Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part four of our series about Whistling.
Speaker 1: This episode is going to be a little weird today
Speaker 1: because we literally already recorded this episode and then lost
Speaker 1: the whole thing to a technical glitch. Rob I'm to
Speaker 1: understand that as I was talking when we were recording
Speaker 1: this episode the first time, Uh, it was just constantly
Speaker 1: making the sounds of hell in your ears and can
Speaker 1: you describe the terror and the anguish um. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like your dialogue was an a fix twin
Speaker 1: remix the entire time, and so at first it was
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I can I can put up
Speaker 1: with this. Uh, this is fine. We've already gone so
Speaker 1: far into the episode we should just you know, finish
Speaker 1: it out. By the end of it. It was kind
Speaker 1: of headache inducing, but I was like, well, at least
Speaker 1: we got the episode. Uh, this is just audio distortion
Speaker 1: that I'm hearing. It's not going to transfer over to
Speaker 1: the recorded finished product. Sadly it did, and so here
Speaker 1: we are. It's the worst. Yeah. We were like, well,
Speaker 1: at least it won't be on the actual audio, and
Speaker 1: then it was and so here we are. Okay, so
Speaker 1: so this is this is take two. Yeah, it could
Speaker 1: could have been much worse, So no big deal. Hey,
Speaker 1: looking on the bright side, we got a rehearsal in there.
Speaker 1: How often do we have a rehearsal for a podcast episode?
Speaker 1: So I think it's gonna be stronger because of that,
Speaker 1: do you think? So? I was like, is it going
Speaker 1: to make the episode better or worse? I really don't know.
Speaker 1: Well we'll see, we'll see better better, Okay. Alright, so
Speaker 1: we're picking up in this series about whistling. Uh let's see,
Speaker 1: what do we talk about in the previous episodes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're picking up where we left off from the
Speaker 1: last Whistling episode, which was Whistling Part three, regarding superstitions
Speaker 1: and beliefs concerning whistle ing. We were talking about whistling
Speaker 1: as an ill omen at sea, as a potential mark
Speaker 1: of witchcraft, and women has bad theater luck in England
Speaker 1: and much more. Uh So we're going to continue this
Speaker 1: journey through folklore and mythology concerning whistling, and we're going
Speaker 1: to be referencing some of what we covered in another
Speaker 1: previous episode about Chinese transcendental whistling, in which a specialized
Speaker 1: Dallast form of whistling was almost like meditation, but was
Speaker 1: also said to give one both insight and perhaps even
Speaker 1: power over the energy of things in the world. So
Speaker 1: once more I'm going to be referencing that excellent Whistling
Speaker 1: and Antiquity paper by A. V. Van ste Kellenberg, but
Speaker 1: also some other sources. Now, according to Edie Edwards, in
Speaker 1: the two thousand nine paper The Principles of Whistling, a
Speaker 1: ten dynasty text called shall Chi says that whistling simply
Speaker 1: calls out to all spirits good or add and st.
Speaker 1: Kellenberg summarizes, this is kind of a supernatural neutrality concerning whistling.
Speaker 1: So whistling isn't something that is used by bad people
Speaker 1: or necessarily used by good people. It's just it's this
Speaker 1: thing that that signals out into the world around us,
Speaker 1: into the unknown, and you know, you could potentially attract
Speaker 1: the attention of things you don't want to attract the
Speaker 1: attention of, but it also could be resident basically harmless.
Speaker 1: It kind of depends on the circumstances. Yeah, the Rhapsody
Speaker 1: on Whistling, which was a text we cited in a
Speaker 1: previous episode. It talks about whistling having a kind of
Speaker 1: withdrawing or distancing power on the whistler. It says, you know,
Speaker 1: like the whistling gentleman sort of distances himself from the
Speaker 1: things of the world and lets out a long drawn whistle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's a thread we're gonna definitely come back to.
Speaker 1: But but first I wanted to add another note on
Speaker 1: whistling in Chinese history. So first of all, you know,
Speaker 1: anytime we're talking about Chinese history, uh, Chinese culture covers
Speaker 1: a great deal of territory, both in terms of distance
Speaker 1: and in terms of years. Uh. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say with any certainty, like this
Speaker 1: is the traditional Chinese view of it versus another thing.
Speaker 1: But mainly I don't want to imply here that that
Speaker 1: whistling was just something that Dallas sorcerers engaged in. I
Speaker 1: was looking at the paper by Julung Sue from two
Speaker 1: thousand six titled Whistling and It's Magico Religious Tradition A
Speaker 1: comparative perspective, and this points out that there are han
Speaker 1: dynasty accounts of women whistling for both sorrow. Uh, and
Speaker 1: this seems in some cases tap into this idea of
Speaker 1: sighing as well. Um, again, look at thinking back to
Speaker 1: previous episodes where we've discussed whistling and it's similarity to
Speaker 1: other nonlinqual linguistic sounds that we make, other breath based
Speaker 1: sounds that can be used to communicate something or to
Speaker 1: get somebody's attention. Yeah, and we were talking about cases
Speaker 1: where sometimes it's maybe difficult to uh precisely translate a
Speaker 1: word because a word could be interpreted as meaning like
Speaker 1: whistling or could mean hissing or some other kind of
Speaker 1: controlled expulsion of breath. There's sort of some blurry nous
Speaker 1: in the the breath based lexicon. Now, according to Sue here,
Speaker 1: it's not just for sorrow. There are also accounts of
Speaker 1: women whistling out of happiness or joy. It does seem
Speaker 1: like it is linked to traditions of whaling in some cases, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of whaling one might might might
Speaker 1: engage in, say at a grave, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But also not just women in this. In other sources
Speaker 1: as well, even the Yellow Emperor is said to whistle
Speaker 1: but the terminology here might actually mean hiss or it
Speaker 1: might mean a sigh. And in the Classic of Mountains
Speaker 1: and Seas, the queen mother uses a whistle as a
Speaker 1: kind of battle cry to just fly her for off city. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a wide spectrum of possible uses for
Speaker 1: the for the whistle, even within Chinese tradition here now,
Speaker 1: Sue also points out that while yes, in English customs
Speaker 1: and Western customs, there are a lot of these superstitions
Speaker 1: against women whistling, particularly uh and we don't really see
Speaker 1: this in Chinese traditions, though it is sometimes seen as
Speaker 1: ominous in general whistling due to the connection between whistling
Speaker 1: and various death rituals and you know, and attracting the spirits.
Speaker 1: But it is more inherently magical and not gendered. Sue
Speaker 1: also share some other examples from from Western traditions, you know,
Speaker 1: for a comparative experience here, but they point out here
Speaker 1: quote the Germans believe that a woman's whistling will make
Speaker 1: the angels weep and the devil's rejoice. This is this
Speaker 1: would be a fantastic basis for a German metal band,
Speaker 1: all female metal band that just employs whistling instead of singing.
Speaker 1: Now that's a that's a question to what a scent?
Speaker 1: Has whistling been used in metal? The metal scene has
Speaker 1: come to encompass a lot of different sounds and ideas,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if they've gotten around whistling, have they? Well,
Speaker 1: what's the metal version of the rule thirty four ideas?
Speaker 1: Kind of like, if you can imagine it, there is
Speaker 1: a metal a metal band of it, right, I guess
Speaker 1: it depends on what you classify as metal too, Like
Speaker 1: are the Scorpions metal? I don't know, probably not, probably not. Now.
Speaker 1: Sue also shares that, among various Chinese minorities, whistling while
Speaker 1: you work, as in you know, snow white and the
Speaker 1: song that the Dwarfs sing, whistling while you work, at
Speaker 1: least in the field was thought to to summon demons
Speaker 1: to damage crops, or it could summon demons to damage crops,
Speaker 1: so it was discouraged. This Sioux Stresses does not seem
Speaker 1: to be linked to, say Dallas ideas regarding whistling, but
Speaker 1: is instead rooted in particular folk traditions. Now here's another
Speaker 1: really interesting one that that Sue brings up. Sue shares
Speaker 1: an example from Mythrayism, So Mythrayism. For sci fi fans
Speaker 1: out there, some of you might be familiar with this
Speaker 1: religion because you may have watched the really excellently weird
Speaker 1: HBO Max sci fi series Raised by Wolves, in which
Speaker 1: one of the two factions that's going out into space
Speaker 1: and colonizing other worlds are are devoted, uh, myth Rayists,
Speaker 1: and you might you might well think, oh, this is
Speaker 1: some sort of cool religion they made up for the show,
Speaker 1: but it is not. It is this is a reference
Speaker 1: to the Roman mystery cult of Mithras and in their
Speaker 1: recorded rituals, and Joe, You're going to get into this
Speaker 1: a little bit and talk about what what we mean
Speaker 1: when we when we bring up the idea of recorded
Speaker 1: rituals of of Mythraism. But supposedly there is a system
Speaker 1: of whistling and tongue clicking that was used to attract
Speaker 1: what Sue refers to as theeo morphics star deities, theeomorphic
Speaker 1: meaning animal formed, so like beast beast forms of star gods. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I haven't seen the show Raised by Wolves, but
Speaker 1: I think I'm to understand you were saying that the
Speaker 1: title there is a reference to like the myth about
Speaker 1: the founding of Rome, the Romuliss and Rema story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's that seems to be the direct reference
Speaker 1: made there, and there are there's other references as well,
Speaker 1: and just a lot of just sheer weirdness on top
Speaker 1: of it. So if nothing else, it's a show that's
Speaker 1: going to give you lots of strange imagry. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like um Ridley Scott's continuation of the the Android
Speaker 1: centered alien sequels or prequels that he was working on
Speaker 1: m okay uh. So well, anyway, I love the idea
Speaker 1: that the show would incorporate actual things about Mythrayism because
Speaker 1: I've long thought we should do a series or at
Speaker 1: leased an episode on Mythraism, because I find it really
Speaker 1: interesting because it is a religion that clearly commanded an
Speaker 1: enormous following and had huge cultural significance in the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: Like you can find the ruins of their underground temples
Speaker 1: called mithri um uh and they're they're all throughout Roman settlements,
Speaker 1: and yet we know way less about this religion than
Speaker 1: one might assume. And one of the big reasons for
Speaker 1: that is that as far as I understood, and I
Speaker 1: guess the text that you just referred to, Uh, maybe
Speaker 1: a counter example to this, but modern scholars generally thought,
Speaker 1: we have basically no access to any primary literary sources
Speaker 1: about the religion. So if it had religious texts, we
Speaker 1: don't have any of them, and so what we know
Speaker 1: about it we've had to try to like piece together
Speaker 1: through detective work based on imagery and simple inscriptions and
Speaker 1: archaeological clues and comments and references made by external writers
Speaker 1: trying to say, hey, you know, this is what's going
Speaker 1: on with mythraism. So for a kind of hopefully interesting analogy,
Speaker 1: imagine trying to understand what chris Ganity was if it
Speaker 1: like mostly died out and disappeared in the fourth century
Speaker 1: or so, and we did not have any of the
Speaker 1: writings of the New Testament or any other writings by
Speaker 1: Church fathers or any other early Christians, and we were
Speaker 1: trying to reconstruct what Christianity was based entirely on like
Speaker 1: imagery and artifacts and what other external writers said about it.
Speaker 1: So it's a really fascinating problem. And one of the
Speaker 1: most common images in Roman Mythraism is apparently an important
Speaker 1: scene from their mythology of the god Mithrus slaughtering some
Speaker 1: kind of divine bull. But there's another interesting complication here too,
Speaker 1: which is that there is a pre Roman Persian cult
Speaker 1: of Mithrus or or Metra, which is a Zoroastrian or
Speaker 1: pre Zoroastrian god of the Persian people who's kind of
Speaker 1: a solar deity of justice, who I think was associated
Speaker 1: with contracts and the honoring of bargains. And then later
Speaker 1: you get this widespread Roman mystery cult that seems to
Speaker 1: be based on an appropriated version of that deity. And
Speaker 1: of course we know the Romans loved absorbing and reprocessing
Speaker 1: other cultures gods, you know, like the main Roman pantheon
Speaker 1: is mostly a photocopy of the Greek. And then you've
Speaker 1: got the Persian Mithras becoming the Roman savior god of
Speaker 1: some kind, and even the way you can think about
Speaker 1: a Jewish messianic figure in Jesus and the original context
Speaker 1: of monotheistic Judaism rather quickly becomes a popular savior god
Speaker 1: to people throughout the Empire who had been polytheists up
Speaker 1: until the moment they converted to Christianity. So that whole
Speaker 1: process is really interesting. But the idea of a text
Speaker 1: of Mythraism was very interesting to me because I didn't
Speaker 1: think we had one of these. But this is referring
Speaker 1: to something called the myth rest Liturgy, which I think
Speaker 1: is commonly dated to roughly the fourth century. But there's
Speaker 1: dispute about whether it actually reflects original Mithraic theology or
Speaker 1: whether it's some kind of later synthesis. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the quote from it that Sue shares in the paper. Quote.
Speaker 1: But after you have said the second prayer, where silence
Speaker 1: is twice commanded, then whistle twice and clicked twice with
Speaker 1: the tongue, and immediately you will see stars coming down
Speaker 1: from the disc of the sun, five pointed in large
Speaker 1: numbers and filling the whole air. But say once again, silence, silence,
Speaker 1: whistle twice, click twice, and then shut up. Here come
Speaker 1: the gods. Now coming back to we're talking earlier about
Speaker 1: like scholars in the woods in Chinese history, Um, there
Speaker 1: is this idea that comes up, Sue mentions, and we
Speaker 1: see this in like the Han dynasty, for example, where
Speaker 1: you would have Confucian scholars other reclusive scholars who would
Speaker 1: whistle as a means of expressing disdain for the world
Speaker 1: and or their absolute freedom. Uh so this is an
Speaker 1: interesting concept, and it was also done by other classes
Speaker 1: as well, uh, Sue writes. Quote in general, poets, hermits,
Speaker 1: and people of all types in the Six Dynasties utilized
Speaker 1: whistling to express a sense of untrammeled individual freedom, or
Speaker 1: an attitude of disobedience to authority or traditional ceremony, or
Speaker 1: to dispel suppressed feelings and indignation. Whistling was not limited
Speaker 1: to a certain class, but was practiced by men from
Speaker 1: all walks of life. I love this idea of whistling
Speaker 1: as a kind of like middle finger to social customs
Speaker 1: and authority. So it's like you might imagine, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the behavior of Diogenes the cynic or something, just completely
Speaker 1: behaving in inappropriate ways in public as a as an
Speaker 1: expression of contempt for norms and authority. Yeah, I whistle,
Speaker 1: I do what I want now. Another paper I looked
Speaker 1: to when I was looking around for various superstitions, We
Speaker 1: of course found superstitions regarding whistling at sea, but we
Speaker 1: also find them in another interesting place below the surface
Speaker 1: of the earth in mines. Oh yeah, and I hadn't
Speaker 1: really thought about this, but this is apparently a big one.
Speaker 1: Uh paper, I was looking at an older paper. This
Speaker 1: is California Miners Folklore. This is from a two edition
Speaker 1: of California Folklore Quarterly written by Wayland D. Hand And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a really interesting read. This one's out
Speaker 1: there on the internet if anyone wants a deeper dive
Speaker 1: into it. But uh, for example, he goes into the
Speaker 1: fear of the Tommy Knockers in the Tunnels. Now, Rob,
Speaker 1: I am only familiar with Tommy Knockers from the Stephen
Speaker 1: King novel or actually I never read the novel. I
Speaker 1: think I watched the made for TV movie adaptation of it,
Speaker 1: which is quite bad, and I think Stephen King himself
Speaker 1: regards that as a terrible book. But but I don't
Speaker 1: know what the original reference here is in the book.
Speaker 1: I think it's aliens. Yeah, I can never get very
Speaker 1: far with the book. But not aliens here, No, but
Speaker 1: it but it apparently refers to a fair variety of things,
Speaker 1: and they're very haunting and they kind of I feel
Speaker 1: like they also kind of connect to perhaps older European
Speaker 1: ideas of creatures that live in the earth, getting into
Speaker 1: you know, various ideas of dwarves and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Cobald. This is what Hand writes in the paper.
Speaker 1: These denizens of the deep dark chambers of the earth
Speaker 1: are conceived in different forms as disembodied spirits of dead
Speaker 1: miners hovering in a working as patrons, or as little
Speaker 1: men elf like be whiskered and wizzened. They are usually
Speaker 1: thought of as benign, occasionally even assisting in the location
Speaker 1: of ore bodies. If they are not so well disposed,
Speaker 1: their conduct tends to be mischievous rather than malignant. Many
Speaker 1: California miners, though not having themselves seen these creatures in person,
Speaker 1: recall having seen small effigies of them made of clay
Speaker 1: and set upon portal, sets to a tunnel or on
Speaker 1: the lagging or elsewhere where their patronage is desired. So
Speaker 1: I love that image of not only the idea that
Speaker 1: there are these beings living elsewhere in the tunnels, but
Speaker 1: there's this kind of uh we talked about a little,
Speaker 1: you know, we were talking about when when people set
Speaker 1: to see, when they return, when they're when seamen are
Speaker 1: are out there on the waters there the newer religions
Speaker 1: that they have taken to might be set aside for
Speaker 1: the older ways the older gods, and here we have
Speaker 1: this example of of California miners potentially having little altars
Speaker 1: to to kind of dwarven Elvin beings in the minds.
Speaker 1: That's too good. So Hand discusses some other ideas as well,
Speaker 1: you know, the go some dead miners working in the tunnels.
Speaker 1: Um also phantom white mules, headless mules, and strange lights.
Speaker 1: Apparently he said that there weren't really that many creature
Speaker 1: myths concerning the minds, though occasionally you would have like
Speaker 1: a cat come down into the minds and would just
Speaker 1: scare the b Jesus out of everybody, because it would
Speaker 1: either way, I'm imagining, you know, the cat would get
Speaker 1: down there, it would be lurking about, its eyes gleaming
Speaker 1: and the light and just give everyone the proper spooks.
Speaker 1: But there there were also these superstitions about about the
Speaker 1: bad luck concerning well, first of all bringing women anywhere
Speaker 1: near the cave, but also there was a widespread superstition
Speaker 1: against anyone whistling down there, and it seems to be
Speaker 1: sort of twofold. On one hand, there was a real
Speaker 1: fear of vibrations in the caves, and so the there's
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, shouldn't whistle because you don't
Speaker 1: know what that's gonna do. You're gonna set up vibrations
Speaker 1: that could potentially cause a cave in. But it also
Speaker 1: seems inked to this older wider idea that if you're whistling,
Speaker 1: you could draw in spirits and hand shares. A fun
Speaker 1: little rhyme here quote whistle by night you'll bring the sprite.
Speaker 1: Whistle by day you'll drive them away. And this is
Speaker 1: not a sprite you want to bring, right, right, or
Speaker 1: certainly you don't want them. You don't want anything going
Speaker 1: on down there in the mind. You don't want you
Speaker 1: don't want any spirits balking about. You don't want any
Speaker 1: vibrations going wild. You want everything to just be as
Speaker 1: safe and quiet as possible. Right, Okay, so this is
Speaker 1: this is not like a friendly tinker bell. This would
Speaker 1: be a sprite that's gonna maybe pollute your oar or
Speaker 1: make a rock fall in your head or something. Yeah. Yeah, though,
Speaker 1: I guess coming back to the idea of the Tommy
Speaker 1: Knockers that it kind of comes back to the sort
Speaker 1: of neutrality of spirits. Right. It's the idea that well,
Speaker 1: there there, there are or maybe spirits around. Um, they
Speaker 1: might do some bad things, they might do some good things.
Speaker 1: We probably shouldn't call them. We shouldn't call an extra spirits,
Speaker 1: and we should try and be on the on the
Speaker 1: good side of any spirits that are present. Now, I
Speaker 1: think all of the examples we've talked about so far
Speaker 1: are superstitions. Uh. The the way that whistling relates to
Speaker 1: monsters or spirits or dangerous entities is that it's something
Speaker 1: humans could do that might in some cases attract them.
Speaker 1: So you know, be careful about whistling because you might
Speaker 1: get a monster on your tail. But I was thinking about,
Speaker 1: are there are there stories of monsters that themselves whistle
Speaker 1: or are you or do something like whistling? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was curious about this. I first of all, I turned
Speaker 1: to Carol Rose, who has two Extraordinary volumes, one about
Speaker 1: monsters and giants and so forth, and the others more
Speaker 1: about fairies and sprites. And there's some overlap between the
Speaker 1: two books, but they are also things in each book
Speaker 1: that are not covered by the other, and so there
Speaker 1: were at least a couple of examples that stood out.
Speaker 1: One of them is an interesting monster of the people
Speaker 1: of the Zingu River in Brazil, and this creature was
Speaker 1: called minata karaia, and these are said to have been
Speaker 1: giants that were as tall as the trees, with fruit
Speaker 1: growing out of their armpits, which the giants then consumed
Speaker 1: to sustain themselves. So it sounds like they weren't themselves dangerous.
Speaker 1: They weren't like eating humans. But they're big, tall giants.
Speaker 1: So if they're coming your way, you want to know
Speaker 1: to get out of their out of their way. And
Speaker 1: the way you knew this is because the male giants
Speaker 1: had a hole in the top of their head and
Speaker 1: it emitted a high pitched whistle when they moved. This
Speaker 1: is a good monster. Okay, so we got armpit autophagi.
Speaker 1: They eat the fruit of their own armpits and their
Speaker 1: heads whistle. Yeah. Now another monster that Rose shares here
Speaker 1: is uh is a Russian creature that I think we
Speaker 1: might well describe as a sort of a harpy, or
Speaker 1: at least a harpy in them the way that modern
Speaker 1: people will think of the harpy a kind of bird
Speaker 1: human hybrid, though in this case I think they're They
Speaker 1: tend to be more male than female. And its name
Speaker 1: is Solve Rochtmas and in Russian folklore it's said to
Speaker 1: give a piercing whistle and this whistle will kill anyone
Speaker 1: who hears it, and then the monster will come and
Speaker 1: rob your corpse, rob your corps. So it's looking for money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not not here to eat you either. It's interested
Speaker 1: in one thing, and it's whatever money you got on
Speaker 1: you checking your armpits for fruit. Yeah. But here in
Speaker 1: it's kind of an interesting theme because the next monster
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention also is not going to kill you.
Speaker 1: This one just wants to scare you real bad. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is yokai. I was looking around in Yokai traditions
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking, well, that's just such a rich font
Speaker 1: of creatures and beings that it makes sense that there'd
Speaker 1: be something out there that whistled. And the one that
Speaker 1: I found some descriptions of it that I found translated
Speaker 1: to of course mentioned whistling is something it does. Others
Speaker 1: don't mention it, so um, I can't be one and
Speaker 1: to present certain if this is something that is actually
Speaker 1: part of it or in a lot of these yokaia too,
Speaker 1: they and when you get into modern ghost stories as well,
Speaker 1: like there's there's there, there's still kind of rich and alive,
Speaker 1: so something's could added, and also some things could added
Speaker 1: in translation. But this one is called um Oa guru batari,
Speaker 1: and its name apparently means nothing but blackened teeth, which
Speaker 1: already sounds pretty pretty amazing. So this is this is
Speaker 1: the way this yokai has encountered. She appears as a
Speaker 1: beautiful woman in a traditional wedding kimono, and I guess
Speaker 1: you might see her at a distance, and in some
Speaker 1: cases as you get as your your interest and you
Speaker 1: move closer, she may whistle to get the attention of
Speaker 1: single men. Other accounts say that she may speak in
Speaker 1: the voice of a loved one. Um others don't seem
Speaker 1: to mention any kind of real sound at all. But
Speaker 1: as you get closer, this is the main thing that happens. She,
Speaker 1: like a lot of these type creatures, will reveal her face.
Speaker 1: And when she reveals her face, you find not a
Speaker 1: not a beautiful humanoid face, but instead a face that
Speaker 1: is largely blank except for a great, big, gaping mouth
Speaker 1: that's filled with nothing but black into teeth. And then
Speaker 1: she cackles, and you just scream and run a runaway,
Speaker 1: terrified uh, and that's it. She's not interested in hurting you.
Speaker 1: She's just here to scare the Bejesus out of you.
Speaker 1: No eyes, no nos, just the teeth and but but yeah,
Speaker 1: so so she doesn't bite your head off. It's just
Speaker 1: to show you the teeth and and get you upset.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, just just just a ghost. Um. Now, I
Speaker 1: didn't look super close at various pop culture and modern
Speaker 1: whistling entities, but I thought I would mention briefly that
Speaker 1: there is something called the whistling Fiend in Dungeons and
Speaker 1: Dragons raven Loft setting that's supposed to be this like
Speaker 1: this horrible monster, like a fiend from the pits of Hell,
Speaker 1: but it will whistle beautifully as it's approaching, so before
Speaker 1: anything goes goes terribly wrong, you'll hear the whistling. And
Speaker 1: then if you happen to witness what it does when
Speaker 1: it gets there, well it's whistling the whole time as
Speaker 1: well as it's doing you know, horrible, gruesome things to people.
Speaker 1: Now I was I was interested to run across this.
Speaker 1: I don't really know much about old radio dramas, but
Speaker 1: there was also an old radio drama about crime and
Speaker 1: fate titled The Whistler, and apparently on this show, the
Speaker 1: titular whistler kind of emerges out of the night. It's
Speaker 1: very much a kind of uh, you know, crime noir
Speaker 1: kind of a figure. You hear him whistling a catchy tune,
Speaker 1: and then he serves as the narrator and kind of
Speaker 1: host of the program. And there were apparently eight different
Speaker 1: Whistler films during the nineteen forties, and the first of
Speaker 1: them was The Whistler, and it was directed by William Castle,
Speaker 1: William Castle of the Tingler fame. Yeah, so I have
Speaker 1: to assume whom he installed special seats in the movie
Speaker 1: theaters that what would the whistle into your bud or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it sounds like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: he would he would do, Yeah, I mean his he
Speaker 1: is perhaps best remembered for figuring out what kind of
Speaker 1: gimmick would get people into the theater. Maybe they just
Speaker 1: the gimmick here was just the existing I p. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I don't think you really hear about
Speaker 1: the Whistler much anymore. I think there was a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties TV series, and I don't know that anyone's really
Speaker 1: gone back to this, but I like this idea because
Speaker 1: it's essentially it's kind of like a crip keeper. You know,
Speaker 1: it's an anthology host um. And apparently the deal with
Speaker 1: the movies is you would have the same star actor
Speaker 1: in each of them, uh, not not the Whistler but
Speaker 1: somebody else, though each story is different and so he's
Speaker 1: playing a different character. So so it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the modern version would be. I don't know, Ryan Gosling
Speaker 1: is in every Whistler movie, but Ryan Gosling plays a
Speaker 1: different protagonist, uh, a different character that's that's all wound
Speaker 1: up in some sort of tale of crime and fate.
Speaker 1: We just got a producer, Chiman from Seth who, by
Speaker 1: the way, is actually a devoted listener to The Whistler.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you can be devoted
Speaker 1: to something that is not currently produced, but he's a fan.
Speaker 1: He says, it's great. You know this idea of that
Speaker 1: the stranger who whistles, and they're there. It's unknown exactly
Speaker 1: what their their knowledge is, what their powers. Maybe I
Speaker 1: guess you do see that in a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of cinema. It's often we've had some listeners right
Speaker 1: in and mentioned that Western's are a place where we
Speaker 1: see a lot of of such suspicious whistling. Um. It
Speaker 1: brings to mind a TV movie that I don't remember
Speaker 1: was especially good, but but it was creepy and it
Speaker 1: was called Into the bad Lands, and it starred Bruce
Speaker 1: dern as this creepy old bounty hunter in black. And
Speaker 1: if memory serves, uh, he does he does variously. He
Speaker 1: cooks some eggs, he shoots some um, some outlaws and
Speaker 1: dry him around kind of rotting behind his cart. Uh.
Speaker 1: He smiles a big creepy grin. But I think he
Speaker 1: also whistles in that one, And there's a particular ditty
Speaker 1: that's reoccurring. Uh, So there there is something to this
Speaker 1: the stranger who whistles. What is he whistling about? He's
Speaker 1: kind of ties into some of these other ideas, like
Speaker 1: like he's an outsider that is not tied to the
Speaker 1: same rules as everything else. He may have some sort
Speaker 1: of communication with knowledge beyond himself, with spirits, etcetera. Another producer,
Speaker 1: Chime ins Seth, had a great example of this, and
Speaker 1: it's Darryll Hannah and kill Bill who does a very
Speaker 1: creepy whistling while she's uh she is on the way
Speaker 1: to kill the protagonist. And that's a great example too,
Speaker 1: because this is this is a female character whistling. So
Speaker 1: many of these examples, even if we're touching on traditions
Speaker 1: where where where whistling is not gendered, it seems like
Speaker 1: a lot of them tend to involve male figures that
Speaker 1: are whistling. So so yeah, great example seth. Alright, So
Speaker 1: that's all I have for now anyway, concern whistling superstitions
Speaker 1: and whistling monsters. Certainly we don't love to hear from
Speaker 1: everyone out there who has additional things they would like
Speaker 1: to bring up, be it you know, folkloric creatures, strange traditions,
Speaker 1: and certainly any kind of you know, movie tie in
Speaker 1: characters who whistle. I'd love to hear about any of that.
Speaker 1: So yes, by all means right in So I guess
Speaker 1: the next thing we should look at is some of
Speaker 1: the psychology research on whistling, which I have to say,
Speaker 1: I was shocked how sparse this literature is. There is,
Speaker 1: from what I could tell, very little psychological research about
Speaker 1: when and why people whistle. One of the only major
Speaker 1: papers I could find on it wasn't really experimental in nature.
Speaker 1: It was very theoretical and uh and though it had
Speaker 1: a few interesting ideas in it that I do want
Speaker 1: to talk about. To the extent that it is theoretical,
Speaker 1: it seems kind of based in Freudianism, so it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a big caveat there. But before we get to that,
Speaker 1: I did want to talk about a medical ca east
Speaker 1: report I came across that had a title that really
Speaker 1: grabbed my attention. So this is a paper by Pollock
Speaker 1: at All published in BMC Psychiatry in two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: and it's called Compulsive Carnival Song Whistling following Cardiac arrest
Speaker 1: A case study Compulsive Carnival Song Whistling. Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: So is it the BA? Is that the music? You
Speaker 1: think that? That's what I was assuming. Unfortunately, the case
Speaker 1: report does not attach a recording or sheet music or anything, so,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't name the tunes, so I don't know
Speaker 1: what song it is. The most they say about it
Speaker 1: is that it is a carnival song. Alright, what are
Speaker 1: the options? Yeah, so you got that one is like
Speaker 1: the Binny Hill theme? Possible? I don't know, Yeah, I think, Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too far into this, because
Speaker 1: this is like, this is a realm I know virtually
Speaker 1: nothing about. But apparently there's a there's a fair amount
Speaker 1: of what we I think of his circus music that
Speaker 1: you know, we're talking about circus band stuff. We're talking
Speaker 1: about waltzes and fox trots. Uh So, there, there's there's
Speaker 1: probably a lot there. But the is the thing that
Speaker 1: that mostly comes to the surface for for folks like me. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in this case, report the medical history the patient.
Speaker 1: In this case it's anonymous of course, so we don't
Speaker 1: know their name. But it was a man who was
Speaker 1: found unconscious in his car in February at the age
Speaker 1: of forty eight, having suffered a heart attack. Um he
Speaker 1: was in cardiac arrest for some period of time, but
Speaker 1: he was reanimated successfully in the emergency room at a
Speaker 1: nearby hospital, so he survived the heart attack he had.
Speaker 1: His heart had stopped, there was reduced supply of oxygen
Speaker 1: to the brain, but they resuscitated him and he was
Speaker 1: all right. But during rehabilitation he presented with some symptoms,
Speaker 1: including neurological impairment and uh So, several of the things
Speaker 1: they report are disorientation, apathy. What they called brady phrenium,
Speaker 1: meaning slowness of thought, short term memory problems and things
Speaker 1: like that. And imaging particularly E. G. Showed decreased functioning
Speaker 1: in the brain, especially in the bezo temporal areas, and
Speaker 1: he continued to exhibit some neurological symptoms in the following years.
Speaker 1: And here's where we get to the music. I'll read
Speaker 1: straight from the case report quote. We were approached in
Speaker 1: May two eight by the patient's wife, who got to
Speaker 1: know our center of expertise through the internet. She was
Speaker 1: close to desperation from listening to the whistling of the
Speaker 1: same carnival song for nearly sixteen years. It would go
Speaker 1: on for five to eight hours every day and got
Speaker 1: worse when the patient was tired. So it's a mix
Speaker 1: like obviously it's uh, you know, I was snagged by
Speaker 1: the idea of of repetitive whistling of a carnival song,
Speaker 1: but when you actually hear the details, it is I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's a very unfortunate situation to imagine
Speaker 1: that like the whistling of the same song goes on
Speaker 1: four five to eight hours a day for sixteen years. Now.
Speaker 1: The authors here talk about treatments that were tried, including
Speaker 1: a drug called clamypramine, which is a tricyclic antidepressant that
Speaker 1: is sometimes used to treat obsessive compulsive disorder, which obviously
Speaker 1: share some features with what's being described here uh that
Speaker 1: among other conditions. But basically this drug regimen did manage
Speaker 1: to decrease the whistling by about half, but it also
Speaker 1: came with some very difficult side effects in in this
Speaker 1: man's case, and the repetitive whistling of a carnival song
Speaker 1: NonStop for five to eight hours a day could be
Speaker 1: considered an example of what psychiatrists would call compulsivity, which
Speaker 1: the authors describe as quote, the repetitive, irresistible urge to
Speaker 1: perform a behavior, the experience of loss of voluntary control
Speaker 1: over this intense urge, and the tendency to perform repetitive
Speaker 1: acts in a habitual or stereotyped manner. So they talk
Speaker 1: about how the man would whistle the song on a
Speaker 1: on a loop all day pretty much, and that at
Speaker 1: certain points they could make him stop doing it, though
Speaker 1: he reported after he stopped that he experienced anxiety um
Speaker 1: and in their discussion, the authors explain how the man
Speaker 1: in this report showed symptoms that could be consistent with
Speaker 1: three different interpretations of his condition. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: they talk about the idea of a frontal syndrome characterized
Speaker 1: by impulsivity and disinhibition. I think frontal syndrome there because
Speaker 1: it's the frontal lobe that is very important for inhibiting behavior.
Speaker 1: That's your sort of like self control mechanism um. And
Speaker 1: then second a compulsivity condition known as punding, which is
Speaker 1: characterized by quote, purposeless and repetitive behavior such as collecting
Speaker 1: or arranging things often related to the patient's personal hobbies
Speaker 1: or occupation, and attributed to alterations of the brain's reward
Speaker 1: and motor systems in both the ventral and dorsal stree atom.
Speaker 1: And then the final interpretation would be a sort of
Speaker 1: acquired form of obsessive compulsive disorder or o c D UH,
Speaker 1: And there are other examples of people acquiring o c
Speaker 1: D after a brain injury later in life. The o
Speaker 1: c D is usually acquired gradually earlier on in life.
Speaker 1: And they say all of these explanations matched the observations
Speaker 1: in some ways but not in others. But one thing
Speaker 1: they got into that I thought was interesting here was
Speaker 1: talking about the different characteristics of impulsivity versus compulsivity in
Speaker 1: the brain. So the rite quote, one may conclude that
Speaker 1: the whistling with its repetitions is primarily compulsive rather than
Speaker 1: impulsive or disinhibitive, as the patient had a constant urge
Speaker 1: to whistle and felt anxiety when asked to stop rather
Speaker 1: than acting without foresight. The fact that anxiety was felt
Speaker 1: is in line with compulsivity rather than impulsivity, assuming that
Speaker 1: compulsive behaviors are performed to prevent perceived negative consequences from happening.
Speaker 1: So this is a useful distinction for thinking about because
Speaker 1: when we you know, outside of the medical context, when
Speaker 1: we think about these words impulsive or compulsive, they both
Speaker 1: I think usually refer to situations where a person seems
Speaker 1: to lack executive control. They lack the ability to control
Speaker 1: their own behavior or prevent themselves from doing something, but
Speaker 1: in very different ways. So in impulsivity, you feel an
Speaker 1: urge to do something, but some process taking place in
Speaker 1: your frontal lobe tells you that's not appropriate and stops
Speaker 1: you from doing it. But the urge itself might be
Speaker 1: something normal that, like we would all think of doing
Speaker 1: for a second, it might cross our mind to do it,
Speaker 1: but then we would turn away from actually doing it
Speaker 1: because of some inhibition mechanism in the brain. Examples of
Speaker 1: this include all kinds of stuff, spitting on the floor,
Speaker 1: or making a rude or inappropriate comment and conversation, or
Speaker 1: jumping out of a moving car. They can they can
Speaker 1: vary wildly from you know, minor things to extreme things.
Speaker 1: They would all be things though, that even a person
Speaker 1: with typical neuro anatomy might think for a second about doing,
Speaker 1: but then they would be able to stop themselves. All right.
Speaker 1: I think we can all think of examples of this
Speaker 1: from our own life, where you have it's like it's
Speaker 1: you're just in a situation and you may think of
Speaker 1: like something just ridiculous or absurd or antisocial that you
Speaker 1: theoretically could do, and then you sort of but you
Speaker 1: recoil from it and you realize, oh, well, of course
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that. And it can be
Speaker 1: a little shocking to think that you even thought about
Speaker 1: doing that, Like why did I think that, hey, I
Speaker 1: could take my wallet out and throw it off of
Speaker 1: this building or off of this bridge that I'm on. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did a whole episode one time called the imp
Speaker 1: of the Perverse. That was about this idea that like
Speaker 1: that there is some kind of It was about the
Speaker 1: first half before the inhibition comes in. It's like, what
Speaker 1: is that? Or to do things that are obviously not
Speaker 1: in your best interests, but you suddenly just feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: I should do that. But then you're able to put
Speaker 1: the you know, put the lid on it and say no,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't do that. People with a frontal syndrome often
Speaker 1: have impulsivity problems because they whatever the normal disinhibition mechanism
Speaker 1: in the brain is that has been damaged in some
Speaker 1: way by their injury. So contrast that that impulsivity with compulsivity,
Speaker 1: where a person also lacks the ability to stop themselves
Speaker 1: from performing an action, but it's an action that they
Speaker 1: feel they must do repetitively in order to prevent some
Speaker 1: kind of bad consequence from happening. So remember it was
Speaker 1: said that the man here would whistle constantly, but he
Speaker 1: felt the immediate onset of anxiety if he stopped whistling
Speaker 1: the carnival song. So that makes it sound more like
Speaker 1: it's it's compulsivity here, that it's something that he felt
Speaker 1: he had to do repetitively or else negative consequences would emerge.
Speaker 1: And the case history here man is that the man
Speaker 1: once worked as head of a carnival association. And the
Speaker 1: authors don't say this, so we don't know this, but
Speaker 1: it seems like a reasonable guess that the carnival tune
Speaker 1: he was whistling was one he was familiar with from
Speaker 1: his own past working uh, working as the head of
Speaker 1: a carnival association, maybe even one he associated with a
Speaker 1: time when he was more in control. That's fascinating because
Speaker 1: it also this ties into sort of the power of music,
Speaker 1: right like we have we we all use music, I
Speaker 1: think at times to to augment our current mental state,
Speaker 1: to draw in uh mental feelings of of of power
Speaker 1: or assertiveness, but also uh sadness, whatever the case might be,
Speaker 1: whatever we feel like we need to connect with that
Speaker 1: is not our current state exactly. But it also ties
Speaker 1: into something that came up in previous episodes. So here
Speaker 1: again we have a case of a man who suffers
Speaker 1: neurological damage after a period where his brain isn't getting
Speaker 1: enough oxygen. Uh. He never had any symptoms of obsessive
Speaker 1: compulsive disorder or anything before this, but after this event
Speaker 1: he acquired this tendency to engage in compulsive whistling. And
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that the whistling, if it
Speaker 1: is best interpreted as a way of staving off anxiety,
Speaker 1: which the authors here suggested, is it made me think
Speaker 1: of our discussion about whistling past the graveyard or whistling
Speaker 1: in the dark, other cases where it's commonly observed that
Speaker 1: people whistle in order to push out of fear or
Speaker 1: or or thoughts of danger. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: more and more whistling past the grave yard for sure. Now, again,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, it seemed like the psychological research
Speaker 1: on whistling was far less developed than I would have expected.
Speaker 1: Maybe there are some great studies out there that I
Speaker 1: just wasn't able to find, So if you if you
Speaker 1: know of them, please send them into the show account
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. But
Speaker 1: the other major one I found, and this was cited
Speaker 1: in in some other papers, is a paper from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine published in the journal Language and Speech called
Speaker 1: Win People Whistle, And it's by the you see San
Speaker 1: Francisco professor of psychiatry Peter F. Austwald, As I said, earlier.
Speaker 1: I do want to mention this one because it has
Speaker 1: some interesting ideas in it, but also it is an
Speaker 1: older paper. It clearly is not constricted by empirical method.
Speaker 1: This is not like reporting on on original experiments. It's
Speaker 1: more kind of theorizing about what whistling might mean and
Speaker 1: why people whistle, based on models that seem at least
Speaker 1: influenced by Freudianism. A lot of it's about, you know,
Speaker 1: fixations that uh uh sort of emerge from childhood development.
Speaker 1: But anyway, okay, so who is this guy who wrote this? Austwald.
Speaker 1: He seems like a kind of interesting guy. So he
Speaker 1: lived from nineteen to nineteen six, and his life is
Speaker 1: sort of divided between an interest in psychiatry on on
Speaker 1: one hand, and music and music history on the other.
Speaker 1: So he wrote biographies of musicians and composers like Schumann
Speaker 1: and Glenn Gould. But also, to quote from his New
Speaker 1: York Times obituary quote, in nineteen eighty six, he founded
Speaker 1: the Health Program for Performing Artists, a voluntary group of
Speaker 1: specialists engaged in research, education, and clinical care of the
Speaker 1: particular mental and medical problems afflicting musicians, dancers, and other
Speaker 1: performing artists. Both professionals and students. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was very interesting because now that I think about it,
Speaker 1: it clearly makes sense that you could have a medical
Speaker 1: center focused on the mental and physical health needs of
Speaker 1: performing artists, in particular, because I'd imagine there would be
Speaker 1: patterns in their needs, but it never occurred to me
Speaker 1: that such a thing would exist. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: makes sense, right, because we have sports medicine. Athletes do
Speaker 1: extreme things with their bodies that put special types of
Speaker 1: wear and tear on them, and you could I think
Speaker 1: you can very fairly say the same thing for performers,
Speaker 1: especially when you're thinking about something like d ats or
Speaker 1: vocal performance. Totally, But okay, what what does Ostfauld say
Speaker 1: in this language psychology paper? Mainly, this article is focused
Speaker 1: on questions of why humans whistle, what purpose it serves,
Speaker 1: what whistling tends to mean, and how it differs from
Speaker 1: other forms of noise production. I'm not gonna get into
Speaker 1: everything he theorizes about in this paper, but I did
Speaker 1: want to focus on one part where he's sort of, uh,
Speaker 1: taking a look at the phenomenology of whistling. What does
Speaker 1: it feel like to whistle? Like? Is it pleasurable to people,
Speaker 1: and if it is, which it often seems to be,
Speaker 1: why is it pleasurable? So to check one of the
Speaker 1: very Freudian boxes, he he argues that, first of all,
Speaker 1: the act of whistling involves manipulation of the muscles in
Speaker 1: the face and the mouth in a way that may
Speaker 1: produce hedonic states and feelings of comfort and pleasure because
Speaker 1: of its similarity to the facial and mouth movements of
Speaker 1: what he calls oral gratification. And so he expands that
Speaker 1: to all kinds of things like eating and smoking, but
Speaker 1: he specifically ties it into the facial and mouth muscle
Speaker 1: movements of a feeding infant. So this is one of
Speaker 1: those things that, well, it's hard to disprove that, but
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced there's much evidence to establish that exact
Speaker 1: causal chain that like doing the same thing with your
Speaker 1: face muscles that you did when you were a baby
Speaker 1: in your mother's arms produces comfort and for the same reason. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know how you would show that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And also I'd be skeptical that there's a general principle
Speaker 1: that doing something with the you know, the skeletal muscle
Speaker 1: in your body that is similar to what that muscle
Speaker 1: does in some other unrelated activity that is pleasurable in
Speaker 1: some way gives you pleasure in the secondary activity just
Speaker 1: because you're using the same muscles. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could think of uh ways that you would use
Speaker 1: the same muscles you might use in some pleasurable activity,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't bring pleasure. Does just like pretending to
Speaker 1: chew bring you the same kind of pleasure you get
Speaker 1: from eating and so forth? Uh yeah, generally not Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't just say, pretend to be eating
Speaker 1: your favorite dish and uh. I mean maybe if you're
Speaker 1: hungry enough you can you complete into it a little bit.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but yeah, for the most part, I
Speaker 1: don't really put a lot of stock in this this notion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I got doubts about that. But then he makes
Speaker 1: some other points that I think are I don't know,
Speaker 1: more worth considering. Uh, this next one is still sort
Speaker 1: of along Freudian lines, but I think it's it's I
Speaker 1: don't know, it feels different to me. So see what
Speaker 1: you think about this. He says, quote. In addition to
Speaker 1: the mouth and face whistling involves the respiratory structures. These structures, chest, abdomen, lungs,
Speaker 1: wind pipes, and throat move of their own accord regulated
Speaker 1: by neuronal and chemical processes beyond voluntary control. But the
Speaker 1: whistler in effect willfully imposes his own rhythm, amplitude, and
Speaker 1: organization pattern on these automatic movements. Psychological studies show that
Speaker 1: if the individual is rewarded by attention or praise when
Speaker 1: he first gains control over such automatic processes, he may
Speaker 1: continue to expect satisfaction from this display of skill. As
Speaker 1: will be shown later, whistling arouses the attention of listeners,
Speaker 1: so that the whistler's bodily mastery is almost universally rewarded
Speaker 1: in some way. And I don't know at a at
Speaker 1: a gut level, this seemed a little more plausible to
Speaker 1: me that there could be like a learned association of
Speaker 1: positive reinforcement upon gaining conscious control over previously automatic or
Speaker 1: autonomic processes. And I think one of the main ideas
Speaker 1: this ties into here is like toilet training, that you know,
Speaker 1: there could be some kind of bleed over with pleasure
Speaker 1: upon a general pleasure upon taking conscious control of things
Speaker 1: like breath, and that would sort of check out with
Speaker 1: other things. I mean, there are a lot of things
Speaker 1: people do to seemingly bring themselves pleasure and comfort just
Speaker 1: by taking conscious control of breath, which is normally automatic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this does remind me of certain potty training techniques for
Speaker 1: for kids where there will be for instance, if you're
Speaker 1: you're you're trying to teach the the the very young
Speaker 1: child to have some degree of control over when they defecate. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a like a technique where you're that
Speaker 1: you're getting them to hum while they do it. So
Speaker 1: it's yeah, I can see where you can have a
Speaker 1: lot of connection between the two here. Oh and in
Speaker 1: the next section I want to talk about he actually
Speaker 1: ties directly into that. So oust Bald writes, quote, some
Speaker 1: of the emotions that accompany the act of whistling would
Speaker 1: appear to result from wishful thoughts and magical fantasies in
Speaker 1: the mind of the whistler. Whistling, because it involves the
Speaker 1: production of wordless sounds, may bring back memories of that
Speaker 1: very early period during which the child could not distinguish
Speaker 1: between those sounds which came from the outside world and
Speaker 1: those sounds which came from his own body. During this
Speaker 1: phase of personality development. One is unsure of the significance
Speaker 1: of sound. One cannot tell whether a certain noise, say
Speaker 1: one's footsteps, has personal meaning referable only to his own body,
Speaker 1: or has a public meaning with some reference to the
Speaker 1: world of other people. In this confused state, the individual
Speaker 1: may come to believe that the sounds he produces have
Speaker 1: some causal relationship to what he experiences. Whistling, like other
Speaker 1: noises he makes, may thus be associated with fantasies of omnipotence, which,
Speaker 1: unless corrected by reality, can lead to delusions of grandeur. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was really interesting to me because think about how
Speaker 1: many things we've already looked at where there's some belief that,
Speaker 1: like whistling gives you power to like change the external
Speaker 1: world somehow. Yeah yeah, ties directly into the wind magic
Speaker 1: we've been discussing and uh and getting, and even connects
Speaker 1: back to the the Taoist transcendental whistling as well totally,
Speaker 1: or even the Terence mckenneth thing. Yeah yeah, yeah, but okay,
Speaker 1: So coming back to this, um Ostfald writes, quote, Occasionally
Speaker 1: parents or other adults inadvertently encourage magical behavior in their children,
Speaker 1: and thus reinforce fanciful thoughts about whistling and other sounds.
Speaker 1: For example, nurses have been known to employ whistles to quote,
Speaker 1: make the child urinate and kindly. Grandparents not infrequently whistle
Speaker 1: away the aches and bruises of a youngster. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see the whip again, whistling as the as
Speaker 1: a sound of wind, but also the sound of water
Speaker 1: moving water. We touched on that and then some of
Speaker 1: these ideas that you can get an ox or a
Speaker 1: horse to drink water by whistling at it um, which
Speaker 1: there may not be anything to that, but using it
Speaker 1: as some sort of a potty training. Yeah, that I
Speaker 1: can imagine the humming sound being for the deification that
Speaker 1: with the whistling sound being for uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: creation of water with one's body, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And that could actually have efficacy when you're whistling to
Speaker 1: a person, right because they hear that that has some
Speaker 1: associative significance for them. It may actually help motivate, i
Speaker 1: don't know, going to the bathroom, or may actually make
Speaker 1: them feel subjectively less pain or something like that. But
Speaker 1: that could that could lead to the erroneous assumption therefore
Speaker 1: that you can have have physically implausible control over the
Speaker 1: external world with whistling somehow. Yeah, anyway. Ostwald then relates
Speaker 1: this to reports tying directly back into our previous episode
Speaker 1: about sailors who have intense superstitions about whistling and believe
Speaker 1: that it contains powerful and dangerous magic. You know, again
Speaker 1: whistling for the wind. And he also discusses magical beliefs
Speaker 1: about whistling to summon birds and Celtic tales. Uh, and
Speaker 1: this involves a mediating technology. Plenty of stories about beasts
Speaker 1: and magical creatures that are commanded by a flute, you know,
Speaker 1: think of the god pan and the magical cy rings
Speaker 1: and so forth, but also the the piper pie piper. Yes,
Speaker 1: but the interesting observe ration that sort of puts a
Speaker 1: bow on this whole thing is he uh he ends
Speaker 1: up talking about whistling as a form of non verbal signaling.
Speaker 1: So uh here he would uh specifically not be talking
Speaker 1: about actual languages that use whistles, where there's a full
Speaker 1: language and the whistle is actually mean words. Um, so
Speaker 1: you know, he's not talking about whistling with precise informational content,
Speaker 1: but rather the more informal type of communication done via
Speaker 1: whistling in in other contexts, he writes, quote, wordless signals
Speaker 1: usually have a vague and imprecise meaning. They do not
Speaker 1: usually communicate ideas, but serve rather to attract attention, And
Speaker 1: he describes some of the same research we've already talked about,
Speaker 1: for example, that whistling is a type of noise making
Speaker 1: that travels especially well by concentrating energy and the wonderful
Speaker 1: kill hurts range, which is the best window for for
Speaker 1: humans to hear. It's sort of a perfect attention getter.
Speaker 1: But in the context of most cultures, cultures where whistling
Speaker 1: does not constitute a length, which it doesn't contain words
Speaker 1: or precise information, again, it's meaning is vague. It's just
Speaker 1: an attention getter. And personally, I think maybe it's in
Speaker 1: this vagueness that a lot of the superstitions and ideas
Speaker 1: about the magical danger of whistling could emerge, because it's
Speaker 1: a it's sort of a one to punch. It's this paradox.
Speaker 1: Whistling is like the most powerful signal you can make
Speaker 1: with your body to attract attention. The most powerful sound
Speaker 1: signal you can make, right, is this piercing sound. It
Speaker 1: travels far, it makes people turn their heads. It's like
Speaker 1: a beacon, and yet in most cases it doesn't form
Speaker 1: precise words or phrases, so you can't be sure what
Speaker 1: kind of attention you're attracting. It's just a general beacon.
Speaker 1: It could attract a friend, or if you're in a
Speaker 1: dangerous place, maybe you're on the sea, and they're all
Speaker 1: kinds of forces at work, it could just as likely
Speaker 1: attract unwanted attention, a dangerous enemy of some kind. And
Speaker 1: because you can't form precise words with it, you also
Speaker 1: don't know what you're saying or what you're asking for.
Speaker 1: It's like the scene in the movie where you know,
Speaker 1: you like read a spell from an ancient book in
Speaker 1: another language, and you don't know what the words are,
Speaker 1: so you don't know what kind of spell you're enacting
Speaker 1: or what kind of trouble you're getting into. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: thinking about the transmissions that we send into outer space,
Speaker 1: or that are sent from somewhere else in outer space
Speaker 1: by some you know, presumably intelligent or once intelligent species,
Speaker 1: like the potential danger of just of whistling into the
Speaker 1: cosmic darkness, and you don't know who is going to
Speaker 1: receive the signal and what they'll make of the signal.
Speaker 1: I think that's a perfect analogy. Yeah, it's like I
Speaker 1: think a lot of these fears and superstitions about the
Speaker 1: magical power of whistling would be like, uh, if somebody
Speaker 1: in the real context said, I have created the most
Speaker 1: powerful radio transmitter that will omnidirectionally broadcast an incredibly clear
Speaker 1: power or full signal that any other intelligence out there
Speaker 1: could detect. We don't know what they'll make of it,
Speaker 1: but let's just start transmitting. There would obviously be some
Speaker 1: some real concerns about that from from some of the
Speaker 1: less sanguine of extraterrestrial theorists. Yeah. I mean, imagine if
Speaker 1: we just pipe circus music out, like just NonStop circus music,
Speaker 1: what would they make of it? Maybe maybe the killer
Speaker 1: clowns from outer space show up. That's the problem. God
Speaker 1: help us. All Right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: wrap up this four part whistling series here, But again,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there, because whistling
Speaker 1: is something that I think all of us have some
Speaker 1: connection to. You can whistle, or you can't whistle, or
Speaker 1: you can sort of whistle, or there's some sort of
Speaker 1: cultural ideas about whistling. There's something about whistling in the
Speaker 1: way you were brought up. Uh, they're whistling in in
Speaker 1: various pieces of media. So all of this is fair
Speaker 1: game right in and we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can always find core episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays and
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. On Monday's
Speaker 1: we do listener mail, on Wednesday's we do a short
Speaker 1: form artifact or monster fact episode, and on Friday's we
Speaker 1: do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always, who are excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. Uh. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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