Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it is Saturday. That means
Speaker 2: it is time to go into the vault for an
Speaker 2: older episode of the show. This one originally published August second,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, and it is part one of our
Speaker 2: series on whistling, a surprisingly interesting subject.
Speaker 1: All right, let's dive right in.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to
Speaker 2: be kicking off a multi part series about whistling. This
Speaker 2: is one of those topics I hope in classic Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind fashion, we will be able to
Speaker 2: really surprise you how much weird and interesting stuff there
Speaker 2: is to learn about whistling around the world.
Speaker 1: That's right, I mean, we will make it weird. We
Speaker 1: will know ard in episode one, so strap in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, one of the first things that I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about, and I think this is something we'll
Speaker 2: have to revisit in multiple parts of the series, is
Speaker 2: the idea of whistled languages much to my surprise after
Speaker 2: reading about the subject, there are multiple examples from around
Speaker 2: the globe of whistled languages, or at least whistled alternate
Speaker 2: versions of an existing spoken language. And so to kick
Speaker 2: us off, I wanted to talk about one particular example
Speaker 2: of a whistled language. I was reading about this in
Speaker 2: a classic linguistics paper from nineteen forty eight by George M.
Speaker 2: Cowen called Masteco Whistle Speech. This was published in the
Speaker 2: journal Language in nineteen forty eight. It's by this scholar
Speaker 2: named George M. Cowen who lived nineteen sixteen through twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: He was an expert linguistics. He was associated with the
Speaker 2: Summer Institute of Linguistics, and apparently this paper is one
Speaker 2: of his most important contributions to the field. So it's
Speaker 2: an article documenting this fascinating type of communication practiced by
Speaker 2: the Mazatec people living in Wahaca, Mexico. So what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here is an alternate form of the Mazteko
Speaker 2: language that is based entirely on whistles. Cowen writes that
Speaker 2: as of the nineteen forty Mexican census, there were approximately
Speaker 2: sixty thousand people in the Mazatec tribe, and almost fifty
Speaker 2: six thousand of them were monolingual speakers of the Mezateecan languages.
Speaker 2: The Maztecan languages are part of what Kawen here calls
Speaker 2: the Popo Loca Mezteko language family, so part of a
Speaker 2: broader association of languages found in this area. So Cowen
Speaker 2: spent several winters in the nineteen forties living among speakers
Speaker 2: of the Meztecan languge, which is to document these languages
Speaker 2: and eventually the whistle speech. And I want to begin
Speaker 2: by reading an anecdote that he just observed during his
Speaker 2: time there. Quote Usabio Martinez was observed one day standing
Speaker 2: in front of his hut whistling to a man a
Speaker 2: considerable distance away. The man was passing on the trail below,
Speaker 2: going to market to sell a load of corn leaves,
Speaker 2: which he was carrying. The man answered Ucabio's whistle with
Speaker 2: a whistle. The interchange was repeated several times with different whistles.
Speaker 2: Finally the man turned around, retraced his steps a short way,
Speaker 2: and came up the footpath to Ucbo's hut. Without saying
Speaker 2: a word. He dumped his load on the ground. Usebio
Speaker 2: looked the load over, went into his hut, returned with
Speaker 2: some money, and paid the man his price. The man
Speaker 2: turned and left. Not a word had been spoken. They
Speaker 2: had talked, bargained over the price, and come to an
Speaker 2: agreement satisfactory to both parties, using only whistles as a
Speaker 2: medium of communication, and this is not an isolated incident.
Speaker 2: The author here writes that the Mazateec people frequently hold
Speaker 2: entire conversations and express an extremely broad and versatile set
Speaker 2: of ideas, all using whistles. As he puts it, quote,
Speaker 2: the Masteco is frequently converse by whistling to one another.
Speaker 2: The whistles are not merely signals with limited semantic value,
Speaker 2: arrived at by common agreement, but are parallel to spoken
Speaker 2: conversations as a means of communication. And so to try
Speaker 2: to elucidate that a little bit, what this means is
Speaker 2: that the whistle speech is not a code like you
Speaker 2: may have heard, you may have seen in movies, I
Speaker 2: don't know, like soldiers crawling around and they sort of
Speaker 2: like whistle codes at each other, and you get the
Speaker 2: idea that maybe they've agreed on a handful of whistled
Speaker 2: signals in advance, like you know that one whistle means
Speaker 2: a stop, another one means go forward. But there's probably
Speaker 2: a very limited array of those whistles, and you had
Speaker 2: to work on agreeing to them beforehand.
Speaker 1: Right, right. Also in contrast to how the sort of
Speaker 1: every day 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 graber, a whistle that might be a little more scandalous,
Speaker 1: and then a whistle that is it seems to say
Speaker 1: say whoa, like that's a big truck something of that nature.
Speaker 1: But it's not really, it's nothing at all like a
Speaker 1: robust language of whistles. It's just a few basic whistle
Speaker 1: signals that seem to be commonly used.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, I would say, Like in the standard
Speaker 2: American English speaking context, there are a few sort of
Speaker 2: significant whistles. You basically know what they mean when you
Speaker 2: hear them, but there's only a handful of them, and
Speaker 2: you certainly can't make sentences out of them, right. Exactly
Speaker 2: the opposite is true of the mesatago whistle speech. This
Speaker 2: is a full equivalent to the stand and spoken Mesteko language.
Speaker 2: The whistles can be recorded and translated by anybody familiar
Speaker 2: with the whistle speech, producing the same specific translations with
Speaker 2: a couple of certain kinds of ambiguities. I'll get into
Speaker 2: that later. So it's not a kind of loose suggestive code.
Speaker 2: It's not something that has to be agreed on ahead
Speaker 2: of time. It's just an equivalent of a spoken language
Speaker 2: with all the freedom of degrees of expression and lexical
Speaker 2: richness found in the spoken language. And I thought this
Speaker 2: was just amazing, So I guess I want to explore
Speaker 2: a few more things. The Cowan documents that he observed
Speaker 2: about the whistle speech during his time in Wahaka in
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties. So he says also that the Mezteko
Speaker 2: people use the whistle signals when communicating with animals. For example,
Speaker 2: there's a sort of slow upgliding whistle to keep burrows
Speaker 2: moving when on the trail, or whistles to call out
Speaker 2: to dogs. But these whistles don't have a translatable language equivalent.
Speaker 2: So there is whistling that is language. But then there's
Speaker 2: also a whole set of like whistle sounds that are
Speaker 2: useful day to day, but are not words.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They just if they were to be translated, they'd
Speaker 1: be like.
Speaker 2: Hey, yeah, or keep walking, keep going another thing. Not
Speaker 2: everybody whistles, and not everybody who whistles whistles the same amount.
Speaker 2: Cowan writes that while everyone seems to have listening fluency
Speaker 2: with the whistled speech, generally only men whistle, and especially
Speaker 2: men between the ages of boyhood and middle age. So
Speaker 2: he says old men rarely whistle conversationally. It seems to
Speaker 2: fade out over the lifespan, and women and girls understand
Speaker 2: what is whistled by the men and boys, but usually
Speaker 2: do not whistle themselves. So he talks about observing a
Speaker 2: bunch of interactions where like a boy would whistle something
Speaker 2: to a girl his age, and the girl would reply
Speaker 2: with spoken language, so she understands the whistles, but she
Speaker 2: doesn't use them herself. He even talks about one specific
Speaker 2: example of like a boy teasing a girl and he
Speaker 2: didn't realize what was happening because he just observed the
Speaker 2: boy whistling. He didn't realize it was speech, and suddenly
Speaker 2: the girl lashed out and hit the boy with the
Speaker 2: broom Because of what he'd been saying to her, except
Speaker 2: he hadn't been using the spoken language.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Okay, so with the former we have perhaps a
Speaker 1: physical reason for the limit, but possibly cultural, and then
Speaker 1: the second one seems to be definitely cultural.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if there's like a biological limitation
Speaker 2: on older men whistling either. I mean, it seems like
Speaker 2: this is probably all cultural convention.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think with older men, based on what I've
Speaker 1: been reading, it would be it would be kind of
Speaker 1: a case to case situation. You certainly have older gentlemen
Speaker 1: who are profound whistlers, but there are there are certainly
Speaker 1: cases even in younger people where if there changes to
Speaker 1: one's mouth due to injury, due to just changes in
Speaker 1: dental health, then that could impact one's ability to whistle.
Speaker 2: Well, So a big question here would be why. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is an interesting and beautiful thing about this language
Speaker 2: that it has the you know, the spoken language and
Speaker 2: then it's whistled twin, But like, what would cause a
Speaker 2: whistled version of a language to develop like this? And
Speaker 2: I think one good way to get some insight into
Speaker 2: that is to look at what are the common occasions
Speaker 2: for people to use the whistled version of their language
Speaker 2: instead of the spoken version, and one of the big
Speaker 2: answers here is pretty clear. The author here says that
Speaker 2: the most frequent use of the whistle speech was observed
Speaker 2: when the speakers were at a distance from each other.
Speaker 2: He writes quote, Men scattered widely over a mountainside, each
Speaker 2: working in his own plot of ground, will often talk
Speaker 2: to one another with whistles. Travelers on the trails will
Speaker 2: keep in touch with one another by whistling, though separated
Speaker 2: by considerable distance. When wishing to call or get the
Speaker 2: attention of someone, even though he be within easy speaking distance,
Speaker 2: the mastacos will often whistle his name. The village shoemaker
Speaker 2: often calls passers by into his shop with a whistle
Speaker 2: to chat with him while he works. A man may
Speaker 2: come to a friend's hut on a visit. While approaching,
Speaker 2: or when he has actually arrived at the door of
Speaker 2: the hut, he will frequently whistle rather than call his
Speaker 2: friend's name. If the friend is home, he may respond
Speaker 2: from within with a whistle, then come out to greet
Speaker 2: his visitor, or he may remain inside and whistle to
Speaker 2: his visitor to come in. Fascinating Okay, so communicating at
Speaker 2: a distance seems to be a big one, or also
Speaker 2: initiating communication at the start of an encounter, which I
Speaker 2: think is interesting that even when we're not at a distance,
Speaker 2: we often use language that we employ at a distance,
Speaker 2: like to get some in a spoken language, to get
Speaker 2: somebody's attention from far away, what do you do? You
Speaker 2: yell hey at them? But also what do you do
Speaker 2: when you walk up and see somebody you know, you're
Speaker 2: two feet away from them? You say, oh hey?
Speaker 1: And there might be some sort of a wave or
Speaker 1: something in there as well, And I could I can imagine,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is sure, I can imagine
Speaker 1: where if whistling could maybe take the place of some
Speaker 1: of the otherwise necessary waving or gesticulating that would be
Speaker 1: required to sort of get somebody's attention and say, hey, here,
Speaker 1: I am, there you are, let's.
Speaker 2: Converse, right. So okay, So you got communicating at a distance,
Speaker 2: You've got initiating communication at the start of a meeting.
Speaker 2: And then along the same lines, he writes here that
Speaker 2: the whistle is sometimes used as a warning, such as
Speaker 2: when someone unknown is seen approaching on the trail, you
Speaker 2: kind of whistle to let all of your friends nearby
Speaker 2: know that something's up, you know, to get their attention.
Speaker 2: Though again he says the most common occation is talking
Speaker 2: at a distance, and he writes that in these cases,
Speaker 2: men working in the field seem to be able to
Speaker 2: communicate easily with people a full quarter of a mile away,
Speaker 2: like on the opposite mountain side, using the whistle speech.
Speaker 2: But also, and I found this next part really interesting.
Speaker 2: Count says that sometimes, especially boys will hold a whistle
Speaker 2: conversation if they're trying to talk while older people are
Speaker 2: also nearby carrying on a spoken conversation or even singing together.
Speaker 2: And he calls these sort of simultaneous whistled conversations subdued
Speaker 2: whistles and says that they're quite audible, and yet they
Speaker 2: are able to happen simultaneously without seeming to much interfere
Speaker 2: with the spoken conversation of the adults. And I don't
Speaker 2: know that one seems really interesting to me. I mean,
Speaker 2: it reminds me of of being a kid and wanting
Speaker 2: to talk to other kids while I don't know, while
Speaker 2: you're in class or something, when you're not supposed to
Speaker 2: be doing that, and there's just an obvious sort of
Speaker 2: clash between two sets of spoken words going on at
Speaker 2: the same time, and this gets the ire of the adults,
Speaker 2: not only because you're not paying attention, but because you're
Speaker 2: distracting others. Yet somehow I could imagine that, Yeah, maybe
Speaker 2: having like a different form of the language. If you're
Speaker 2: speaking your language based on whistles instead of the normal
Speaker 2: of phonetic syllables, that could allow a kind of simultaneity
Speaker 2: without so much conflict.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a way to speak while the adults are speaking,
Speaker 1: without interfering with what they're doing. Now, the example of
Speaker 1: using the whistles to communicate, say, in the case of
Speaker 1: a path, you're in the woods, someone's coming. That reminds
Speaker 1: me that And I'm making an assumption here, but if
Speaker 1: one were to say, Hey, Carl, there's somebody coming and
Speaker 1: call out, well, not only are you communicating to Carl,
Speaker 1: but you're communicating something about yourself. I wonder if whistling
Speaker 1: language in specific scenarios like this allow you to communicate
Speaker 1: without tipping your hand at all, regarding like who you are,
Speaker 1: like what your age is, what your gender is, etc.
Speaker 2: Oh huh, I didn't think about that. That's interesting. Well,
Speaker 2: another thing I would say along those same lines. Is again,
Speaker 2: I haven't done experiments to confirm this, but I would
Speaker 2: just say as a baseline, I might assume that whistling
Speaker 2: can more easily blend in with nature than spoken language. That,
Speaker 2: like you hear spoken language, you instantly know a person
Speaker 2: is nearby, you hear a little whistle. I don't know
Speaker 2: that could be a bird or something like that if
Speaker 2: you're not tuned into it as a linguistic signal.
Speaker 1: And I think that's where that's certainly where my assumption
Speaker 1: comes into play, is that I'm not sure what it
Speaker 1: would be like for someone who has lived in the
Speaker 1: world of this kind of whistling. If you're used to it,
Speaker 1: then maybe you just you've a heightened susceptibility to recognizing
Speaker 1: it and telling the difference between it and 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 whistle and a
Speaker 1: boy's whistle.
Speaker 2: Well, So, to round out the things that the Cowan
Speaker 2: talks about in this article, he says that there are
Speaker 2: no lexical limitations on the whistle. Speech sort of already
Speaker 2: got to this, but basically, anything you can express in
Speaker 2: spoken language, you can express in the whistles. However, there
Speaker 2: are some ambiguities caused by the whistle speech, and this
Speaker 2: is because of the basic phonetic features of it. So
Speaker 2: the Mestaken languages are tonal languages, and this would mean
Speaker 2: they're similar to like Mandarin, where you can have a
Speaker 2: syllable and you can have maybe four different versions of
Speaker 2: that syllable, and in English they would all be the
Speaker 2: same syllable to us, like maybe the classic example in
Speaker 2: Mandarin is four different ways of saying ma, but pronounced
Speaker 2: in each case with a different tone. So you would,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're trying to write them out phonetically
Speaker 2: in English, they would all be maa, but one might
Speaker 2: be a kind of gliding up tone and one is
Speaker 2: a falling tone and so forth. Well, the Mestaken languages
Speaker 2: are like this too. They have tones in the speech,
Speaker 2: and the tones are what eventually becomes the whistle speech.
Speaker 2: The whistle speech is based on the tonal features of
Speaker 2: the spoken language. But if you have, say two different
Speaker 2: phrases that in the spoken language have the exact same
Speaker 2: sequences of tones, these can of course cause ambiguity in
Speaker 2: the whistle speech, and that has to be resolved, you
Speaker 2: might have to say, wait, what do you mean. Cowan
Speaker 2: writes that one of the most common sources of ambiguity
Speaker 2: in whistled speech is just proper names, because there are
Speaker 2: a lot of proper names that have the same sequence
Speaker 2: of tones. But despite this limitation that you know, you
Speaker 2: don't have spoken syllables, you're just turning the language entirely
Speaker 2: into sequences of tones. You can communicate a lot, and
Speaker 2: most of the time people understand each other just fine.
Speaker 2: Another thing I thought was interesting is that he says
Speaker 2: there don't appear to be any limitations on whistled speech
Speaker 2: mingling with spoken language. Like it's not like you go
Speaker 2: into one mode and then you're supposed to stay there
Speaker 2: and back and forth, and like he says that a
Speaker 2: conversation might start at a distance as as whistles, and
Speaker 2: then switch to normal speech when the parties get closer
Speaker 2: to each other, or you might just go back and forth.
Speaker 2: You might be speaking and then suddenly whistling, and then
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 1: Interesting this this is not a perfect comparison, but I
Speaker 1: am I can't help but think of the astro mach
Speaker 1: droids and star wars. You know how they speak with
Speaker 1: the kind of whistling language, and and generally when they're
Speaker 1: talking to somebody like Luke Skywalker or whoever, Luke understands
Speaker 1: the astro Mach language and then speaks back in English
Speaker 1: and or whatever we're calling English in the Star Wars universe.
Speaker 1: And at times when I'm watching this, I'm always I'll
Speaker 1: stop and I'll think, and I'll of course i'm you know,
Speaker 1: caught up in the flow of it, so it ultimately
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. But if I'm over analyzing it, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about the fact that they're they're speaking in two different
Speaker 1: languages to each other, and there doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: any problem. But an example like this from the real
Speaker 1: world makes me think, well, no, this is entirely believable.
Speaker 1: You have both parties know the language, but the Astromac
Speaker 1: of course can only speak one of those languages, and
Speaker 1: Luke Skywalker can also only speak one of those languages,
Speaker 1: but both can understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. I have often thought about that too,
Speaker 2: about the how exactly the R two D two communication
Speaker 2: goes on a bolt. But I just wanted to say
Speaker 2: also that, like this isn't something of the past that
Speaker 2: the mesateko whistle speech is still in use today, certainly
Speaker 2: by people in Wahaka and maybe elsewhere as well. If
Speaker 2: you want to hear what it sounds like, I would
Speaker 2: highly recommend looking up videos. There are videos you can
Speaker 2: find online of native speakers demonstrating the Mesateko whistle speech,
Speaker 2: and it's totally worth looking up.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, it's quite beautiful.
Speaker 2: But as I alluded to earlier, this is not the
Speaker 2: only case in the world. This is just one example
Speaker 2: I picked. There are other examples and I might get
Speaker 2: into them in part two of this series of whistled
Speaker 2: languages popping up, especially it seems in mountainous and forested
Speaker 2: regions around the world, And there is a paper I
Speaker 2: want to talk about in the next part of the
Speaker 2: series about what are some of the common features that
Speaker 2: may cause whistled versions of languages to arise. It's very
Speaker 2: interesting to think about what are the pressures and environmental
Speaker 2: characteristics that tend to give rise to certain characteristics of language.
Speaker 1: Absolutely now in discussing whistling here. When we first started
Speaker 1: looking into this topic, I was thinking, well, what is whistling?
Speaker 1: And 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 eas
Speaker 1: maybe not as quickly as we were discussing in our
Speaker 1: previous example compared to other things. But hear it for
Speaker 1: a second and you'll say, yeah, yeah, somebody's whistling, and
Speaker 1: then maybe you can pick out the tune. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we know it when we hear it, and we know
Speaker 1: it when we produce it. So I honestly expected to
Speaker 1: kind of springboard pass the basic what is a whistle
Speaker 1: question here, and so can get more into some of
Speaker 1: the media stuff. But then I read this definition of
Speaker 1: whistling from the paper the Physiology of Oral Whistling by A.
Speaker 1: Zola at All, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. Quote. Experimental models support the hypothesis that
Speaker 1: the sound in human whistling is generated by a Helmholtz 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 I
Speaker 1: don't think I had actually heard of a Helmholtz resonator before,
Speaker 1: and when I heard that, I instantly thought of like
Speaker 1: the Holtzman effect in Dune. But this has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with personal shields and suspensers.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I think that's interesting too, that it's like
Speaker 2: not a fully settled question how exactly the physics of
Speaker 2: whistling work. But I do think it's clear and you
Speaker 2: can sort of test this in your own body. That
Speaker 2: part of what's happening with whistling is you are relocating
Speaker 2: the primary resonating chamber that's producing the vibrations the sound
Speaker 2: when you whistle, as opposed to when you produce regular speech.
Speaker 2: Because if you just feel it in your body while
Speaker 2: you're talking, you can kind of feel least I can
Speaker 2: that the vibrations sort of seem to be coming from
Speaker 2: the throat. It's also sort of happening in the mouth
Speaker 2: a little bit. But then when you whistle. At least,
Speaker 2: what I feel is I feel the vibration beginning in
Speaker 2: my mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would certainly advise everyone as you're whistling, you
Speaker 1: may be whistling right now, to sort of test this out, like,
Speaker 1: really focus in on how it feels, Focus on how
Speaker 1: you feel the air flowing through your mouth. You'll find
Speaker 1: these lateral air passages between cheek and molars, and it's
Speaker 1: really quite quite fascinating, because again, it's easy to just
Speaker 1: take this for granted, it's not something for most of us.
Speaker 1: Is certainly 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.
Speaker 2: As a total sidetrack. I'm sorry, but I found the
Speaker 2: title of that paper, The Physiology of Oral Whistling, very
Speaker 2: funny because it immediately made me think, are there other
Speaker 2: types of whistle? Is there ocular whistling?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I guess there may be some sort
Speaker 1: of nasal variety. I mean, I'm instantly reminded of the
Speaker 1: various nasal flutes that exist in different cultures. So the
Speaker 1: airflow from the mouth is not the only way that
Speaker 1: we have to produce sound. But yeah, when you say whistling,
Speaker 1: you tend to think oral whistling. Now, I want to
Speaker 1: come back to the Helmholtz resonator here. So this is
Speaker 1: named for important German physicist and physician Hermann von Helmholtz,
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen twenty one through eighteen ninety four. If
Speaker 1: you're studying anything about sound and sound generation, you'll generally
Speaker 1: find out find something about von Helmholtz. For instance, after
Speaker 1: we had started this particular topic, I was in Asheville,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and I went to the Moge Museum there,
Speaker 1: the synthesizer Museum, and Helmholtz's name comes up in some
Speaker 1: of the materials there because it's just it's hard to
Speaker 1: avoid him when you get into the science of sound.
Speaker 1: So the Helmholtz resonator is a kind of spherical chamber
Speaker 1: with an aperture at the top or at one end
Speaker 1: called the nipple and tapering there for insertion into the ear,
Speaker 1: and then has another larger aperture on the other end
Speaker 1: of this sphere. So each Helmholtz resonator has a known
Speaker 1: fixed volume size and therefore is made to pick up
Speaker 1: on a particular tone. There's no mechanical parts in this.
Speaker 1: It's essentially it's kind of like a very finely engineered
Speaker 1: seashell pick one up. You place the nipple in your ear,
Speaker 1: and you can pick out a particular frequency, and you
Speaker 1: generally will have a selection of these to analyze complex sounds. Joe,
Speaker 1: for your benefit, I included a photo here of various
Speaker 1: Helmholtz resonators, and if you do a Google search out
Speaker 1: there of Helmholtz resonators, you'll see selections like this. They're
Speaker 1: often made out of some sort of a metal. You know.
Speaker 2: I think of myself as an adventurous seeker of experiences.
Speaker 2: But somehow I don't want to put the big ones
Speaker 2: of these in my ear. That's just I would fear
Speaker 2: oral injury.
Speaker 1: Well, the nipple is the same size on all of them,
Speaker 1: nipple that is inserted into your ear.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm just I guess what I mean is
Speaker 2: I'm afraid it looks like it would suddenly produce an
Speaker 2: incredibly loud sound. But I guess the size of the
Speaker 2: resonator cavity is not actually about the volume, but about
Speaker 2: the pitch.
Speaker 1: So these resonators they have various applications in engineering, architecture,
Speaker 1: and music. But when it comes to studying and describing
Speaker 1: the mechanisms of human whistling, something that the aforementioned authors
Speaker 1: say isn't done enough and again is not maybe fully understood.
Speaker 1: The Helmholtz resonator is apparently a good model of what
Speaker 1: seems to be going on inside of our head, inside
Speaker 1: of our you know, our head and face when we whistle.
Speaker 1: And Joe I included an illustration from that paper that
Speaker 1: I thought was very useful. This kind of takes the airflow,
Speaker 1: those lateral air passages who are describing, as well as
Speaker 1: the central resonance chamber, and illustrates those inside of this
Speaker 1: drawling of a human female who is supposedly whistling, and
Speaker 1: it makes whistling look like some sort of strange organ
Speaker 1: inside the mouth.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, it looks like, well, you got your regular
Speaker 2: liver down below, and then you've got your whistling liver,
Speaker 2: and that's up somewhere underneath the nose.
Speaker 1: Right now, going back to that paper by Azola at all,
Speaker 1: I want to read this quick quote that sums a
Speaker 1: lot of this up quote. The results of this study
Speaker 1: indicate that the acoustic mechanism in human person lip whistling
Speaker 1: follows a Helmholtz resonator model. The oral cavity acts as
Speaker 1: the resonant chamber and the anterior posterior movements of the
Speaker 1: tongue play a major role in changing the volume and
Speaker 1: thus the whistle frequency produced For their studies, performed with
Speaker 1: high resolution measurements may help elucidate the contribution of changes
Speaker 1: to other parameters of the Helmholtz equation.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is sort of in line with what
Speaker 2: I was at least guessing based on the feelings inside
Speaker 2: my head. When I whistle, it feels like the vibrations
Speaker 2: are coming from the mouth when I whistle, and hear
Speaker 2: they're saying that, yes, when you whistle, the oral cavity
Speaker 2: is what's acting as the resonant chamber. It's sort of
Speaker 2: acting as a Helmholtz resonator.
Speaker 1: Right, And it is stressing though that, Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on here and even though it may feel
Speaker 1: pretty natural for most of us to whistle, we don't
Speaker 1: have to again put a lot of thought into it,
Speaker 1: though if you may be overthinking it now and find
Speaker 1: yourself having to think more about doing it, but you
Speaker 1: still have to have the proper prerequisites in place. Some
Speaker 1: people lack the ability to whistle for a few different reasons.
Speaker 1: It's also something that does have to be initially learned
Speaker 1: and can get really good with practice. So it's like
Speaker 1: it's one of those scenarios like when you hear somebody
Speaker 1: do it really well, it has an almost otherworldly beauty
Speaker 1: to it. Some of those examples earlier in the whistling
Speaker 1: speech definitely have this quality to them. But also I
Speaker 1: think of whistling used in music sometimes I think of
Speaker 1: the whistling of say, Leon Redbone whistle during some of performance.
Speaker 1: So an amazing whistler. My whistle is nothing like that,
Speaker 1: and a large part of that just may simply be practiced.
Speaker 1: I have not applied the hours of whistling that Leon
Speaker 1: Redbone applied during his lifetime to achieve that level of art.
Speaker 2: So off, Mike, we were talking about our favorite examples
Speaker 2: of music that features whistling. One example that immediately comes
Speaker 2: to my mind is there's a great Bolivian folk song
Speaker 2: called Jorando se Foe and the band, the experimental rock
Speaker 2: band Sun City Girls do a cover of that song.
Speaker 2: I think their cover is called the Shining Path and
Speaker 2: there's a part usually before the lyrics come in that
Speaker 2: I think on earlier recordings of this song is done
Speaker 2: on a flute, but they whistle this part, and the
Speaker 2: whistling is just intense. It sounds very much the comparison
Speaker 2: a lot of people seem to make. I think Seth
Speaker 2: said the same thing when we played it for him earlier,
Speaker 2: is that it feels like Anyomricone. It feels like kind
Speaker 2: of a very dramatic, dangerous Western scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's something about the West cinematically that
Speaker 1: makes me think of whistling, And a big part of
Speaker 1: it is, you know, probably Morricone's scores, but also the
Speaker 1: score by Carter Burwell for a Raising Arizona, the Coen
Speaker 1: Brothers film, So good, fabulous score that includes a lot
Speaker 1: of like yodeling and banjo, but also whistling, really powerful,
Speaker 1: like pure whistling that sounds like it's from just straight
Speaker 1: from heaven.
Speaker 2: But the other one Seth reminded reminded me of was
Speaker 2: the Peter Bjorn and John song that was popular. I
Speaker 2: think that was like really big my last year in college.
Speaker 2: It was like two thousand and eight or so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's a great example Another one that I
Speaker 1: think Seth and I both thought of at the same
Speaker 1: time was Otis Redding sitting on the dock of the bay.
Speaker 1: That is a wonderful whistling part in it.
Speaker 2: I was trying to think, based on all these examples
Speaker 2: we just brought up, whether there are sort of common
Speaker 2: connotations to whistling and music. But I guess not really,
Speaker 2: because in some of these examples we've talked about, the
Speaker 2: whistling feels very, very happy and languid. It's a relaxed
Speaker 2: kind of sound. I think of sitting on the dock
Speaker 2: of the bay, whereas in the first example I mentioned,
Speaker 2: it's it's a fiery, intense, you know, a danger rising
Speaker 2: from from the canyon kind of sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm glancing at a list right now, and oh,
Speaker 1: this is a big one. Winds of Change by the Scorpions.
Speaker 1: That's some powerful whistling in there. Feel it, Feel it
Speaker 1: in your bones. Golden Years by David Bowie. That's another
Speaker 1: good one. MM Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel.
Speaker 2: Oh I know that one.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, that's a great one.
Speaker 2: War Without Tears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they are a bunch of them, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go through this whole list, but I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from folks out there if you have
Speaker 1: particularly favored examples of songs with whistling in them, or
Speaker 1: favorite whistling performers. Oh here's another great one. I Always
Speaker 1: look on the bright Side of Life from Monty Python's
Speaker 1: The Life of Brian m hm. Great stuff. There's walk
Speaker 1: like in Egyptian by the Bengals.
Speaker 2: I did not remember the whistling in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't worry, be happy. Bobby McFerrin, there you go.
Speaker 2: Ooh.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I remember the I remember this song,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember the whistling. Me and Julio down
Speaker 1: by the schoolyard.
Speaker 2: Paul Simon, Oh yeah, yeah, okay, I shouldn't do that
Speaker 2: too much.
Speaker 1: Love is a battlefield, Pat Benattar.
Speaker 2: Great song. I don't remember the whistling, you know. Coming
Speaker 2: back to the idea of whistled languages, part of me thinks, oh, man,
Speaker 2: I it would be difficult for me living in a
Speaker 2: culture like that, because I feel like I don't whistle
Speaker 2: very well. But then again, I guess it's a it's
Speaker 2: a skill that you develop with practice, like other language skills,
Speaker 2: and that unless you have some kind of like anatomical
Speaker 2: reason that's interfering with your ability to whistle it. Imagine
Speaker 2: it's largely a function of how much you do it,
Speaker 2: how much you practice it, and how much you learn
Speaker 2: it at an early age. But yes, I am one
Speaker 2: of those who I don't whistle great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my whistling is It's okay for my own purposes,
Speaker 1: but it is not a performance level whistle. So I
Speaker 1: will catch myself occasionally whistling a particular tune. But I'm
Speaker 1: also just as just as inclined to maybe sing a
Speaker 1: little bit from a particular song, or to hum a
Speaker 1: little bit, did to use those more or less in tandem.
Speaker 1: But pure whistling. Yeah, I've never really applied myself to
Speaker 1: it because I felt like my whistling, yeah, it's good
Speaker 1: enough for me, not so much for anybody else I'm around.
Speaker 2: I did get into a habit a while back of
Speaker 2: when I would be singing a song and I would
Speaker 2: start getting up to the high notes that I couldn't sing,
Speaker 2: I would just switch to whistling them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. As we were researching this, I was, of course,
Speaker 1: like a lot of you out there listening to the episode,
Speaker 1: So I was a little. I was hyper conscious of
Speaker 1: my own whistling, so I was trying it out, and
Speaker 1: I decided, well, what if I tried to whistle better?
Speaker 1: You know what if I sort of really concentrate on
Speaker 1: it and try and see what happens when I change
Speaker 1: the shape of my mouth a little bit and I
Speaker 1: was feeling I found that I was able to make
Speaker 1: a stronger whistle, but it was also I felt it straining,
Speaker 1: like muscles in my face and in my head, that
Speaker 1: I maybe don't strain that much when I do my
Speaker 1: default whistle. And then I was able to go back
Speaker 1: to my default whistle and it felt more natural. So
Speaker 1: I kind of took that as an indicators like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is kind of the gateway to better whistling if
Speaker 1: I wanted to actually pursue this, probably, but I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do that.
Speaker 2: Oh well, this makes me think of how actually, to
Speaker 2: some degree, the same thing is true about spoken language,
Speaker 2: Like I find at least if I think too hard
Speaker 2: about what my body is doing while I'm reducing words
Speaker 2: with my mouth, suddenly they become a lot harder to produce,
Speaker 2: Like if I'm thinking about my lungs and my larynx
Speaker 2: and my mouth, the syllables become kind of strange. You
Speaker 2: get that. Actually, I would say it's a feeling kind
Speaker 2: of similar to semantic satiation, where when you say a
Speaker 2: word too many times in a row, you start like
Speaker 2: the words starts to feel strange and it loses its
Speaker 2: association with the with the meaning that it signifies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In a way, it's kind of like if you're
Speaker 1: riding a bicycle and you suddenly start thinking really hard
Speaker 1: about how you were riding the bicycle, how this is
Speaker 1: being in pained, and maybe don't do that. Maybe just
Speaker 1: just just ride the bicycle, think about something else, because
Speaker 1: everything's in motion, it's working. Just don't second guess it.
Speaker 1: But as we were saying, though, it's by second guessing
Speaker 1: it that we are able to potentially improve it as well.
Speaker 1: We can certainly fall into a habit of whistling a
Speaker 1: certain way, and there are conceivably ways to improve upon
Speaker 1: that whistle. But you've got to want to do that
Speaker 1: or have some reason to do that, And certainly communication
Speaker 1: would be a big one. If you're engaging in some
Speaker 1: sort of whistling communication with people, then there's going to
Speaker 1: be sort of a whistling standard. I imagine you're going
Speaker 1: to hear other people use it, and there is going
Speaker 1: to be a positive social pressure to improving your whistle
Speaker 1: to match the whistles of those around you.
Speaker 2: Right right, Well, maybe we need to call part one
Speaker 2: of our Whistling series here, but we've got so much
Speaker 2: more interesting stuff to talk about in subsequent parts. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk about religious uses of whistling. We're going
Speaker 2: to talk about whistling superstition, whistling psychology, whistling technology. That
Speaker 2: there are a lot of monsters in this closet.
Speaker 1: All right, well, join us for that when we come back,
Speaker 1: and certainly go ahead and send in your messages regarding
Speaker 1: your own experience with whistling. We would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. As a reminder. Stuff to Blow your minds
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Speaker 1: go to the discord email us and we'll send you
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Speaker 1: a lot of cool discussions going on there, and they're
Speaker 1: doing a book club there. I need to mention that again,
Speaker 1: some of the listeners have decided to read Umberto Echoes
Speaker 1: the name of the Rose, So if you're interested in that,
Speaker 1: email us, get the link. We'll send you to the
Speaker 1: right place and you can join up with them.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
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