whistles. Finally,
Speaker 1: the man turned around, retraced his steps a short way,
Speaker 1: and came up the footpath to U. CBO's hut. Without
Speaker 1: saying a word, he dumped his load on the ground. U.
Speaker 1: Sabio looked the load over, went into his hut, returned
Speaker 1: with some money, and paid the man his price. The
Speaker 1: man turned and left. Not a word had been spoken.
Speaker 1: They had talked, bargained over the price, and come to
Speaker 1: an agreement satisfactory to both parties, using only whistles as
Speaker 1: a medium of communication. And this is not an isolated incident. Uh.
Speaker 1: The author here writes that the Mazotec people frequently hold
Speaker 1: entire conversations and express an extremely broad and versatile set
Speaker 1: of ideas, all using whistles. As he puts it, quote,
Speaker 1: the Maso Teco is frequently conversed by whistling to one another.
Speaker 1: The whistles are not merely signals with limited semantic value,
Speaker 1: arrived at by common agreement, but are parallel to spoken
Speaker 1: conversations as a means of communication. And so to to
Speaker 1: try to uh elucidate that a little bit, what this
Speaker 1: means is that the whistle speech is not a code
Speaker 1: like you may have heard, you may have seen in movies,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like like soldiers crawling around and they
Speaker 1: sort of like whistle codes at each other, And you
Speaker 1: get the idea that maybe they've agreed on a handful
Speaker 1: of whistled signals in advance, like you know that one
Speaker 1: whistle means a stop, another one means go forward, And
Speaker 1: but there's probably a very limited array of those whistles,
Speaker 1: and you had to work on agreeing to them beforehand,
Speaker 1: right right. Also in contrast to how the sort of
Speaker 1: every day and in our world you will encounter. You know,
Speaker 1: a handful of uses of whistles that have sort of
Speaker 1: agreed upon meaning sort of a whistle that is an
Speaker 1: attention grabber, and a whistle that might be a little
Speaker 1: more scandalous, and then a whistle that is it seems
Speaker 1: to say say whoa, uh, like that's a big truck
Speaker 1: h something of that nature. But but it's not really,
Speaker 1: it's nothing at all like a robust language of whistles.
Speaker 1: It's just a few basic whistle signals that seem to
Speaker 1: be commonly used. Yeah, that's right, I would say, Like
Speaker 1: in the standard American English speaking context, there are a
Speaker 1: few sort of significant whistles. You you basically know what
Speaker 1: they mean when you hear them, but there's only a
Speaker 1: handful of them, and you certainly can't make sentences out
Speaker 1: of them. Exactly the opposite is true of the Mazo
Speaker 1: Teco whistle speech. Uh. This is a a full equivalent
Speaker 1: to the standard spoken Meso Teco language. The whistles can
Speaker 1: be recorded and translated by anybody familiar with the whistle speech,
Speaker 1: producing the same specific translations with a couple of uh,
Speaker 1: certain kinds of ambiguities. I'll get into that later. So
Speaker 1: it's not a kind of loose suggestive code. It's not
Speaker 1: something that's to be agreed on ahead of time. It's
Speaker 1: just an equivalent of a spoken language with all the
Speaker 1: freedom of degrees of expression and lexical richness found in
Speaker 1: the spoken language. And I thought this was just amazing.
Speaker 1: So I guess I want to explore a few more
Speaker 1: things that the Cowen documents that he observed about the
Speaker 1: whistle speech during his time in Wahaka in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: So he says also that um the mesa teco people
Speaker 1: use the whistle signals when communicating with animals. For example,
Speaker 1: there's a sort of slow up gliding whistle to keep
Speaker 1: burrows moving when on the trail, or whistles to call
Speaker 1: out to dogs. But these whistles don't have a translatable
Speaker 1: language equivalent. So there is whistling that is language. But
Speaker 1: then there's also a whole set of like whistle sounds
Speaker 1: that are useful day to day but are not words. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just they want to be translated. They'd be like hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: or keep walking, keep going another thing. Not everybody whistles,
Speaker 1: and not everybody who whistles whistles the same amount. Cowen
Speaker 1: writes that while everyone seems to have listening fluency with
Speaker 1: the whistled speech, generally only men whistle, and especially men
Speaker 1: between the ages of boyhood and middle age. So he
Speaker 1: says old men rarely whistle conversationally. It seems to fade
Speaker 1: out over the lifespan, and women and girls understand what
Speaker 1: is whistled by the men and boys, but usually do
Speaker 1: not whistle themselves. So he talks about observing a bunch
Speaker 1: of interactions where like a boy would whistle something to
Speaker 1: a girl his age, and the girl would reply with
Speaker 1: spoken language, so she understands the whistles, but she doesn't
Speaker 1: use them herself. He even talks about one specific example
Speaker 1: of like a boy teasing a girl and he didn't
Speaker 1: realize what was happening because he he just observed the
Speaker 1: boy whistling. He didn't realize it was speech, and suddenly
Speaker 1: the girl lashed out and hit the boy with the
Speaker 1: broom because of what he'd been saying to her, except
Speaker 1: he hadn't been using the spoken language. Interesting, Okay, so
Speaker 1: the former we have perhaps a physical reason for the limit,
Speaker 1: but possibly cultural, and then the second one seems to
Speaker 1: be definitely cultural. Yeah, I don't know if there's a
Speaker 1: if there's like a biological limitation on on older men
Speaker 1: whistling either, I mean, it seems like this is probably
Speaker 1: all cultural convention. Yeah. I think with older men, based
Speaker 1: on what I've been reading, it would be it would
Speaker 1: be kind of a case to case situation. You certainly
Speaker 1: have older gentlemen who are profound whistlers, but there are
Speaker 1: there's certainly cases even in younger people where if there
Speaker 1: changes to one's mouth uh, due to injury, due to
Speaker 1: just changes in dental health, then that could impact one's
Speaker 1: ability to whistle. Well. So a big question here would
Speaker 1: be why. I mean, this is an interesting and beautiful
Speaker 1: thing about this language that it has the you know,
Speaker 1: the spoken language and then it's whistled twin. But like,
Speaker 1: what would cause a whistled version of a language to
Speaker 1: develop like this? And I think one good way to
Speaker 1: get some insight into that is to look at what
Speaker 1: are the common occasions for people to use the whistled
Speaker 1: version of their language instead of the spoken version. And
Speaker 1: one of the big answers here is pretty clear. The
Speaker 1: author here says that the most frequent use of the
Speaker 1: whistle speech was observed when the speakers were at a
Speaker 1: distance from each other, he writes quote. Men scattered widely
Speaker 1: over a mountain side, each working in his own plot
Speaker 1: of ground, will often talk to one another with whistles.
Speaker 1: Travelers on the trails will keep in touch with one
Speaker 1: another by whistling, though separated by considerable distance. When wishing
Speaker 1: to call or get the attention of someone, even though
Speaker 1: he be within easy speaking distance, the masa tecos will
Speaker 1: often whistle his name. The village shoemaker often calls passers
Speaker 1: by into his shop with a whistle to chat with
Speaker 1: him while he works. A man may come to a
Speaker 1: friend's hut on a visit. While approaching, or when he
Speaker 1: has actually arrived at the door of the hut, he
Speaker 1: will frequently whistle rather than call his friend's name. If
Speaker 1: the friend is home, he may respond from within with
Speaker 1: a whistle, then come out to greet his visitor, or
Speaker 1: he may remain inside and whistle to his visitor to
Speaker 1: come in. Fascinating Okay, so communicating at a distance seems
Speaker 1: to be a big one, or also initiating communication at
Speaker 1: the start of an encounter, which I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that even when we're not at a distance, we often
Speaker 1: use language that we employ at a distance. Like to
Speaker 1: get somebody in a spoken language. To get somebody's attention
Speaker 1: from far away, what do you do? You yell hey
Speaker 1: at them? But also what do you do when you
Speaker 1: walk up and and see somebody you know, your two
Speaker 1: feet away from them? You say, oh hey? And there
Speaker 1: might be some sort of a wave or something in
Speaker 1: there as well, And I could I can imagine, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it so sure, I can imagine where
Speaker 1: if whistling could maybe take the place of some of
Speaker 1: the otherwise necessary waving or gesticulating that would be required
Speaker 1: to get somebody's attention and say, hey here, I am,
Speaker 1: there you are, let's converse right, So okay, So you've
Speaker 1: got communicating at a distance, you've got initiating communication at
Speaker 1: the start of a of a meeting, and then along
Speaker 1: the same lines. Uh. He writes here that the whistle
Speaker 1: is sometimes used as a warning, such as when someone
Speaker 1: unknown is seen approaching on the trail, you kind of
Speaker 1: whistle to let all of your friends nearby know that
Speaker 1: something's up, you know, to get their attention. Though again
Speaker 1: he says the most common occasion is talking at a distance,
Speaker 1: and he writes that in these cases, men working in
Speaker 1: the field seem to be able to communicate easily with
Speaker 1: people a full quarter of a mile away, like on
Speaker 1: the opposite mountain side using the whistle speech. But also
Speaker 1: and I found I found this next part really interesting.
Speaker 1: Count says that sometimes, especially boys will hold a whistle
Speaker 1: conversation if they're trying to talk while older people are
Speaker 1: also nearby carrying on a spoken conversation or even singing together.
Speaker 1: And he calls these sort of simultaneous whistled conversations subdued
Speaker 1: whistles and says that they're that they're quite audible, and
Speaker 1: yet they are able to happen simultaneous lee without seeming
Speaker 1: too much interfere with the spoken conversation of the adults.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that one seems really interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, it reminds me of of being a kid
Speaker 1: and wanting to talk to other kids while they're I
Speaker 1: don't know, while you're in class or something, when you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to be doing that. Uh, And and there
Speaker 1: there's just an obvious sort of clash between two sets
Speaker 1: of spoken words going on at the same time. And
Speaker 1: this gets the ire of the adults, not only because
Speaker 1: you're not paying attention, but because you're distracting others. Yet
Speaker 1: somehow I could imagine that. Yeah, maybe having like a
Speaker 1: different form of the language. If you're speaking your language
Speaker 1: based on whistles instead of with the normal of phonetic syllables,
Speaker 1: that could allow a kind of simultaneity without so much conflict. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a way to speak while the adults are speaking without
Speaker 1: interfering with what they're doing. Now, the example of of
Speaker 1: using the whistles to communicate saying, in the case of
Speaker 1: a path, uh, you're in the woods, someone's coming. That
Speaker 1: reminds me that I And I'm making an assumption here,
Speaker 1: But if one were to say, hey, Carl, there's somebody
Speaker 1: coming and call out, well, not only are communicating to Carl,
Speaker 1: but you're communing communicating something about yourself. I wonder if
Speaker 1: whistling language in specific scenarios like this allow you to
Speaker 1: communicate without tipping your hand at all regarding like who
Speaker 1: you are, like what your age is, what your gender is,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Oh huh, that I didn't think about that.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Um. Well, another thing I would say along
Speaker 1: those same lines is, again I haven't done experiments to
Speaker 1: confirm this, but I would just say, as a baseline,
Speaker 1: I might assume that whistling can more easily blend in
Speaker 1: with nature than than spoken language. That like you hear
Speaker 1: spoken language, you instantly know a person is nearby you
Speaker 1: hear a little whistle. I don't know that could be
Speaker 1: a bird or something like that if you're not tuned
Speaker 1: into it as a linguistic signal. And I think that's
Speaker 1: where and that's certainly where my assumption come comes into play,
Speaker 1: is that I'm not sure what it would be like
Speaker 1: for someone who who has lived in the world of
Speaker 1: this kind of whistling. If you're used to it, then
Speaker 1: maybe you just you have heightened susceptibility to recognizing it
Speaker 1: and and telling the difference between it in the natural world.
Speaker 1: And likewise, perhaps if you're used to it, you can
Speaker 1: definitely tell the difference between a man's whistling a boy's
Speaker 1: whistle than well. So to round out the things that
Speaker 1: the Cowen talks about in this article, he says, um uh,
Speaker 1: that there are no lexical limitations on the whistle speech.
Speaker 1: Sort of already got to this, but basically anything you
Speaker 1: can express in spoken language you can express in the whistles.
Speaker 1: Um However, there are some ambiguities caused by the whistle speech,
Speaker 1: and this is because of the basic phonetic features of it.
Speaker 1: So the massive Taken languages are tonal languages. This would
Speaker 1: mean they're similar to like Mandarin, where you can have
Speaker 1: a syllable and you can have maybe four different versions
Speaker 1: of that syllable, and in English they would all be
Speaker 1: the same syllable to us, Like maybe the classic example
Speaker 1: in Mandarin is four different ways of saying ma, but
Speaker 1: pronounced in each case with a different tone, So you
Speaker 1: would you know, and if you're trying to write them
Speaker 1: out phonetically in English, they would all be m A.
Speaker 1: But one might be a kind of gliding up tone
Speaker 1: and one is a falling tone and so forth. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: them as a taken languages are like this too. They
Speaker 1: have tones in the speech, and the tones are what
Speaker 1: eventually becomes the whistle speech. The whistle speech is based
Speaker 1: on the tonal features of the spoken language. But if
Speaker 1: you have, say, two different phrases that in the spoken
Speaker 1: language have the exact same sequences of tones, these can
Speaker 1: of course cause ambiguity in the whistle speech, and that
Speaker 1: has to be resolved. You might have to say, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? Uh. Colin writes that one of the
Speaker 1: most common sources of ambiguity and whistled speech is just
Speaker 1: proper names, because there are a lot of proper names
Speaker 1: that have the same sequence of tones. But despite this
Speaker 1: limitation that you know, you you don't have spoken syllables,
Speaker 1: you're just turning the language entirely into sequences of tones. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can communicate a lot, and most of the time
Speaker 1: people understand each other just fine. Another thing I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting is that he says there don't appear to
Speaker 1: be any limitations on whistled speech mingling with spoken language.
Speaker 1: Like it's not like you go into one mode and
Speaker 1: then you're supposed to stay there and back and forth,
Speaker 1: and like he says that a conversation might start at
Speaker 1: a distance as whistles as whistles, and then switch to
Speaker 1: normal speech when the parties get closer to each other,
Speaker 1: or you might just go back and forth. You might
Speaker 1: be speaking and then suddenly whistling, and then and so forth. Interesting. This, um, this,
Speaker 1: this is not not a perfect comparison, but I and
Speaker 1: I can't help but think of the astro mac droids
Speaker 1: and star Wars. You know, how they speak with the
Speaker 1: kind of whistling UM language uh and and generally when
Speaker 1: they're talking to somebody like Luke Skywalker or whoever, Luke
Speaker 1: understands the astro Mec language and then speaks back in
Speaker 1: English and UH or whatever we're calling English UM in
Speaker 1: the Star Wars universe. And at times when I'm watching this,
Speaker 1: I'm always I'll stop and I'll think. And of course
Speaker 1: i'm you know, caught up in the flow of it,
Speaker 1: so it ultimately doesn't matter. But if I'm over analyzing it,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm thinking about the fact that they're they're speaking
Speaker 1: in two different languages to each other and there doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be any problem. But an example like this
Speaker 1: from the real world makes me think, well, no, this
Speaker 1: is entirely believable. You have both parties know the language,
Speaker 1: but the astro Mec of course can only speak one
Speaker 1: of those languages, and Luke Skywalker can also only speak
Speaker 1: one of those languages, but both can understand. Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I have often thought about that too, about the how
Speaker 1: exactly the R two D two communication goes on um
Speaker 1: a boat. But I just wanted to say also that
Speaker 1: like um, this isn't something of the past that the
Speaker 1: Massa teco whistle speech is still in use today, certainly
Speaker 1: by people in Wahaka and maybe elsewhere as well. If
Speaker 1: you want to hear what it sounds like, I would
Speaker 1: highly recommend looking up videos. There are videos you can
Speaker 1: find online of native speakers demonstrating the Messa teco whistle
Speaker 1: speech and it's it's it's totally worth looking up. Absolutely yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's. It's quite beautiful. But as I alluded to earlier,
Speaker 1: this is not the only case in the world. This
Speaker 1: is just one example I picked. There are other examples
Speaker 1: and I might get into them in in part two
Speaker 1: of this series of whistled languages popping up, especially it
Speaker 1: seems in in mountainous and forested regions around the world.
Speaker 1: And there's a paper I want to talk about in
Speaker 1: the next part of the series about what are some
Speaker 1: of the common features that may cause whistled versions of
Speaker 1: languages to arise. It's very interesting to think about, like
Speaker 1: what are the pressures and environmental characteristics that tend to
Speaker 1: give rise to certain characteristics of language. Absolutely now in
Speaker 1: discussing whistling here uh. When we first started looking into
Speaker 1: this topic, I was thinking, well, what is whistling and
Speaker 1: I at first I was thinking, well, this has to
Speaker 1: be one of those questions that shouldn't be too complicated, right,
Speaker 1: in part because for many of us, a whistle is
Speaker 1: literally as close as our own breath. We can produce
Speaker 1: a whistle without giving it too much thought, and we
Speaker 1: can generally pick out the sound of whistling rather easily.
Speaker 1: Maybe not, you know, as as quickly as we were
Speaker 1: discussing in our previous example compared to other things. But
Speaker 1: here it for a second, and you'll say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody's whistling, and then maybe you can pick out the tune.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we know it when we hear it, and
Speaker 1: we know it when we produce it. So I honestly
Speaker 1: expected to kind of springboard past the basic what is
Speaker 1: a whistle question here and so get more into some
Speaker 1: of the meteor stuff. But then I read this definition
Speaker 1: of whistling from the paper The Physiology of Oral Whistling
Speaker 1: by A. Zola at All, published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Applied Physiology. Quote. Experimental models support the hypothesis that the
Speaker 1: sound in human whistling is generated by a helm Holtz resonator,
Speaker 1: suggesting that the oral cavity acts as a resonant chamber
Speaker 1: bounded by two orifices, posteriorly by raising the tongue to
Speaker 1: the hard palate and anteriorly by pursed lips. So I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but when I heard that that
Speaker 1: instantly it made me realize, Okay, it's a little more
Speaker 1: complicated than I had perhaps realized at first. And uh,
Speaker 1: I I don't think I had actually heard of a
Speaker 1: helm Holtz resonator before, and when I heard that, I
Speaker 1: instantly thought of like the Holtzman effect in Dune. But
Speaker 1: this has nothing to do with personal shields and suspensers. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting too, that it's like not a
Speaker 1: fully settled question how exactly the physics of of whistling work.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's clear and you can sort
Speaker 1: of test this in your own body. Uh. That part
Speaker 1: of what's happening with whistling is you are relocating the
Speaker 1: primary resonating chamber that's producing the vibrations the sound when
Speaker 1: you whistle, as opposed to when you produce regular speech.
Speaker 1: Because if you just feel it in your body while
Speaker 1: you're talking, you can kind of feel least I can
Speaker 1: that the vibrations sort of seemed to be coming from
Speaker 1: the throat. It's also sort of happening in the mouth
Speaker 1: a little bit um. But then when you whistle, at
Speaker 1: least what I feel is I feel the vibration beginning
Speaker 1: in my mouth. Yeah. I would certainly advise everyone as
Speaker 1: you're whistling, and you may be whistling right now, to
Speaker 1: sort of test this out, like, really focus in on
Speaker 1: how it feels, Focus on how you feel the air
Speaker 1: flowing through your mouth. You'll find these lateral air passages
Speaker 1: between cheek and molars. Uh. And it's it's really quite
Speaker 1: quite fascinating because again, it's easy to just take this
Speaker 1: for granted, it's not something for most of us. Is
Speaker 1: certainly after after a point, you don't really have to
Speaker 1: think about it. You don't have to have to look
Speaker 1: up and read instructions for how to do it. You
Speaker 1: just your mouth assumes the form necessary to create the whistle,
Speaker 1: and you whistle as a total sidetrack. I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: I I found the title of that paper, The Physiology
Speaker 1: of Oral Whistling, very funny because it immediately made me think,
Speaker 1: are there other types of whistle? Is there ocular whistling? Well? There,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess there may be some sort of
Speaker 1: nasal variety. I mean, I'm instantly reminded of the various
Speaker 1: nasal flutes that exist in different cultures. So, uh, the
Speaker 1: airflow from the mouth is not the only way that
Speaker 1: we have to produce a sound. So um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: when you say whistling, you tend to think oral whistling. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to come back to the Helmholtz resonator here.
Speaker 1: So this is named for important German physicist and physician
Speaker 1: Herman von Helmholtz, who lived eighteen twenty one through If
Speaker 1: you if you're studying anything about sound and sound generation,
Speaker 1: you'll generally find out find something about von Helmholtz. For instance,
Speaker 1: after we had started this particular topic, I was in Asheville,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and I went to the mog Museum there,
Speaker 1: the synthesizer Museum, and Helmholtz his name comes up in
Speaker 1: some of the materials there because it's just it's hard
Speaker 1: to avoid him when you get into the science of sound.
Speaker 1: So the helm Holtz resonator is a kind of spherical
Speaker 1: chamber with an aperture at the top or at one
Speaker 1: end called the nipple, and tapering there for insertion into
Speaker 1: the ear, and then has another larger aperture on the
Speaker 1: other end of this sphere. So each Helmholtz resonator has
Speaker 1: a known fixed volume size and therefore is made to
Speaker 1: pick up on a particular tone there there there's no
Speaker 1: mechanical parts in this. It's essentially it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a very finely engineered seashell. Pick one up. You place
Speaker 1: the nipple in your ear, and you can pick out
Speaker 1: a particular frequency, and you generally will have a selection
Speaker 1: of these to analyze complex sounds. Joe, for your benefit,
Speaker 1: I included a photo here of various helm Holtz resonators,
Speaker 1: and if you do a Google search out there of
Speaker 1: helm Halt resonators, you'll see selections like this. They're often
Speaker 1: made out of some sort of metal. You know. I
Speaker 1: think of myself as an adventurous secret of of experiences.
Speaker 1: But somehow I don't want to put the big ones
Speaker 1: of these in my ear. That just I would fear
Speaker 1: I would fear oral injury. Well, the nipples the same
Speaker 1: size on all of them. Okay, nipple that is inserted
Speaker 1: into your ear. I guess I'm just I guess what
Speaker 1: I mean is I'm afraid it looks like it would
Speaker 1: suddenly produce an incredibly loud sound. But I guess the
Speaker 1: size of the resonator cavity is not actually about the volume,
Speaker 1: but about the pitch. So these resonators, they have various
Speaker 1: applications in engineering, architecture, and music. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to studying and describing the mechanisms of human whistling, something
Speaker 1: that the aforementioned authors say isn't done enough, and again
Speaker 1: it is not made fully understood. The Helmholtz resonator is
Speaker 1: apparently a good model of what seems to be going
Speaker 1: on inside of our head, inside of our you know,
Speaker 1: our head and face when we whistle. And Joe I
Speaker 1: included an illustration from that paper that I thought was
Speaker 1: was very useful. This kind of takes uh the airflow,
Speaker 1: those lateral air passages were described, describing the as well
Speaker 1: as the central resonance chamber, and illustrates those inside of
Speaker 1: this This drawing of of of of a human female
Speaker 1: who is supposedly whistling, and it makes whistling look like
Speaker 1: some sort of strange organ inside the mouth. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like, well, you've got your regular liver down below,
Speaker 1: and then you've got your whistling liver, and that's up
Speaker 1: somewhere underneath the nose. Right now, going back to that
Speaker 1: paper by A. Zola at All, I want to read
Speaker 1: this quick quote that sums a lot of this up quote.
Speaker 1: The results of this study indicate that the acoustic mechanism
Speaker 1: in human pursed lip whistling follows a Helmholtz resonator model.
Speaker 1: The oral cavity acts as the resonant chamber, and the
Speaker 1: anterior posterior movements of the tongue play a major role
Speaker 1: in changing the volume and thus the whistle frequency produced
Speaker 1: for their studies, performed with high resolution measurements may help
Speaker 1: elucidate the contribution of changes to other parameters of the
Speaker 1: Helmholtz equation. Okay, so this is sort of in line
Speaker 1: with what I was at least guessing based on the
Speaker 1: feelings inside my head. When I whistle, it feels like
Speaker 1: the vibrations are coming from the mouth when I whistle.
Speaker 1: And here they're saying that, yes, when you whistle, the
Speaker 1: oral cavity is what's acting as the resonant chamber. It's
Speaker 1: sort of acting as a Helmholtz resonator, right, And it
Speaker 1: is stressing though that, Yeah, there's a lot going on here.
Speaker 1: And even though it may feel pretty natural for most
Speaker 1: of us to whistle, we don't have to again put
Speaker 1: a lot of thought into it. Uh though though if
Speaker 1: you may be overthinking it now and finding yourself having
Speaker 1: to to think more about doing it, but uh, you
Speaker 1: still have to have the proper preusit prerequisites in place. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some people lack the ability to whistle for a few
Speaker 1: different reasons. It's also something that does have to be
Speaker 1: initially learned and can get really good with practice. So uh,
Speaker 1: it's like it's one of those scenarios like when you
Speaker 1: hear somebody do it really well. Uh, it has an
Speaker 1: almost otherworldly beauty to it. Uh. Some of those uh
Speaker 1: examples earlier in the whistling speech definitely have this quality
Speaker 1: to them. But also I think of whistling used in
Speaker 1: music sometimes I think of the whistling of say, Leon
Speaker 1: Redbone whistle during some of his performance so amazing whistler.
Speaker 1: My whistle is nothing like that, um And and a
Speaker 1: large part of that just may simply be practiced. I
Speaker 1: I have not applied the hours of whistling that Leon
Speaker 1: Redbone applied during his lifetime to achieve that that level
Speaker 1: of art. Thank so off, Mike, we were talking about
Speaker 1: our favorite examples of music that features whistling. One example
Speaker 1: that immediately comes to my mind is there's a there's
Speaker 1: a great Bolivian folk song called Orando ce Foe and
Speaker 1: the band, the experimental rock band Sun City Girls do
Speaker 1: a cover of that song. I think their cover is
Speaker 1: called the Shining Path, and there's a part usually before
Speaker 1: the lyrics come in that I think on earlier recordings
Speaker 1: of this song is done on a flute, but they
Speaker 1: whistle this part, and the whistling is just intense. It
Speaker 1: sounds very much the comparison a lot of people seem
Speaker 1: to make. I think Seth said the same thing when
Speaker 1: we played it for him earlier, is that it feels
Speaker 1: like Ennio Morricone feels like a kind of a very dramatic,
Speaker 1: dangerous Western scene. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's something about the
Speaker 1: the West cinematically that that makes me think of whistling,
Speaker 1: And a big part of it is, you know, probably
Speaker 1: uh Morricone scores, but also the score by Carter Burwell
Speaker 1: for um A Raising Arizona, the Colin Brothers film, So good,
Speaker 1: fabulous score that includes a lot of like yodeling and banjo,
Speaker 1: but also whistling, really powerful, like pure whistling that sounds
Speaker 1: like it's from just it's from straight from heaven. But
Speaker 1: the other one Seth reminded, uh, reminded me of was
Speaker 1: the Peter Bjorn and John song that was popular. I
Speaker 1: think that was like really big my last year in college.
Speaker 1: It was like two thousand eight or so. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great example. Another one that I think Seth
Speaker 1: and I both thought of at the same time was
Speaker 1: Otis Redding sitting on the dock of the bay. That
Speaker 1: is a wonderful whistling part in it. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I was trying to think, based on all these examples
Speaker 1: we just brought up, whether there are sort of common
Speaker 1: connotations to whistling in music. But I guess not really
Speaker 1: because in some of these examples we've talked about, the
Speaker 1: whistling feels very very happy and languid. It's a relaxed
Speaker 1: kind of sound. I think of sitting on the dock
Speaker 1: of the bay, whereas in uh, in the first example
Speaker 1: I mentioned, it's it's a fiery, intense, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: danger rising from from the canyon kind of sound. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glancing at a list right now, and oh this
Speaker 1: is a big one. Winds of Change by the Scorpions.
Speaker 1: That's some that's some powerful whistling in there. Feel it,
Speaker 1: Feel it in your bones. Golden Years by David Bowie.
Speaker 1: That's another good one. Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel.
Speaker 1: Oh I know that one. Yeah, Yeah, that's a great one.
Speaker 1: War Without Tears. Yeah. Yeah. They're a bunch of them.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to go through this whole list,
Speaker 1: but I'd love to hear from folks out there if
Speaker 1: you have particularly favored examples of songs with whistling in them,
Speaker 1: or or favorite whistling performers. Oh like, here's another great one.
Speaker 1: Always Look on the bright Side of Life from Monty
Speaker 1: Python's The Life of Brian. Great stuff. There's walk Like
Speaker 1: in Egyptian by the Bengals. I did not remember the
Speaker 1: whistling in that. Yeah, don't worry, be happy. Bobby McFerrin. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I remember the I remember this song,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember whistling Me and Julio down by
Speaker 1: the schoolyard Paul Simon. Oh yeah, uh uh, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: do that too much. Love is a Battlefield Pat Benatar,
Speaker 1: great song. Uh, I don't remember the whistling, you know,
Speaker 1: coming back to the idea of whistled language is part
Speaker 1: of me, thinks, Oh, man, I it would be difficult
Speaker 1: for me living in a culture like that because I
Speaker 1: feel like I don't whistle very well. But then again,
Speaker 1: I guess it's a it's a skill that you develop
Speaker 1: with practice, like other language skills, and that unless you
Speaker 1: have some kind of like anatomical reason that's interfering with
Speaker 1: your ability to whistle. And imagine it's largely a function
Speaker 1: of how much you do it, how much you you
Speaker 1: practice it, and how much you learned at an early age.
Speaker 1: But but yes, I am one of those who I
Speaker 1: don't whistle great. Uh Yeah, my whistling is it's okay
Speaker 1: for my own purposes, but it is not a performance
Speaker 1: level whistle. So I will catch myself occasionally whistling a
Speaker 1: particular tune. But I'm also just as just as inclined
Speaker 1: to maybe sing a little bit from a particular song,
Speaker 1: or to hum a little bit, uh did to use
Speaker 1: those more or less in tandem. But pure whistling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never really applied myself to it, uh, because because
Speaker 1: I felt like my whistling, yeah, it's good enough for me,
Speaker 1: not so much for anybody else I'm around. I did
Speaker 1: get into a habit a while back of when I
Speaker 1: would be singing a song and I would start getting
Speaker 1: up to the high notes that I couldn't sing, I
Speaker 1: would just switch to whistling them. Yeah, as we were
Speaker 1: researching this, I was, of course, like a lot of
Speaker 1: you out there listening to the episode, I was a
Speaker 1: little I was hyper conscious of my own whistling, so
Speaker 1: I was I was trying it out, and I and
Speaker 1: I decided, well, what if I tried to whistle better,
Speaker 1: or you know, what have I? What have I sort
Speaker 1: of really concentrate on it and try and see what
Speaker 1: happens when I change the shape of my mouth a
Speaker 1: little bit. And I was feeling that. I found that
Speaker 1: I was able to make a stronger whistle, but it
Speaker 1: was also I felt it straining, uh, like muscles in
Speaker 1: my face and in my head that I maybe don't
Speaker 1: strain that much when I do my default whistle. And
Speaker 1: then I was able to go back to my default
Speaker 1: whistle and it felt more natural. So I kind of
Speaker 1: took that as an indicators like, Okay, this is this
Speaker 1: is kind of a gateway to better whistling. If I
Speaker 1: wanted to actually pursue this probably, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do that. Oh well, uh, this makes me think
Speaker 1: of how Actually, to some degree, the same thing is
Speaker 1: true about spoken language. Like I find at least if
Speaker 1: I think too hard about what my body is doing
Speaker 1: while I'm producing words with my mouth, suddenly they become
Speaker 1: a lot harder to produce. Like if I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: my lungs and my larynx and my mouth. Uh, the
Speaker 1: syllables become kind of strange. You get that. Actually, I
Speaker 1: would say it's a feeling kind of similar to semantic satiation,
Speaker 1: where when you say a word too many times in
Speaker 1: a row, you start like the words starts to feel
Speaker 1: strange and it loses its association with the with the
Speaker 1: with the meaning that it signifies. Uh. In a way,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like if you're riding a bicycle and
Speaker 1: you suddenly start thinking really hard about how you were
Speaker 1: riding the bicycle, how this is being retained, and maybe
Speaker 1: don't do that, Maybe just just just ride the bicycle,
Speaker 1: think about something else, because everything is in motion, it's
Speaker 1: it's working. Just don't don't second guess it. But as
Speaker 1: we were saying, though, it's by second guessing it that
Speaker 1: we are able to potentially improve it as well. Um,
Speaker 1: we can certainly fall into a habit of whistling a
Speaker 1: certain way. Uh, and then there are conceivably ways to
Speaker 1: improve upon that whistle. But uh, you've got to want
Speaker 1: to do that or have some reason to do that.
Speaker 1: And certainly communication would be a big one. If you're
Speaker 1: engaging in some sort of whistling communication with people, then
Speaker 1: there's going to be sort of a whistling standard. I
Speaker 1: imagine you're gonna you're gonna hear other people use it,
Speaker 1: and there is going to be a positive social pressure
Speaker 1: to improving your whistle to match the whistles of those
Speaker 1: around your right. Well, maybe we need to call part
Speaker 1: one of Whistling series here, but we've got so much
Speaker 1: more interesting stuff to talk about in subsequent parts. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about religious uses of whistling. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about whistling superstition, whistling psychology, whistling technology. That
Speaker 1: there are a lot of monsters in this closet. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll join us for that when we come back, and
Speaker 1: certainly go ahead and send in your messages regarding your
Speaker 1: own experience with whistling. We would love to hear from
Speaker 1: you as a reminder. Stuff to Blow your minds Core
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Speaker 1: lot of cool discussions going on there and they're doing
Speaker 1: a book club there. I need to mention that again
Speaker 1: some of the listeners have decided to read um Burder
Speaker 1: Echo is the name of the Rose. So if you're
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