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Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of

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Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick,

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Speaker 1: and we're back with part two of our series on whistling.

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Speaker 1: In the last episode, we talked a bit about how

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Speaker 1: whistling works physically, what happens when you're creating a sort

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Speaker 1: of resonator cavity within the mouth. We also talked about

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Speaker 1: the whistle speech of the Maze Taco languages in Wahaka

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Speaker 1: in Mexico, and I wanted to start off today's episode

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Speaker 1: by talking about some other examples of whistled languages and

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Speaker 1: some of the common characteristics between them, because, of course,

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Speaker 1: the Maze Teco whistle speech is not the only example

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Speaker 1: of a whistled language that carries information. In fact, I

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Speaker 1: was looking at a paper by an author named Julian

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Speaker 1: Meyer called Environmental and Linguistic Typology of Whistled Languages in

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Speaker 1: the Annual Review of Linguistics. It's a very recent paper,

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Speaker 1: uh And according to Meyer, there are reports of more

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Speaker 1: than eighty languages around the world that contain a whistled lexicon,

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Speaker 1: and about half of those have been confirmed by formal

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Speaker 1: studies and published recordings, so really solid documentation of at

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Speaker 1: least forty or so whistled languages around the world, And

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Speaker 1: so I think it's worth mentioning a few more examples

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Speaker 1: of these and describing how they work and seeing what

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Speaker 1: we can compare and contrast with them. So one example

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Speaker 1: I was reading about was in a really interesting article

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Speaker 1: in BBC Travel by Elliott Stein, and the story here

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Speaker 1: goes like this. In Greece, there is a remote mountain

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Speaker 1: village called Antia, which is found on the southern an

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Speaker 1: eastern coast of the Greek island of Evia in the

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Speaker 1: Aegean c And within this village there has long been

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Speaker 1: a whistle based language called Sphyria, which allows speakers to

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Speaker 1: communicate across great distances, and it seems to have been

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Speaker 1: passed down from parents to children among the shepherds and

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Speaker 1: the farmers of the village for literally thousands of years,

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Speaker 1: for more than two thousand years to read from Stein

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Speaker 1: here quote. But in the last few decades, antias population

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Speaker 1: has dwindled from two hundred and fifty to thirty seven,

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Speaker 1: and as older whistlers lose their teeth, many can no

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Speaker 1: longer sound sphery as Sharp notes today there are only

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Speaker 1: six people left on the planet who can still speak

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Speaker 1: this unspoken language. Now this was five years ago as

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Speaker 1: of this recording, so I don't know how that number

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Speaker 1: six has changed since then. There there are descriptions of

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Speaker 1: some efforts to try to teach it to more people. Um,

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Speaker 1: but of whenever you're talking about a language with that

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Speaker 1: few speakers, it it's certainly extremely endangered. In fact, this

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Speaker 1: is considered one of the most endangered languages in the world. Now.

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Speaker 1: Apparently the existence of this language sphery A here was

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Speaker 1: not documented anywhere in the outside world until the year

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, when a plane crashed in the mountains

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Speaker 1: nearby and there was a rescue team that was attempting

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Speaker 1: to locate the pilot and they reported hearing strange, melodious

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Speaker 1: whistling echoing through the hillsides. And this led to investigation

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Speaker 1: and brought the language to the attention of the media

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Speaker 1: and to academics. Uh So, a big question here is

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Speaker 1: where does a language like this come from. Linguists do

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Speaker 1: seem to agree that it dates back to ancient times.

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Speaker 1: It's been around for a long time, but exactly how

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Speaker 1: it was created is less certain, uh and apparently local

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Speaker 1: legends abound. So one story I came across this was

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Speaker 1: described in in some detail in a documentary piece on

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Speaker 1: PBS News Hour that was about Sphyria, and it claimed

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Speaker 1: that the language was invented about two thousand five years ago,

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Speaker 1: not by Greeks, but by Persians after they were defeated

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Speaker 1: at the Battle of Salamis. So Salamus was a battle

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Speaker 1: in four a d b c. During the Persian invasion

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Speaker 1: of Greece under zerk Sees the Great, and so Salamus

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Speaker 1: was a It was a naval battle where the coalition

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Speaker 1: of Greek city states was able to fight off and

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Speaker 1: defeat the larger Persian allied fleet. And I think this

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Speaker 1: is widely considered the battle, or one of the battles

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Speaker 1: that turned the tide of the war in favor of

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Speaker 1: the Greek defenders and pushed back the Persian invasion. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: the legend about the whistle speech goes that the Persian

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Speaker 1: survivors of the battle I guess they were, you know,

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Speaker 1: their their ship was sank or defeated in some way

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Speaker 1: and they managed to swim to shore on the island

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Speaker 1: of Evia, where they had to survive hiding in the

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Speaker 1: mountains inhabited by hostile native Greeks, and one way they

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Speaker 1: avoided detection was by coming up with a way of

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Speaker 1: speaking in whistles that would sound just like the birds,

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Speaker 1: so they could they could communicate with each other, but

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Speaker 1: their speech would not be intelligible and in many ways

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Speaker 1: would probably not even be detected. But that that story

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Speaker 1: has a kind of legendary quality. I'm not sure how

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Speaker 1: much there is behind that so, but but it's a

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Speaker 1: great story nonetheless, and and steinsite some other local legends

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Speaker 1: as well. Some residents believe it was invented during the

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Speaker 1: Byzantine Empire by locals who wanted a secret way to

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Speaker 1: communicate that would elude the understanding of pirates and people

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Speaker 1: from hostile nearby villages. And so a common theme here

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Speaker 1: seems to be the idea that somehow this language was

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Speaker 1: created to be a secret way of communicating, to allow

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Speaker 1: the locals to communicate across distance and understand each other

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Speaker 1: without other people detecting or understanding what they were saying. Now,

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Speaker 1: the author of this BBC Travel piece describes visiting the

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Speaker 1: village and spending time with with the handful of people

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Speaker 1: there who still use the whistle language, and they apparently

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Speaker 1: use it in many of the same scenarios described in

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Speaker 1: that paper on the Massa Teco whistle speech that I

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Speaker 1: talked about in the last episode, A big scenario of

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Speaker 1: you seems to be communicating across great distance on the

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Speaker 1: mountain side and sort of greeting or summoning people from

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Speaker 1: far away. And Stein cites a Greek linguist named Demitra

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Speaker 1: Hanggen who studies Spheria, and she says that Sphoria is

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Speaker 1: in some sense a whistled version of spoken Greek, where

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Speaker 1: specific whistled tones correspond to specific phonetic syllables or letters,

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Speaker 1: and you can build words out of them. Now, again,

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Speaker 1: this is another way that it's similar to the Massa

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Speaker 1: Teco example, because in both cases the wistled language is

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Speaker 1: not like an uh totally independent, unique language. Instead, it

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Speaker 1: is in some way adapting an existing spoken language two whistles,

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Speaker 1: and of course that would lean us more towards the

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Speaker 1: Greek origin story as opposed to the Persian one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I thought about that, but I don't know if it

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Speaker 1: actually informs that one way or another. But yeah, I

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Speaker 1: had the same intuition at least. So one of the

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Speaker 1: most remarkable things about Sphyria, again similar to the mesa

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Speaker 1: Teco whistle speech example, is that it is intelligible at

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Speaker 1: a great distance. You can understand messages in Sphyria up

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Speaker 1: to about four kilometers away on this mountainous terrain, which

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Speaker 1: Hangen says is about ten times farther than you can

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Speaker 1: usually understand speech, loud speech or shouting. And I saw

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Speaker 1: that number of the ten times distance multiplier mentioned in

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Speaker 1: other sources, such as a Cambridge University press paper that

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Speaker 1: I looked at. But there's a great part in this

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Speaker 1: article where Stein quotes a local shop owner named Maria Kafalas,

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Speaker 1: who tells a story about some of the like the

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Speaker 1: social opportunities offered by the whistle speech. And so her

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Speaker 1: story goes like this quote. One night a man was

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Speaker 1: in the mountains with his sheep when it started snowing.

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Speaker 1: He knew that somewhere deep in the mountains there was

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Speaker 1: a beautiful girl from Antia with her goats. So he

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Speaker 1: found a cave, built a fire and whistled to her

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Speaker 1: to come keep warm. She did, and that's how my

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Speaker 1: parents fell in love. Well, that is a better ending

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Speaker 1: than something like and then the descendants of of of

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Speaker 1: Persian soldiers slaughtered him in the woods, so I will

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Speaker 1: say that much. Yeah, and then the Greeks finally came

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Speaker 1: for revenge. Yeah. I continue to just have a lot

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Speaker 1: of questions about the Persian origin theory. It just seems

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Speaker 1: like it seems and I could I could be missing

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Speaker 1: something major here, but it seems like it begs more

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Speaker 1: questions than it answers. Well. Yeah, as as I said,

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Speaker 1: it sounds more like legend to me than like an

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Speaker 1: strongly evidence based explanation. I agree, away from being a

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Speaker 1: full blown ghost story. But but so I've described two

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Speaker 1: examples here of whistled language in detail, and as I

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Speaker 1: mentioned before, there are many others around the globe. There

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Speaker 1: are something like eighty ish that have been reported somewhere

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Speaker 1: around forty of them are very well documented. So an

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Speaker 1: obvious question to ask is what do these languages have

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Speaker 1: in common? What causes a whistled language to arise? So

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Speaker 1: I was looking at a few sources here. One of

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Speaker 1: them is that paper in the Annual Review of Linguistics

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Speaker 1: by Julian Meyer already mentioned. Another is a an article

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Speaker 1: in Smithsonian magazine from one by Bob Holmes, which cites

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Speaker 1: that paper and summarizes some other research in this area,

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Speaker 1: for example, focusing on a whistled variant of Spanish that

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Speaker 1: is used in the Canary Islands, on the mountainous islands

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Speaker 1: of Lagomera and Elierro in uh they're both in the

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Speaker 1: Canary Islands. And that paper by Julian Meyer tries to

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Speaker 1: gather together all of these languages and say, okay, are

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Speaker 1: there common topic, graphical or or sort of geographical features

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Speaker 1: that these languages tend to have in common? And he

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Speaker 1: finds yes, indeed there are almost all of the whistled

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Speaker 1: languages occur in two different types of environments, either in

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Speaker 1: mountainous terrains rugged mountains, or in dense vegetation like dense

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Speaker 1: forest or dense savannah. So why would it be those

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Speaker 1: two places, mountains or in dense vegetation. Well, to focus

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Speaker 1: on mountains first, Myer writes that in mountainous terrain, settlements

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Speaker 1: and the people living in the mountainous terrain tend to

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Speaker 1: be much more scattered across larger distances that are more

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Speaker 1: difficult to travel verse quickly than people in other types

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Speaker 1: of topographical settings. So uh here, so Meyer writes quote

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Speaker 1: in Aliero and Lagomera, in the Canary Islands, in the

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Speaker 1: region around kush Koy in Turkey, in the High Altars,

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Speaker 1: or in the Pyrenees near the village of Os two points,

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Speaker 1: only five dred meters apart can easily represent an hour

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Speaker 1: in walking time. Thus, whistled forms of languages serve as

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Speaker 1: soon as the spoken forms become ineffective between forty and

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Speaker 1: a hundred meters. Depending on terrain, whistles can be heard

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Speaker 1: up to seven kilometers away in some valleys. Okay, So

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Speaker 1: the idea here is that in mountainous terrain you have

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Speaker 1: the problem of people are often situated farther apart from

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Speaker 1: each other, and those distances to cross are difficult to cross.

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Speaker 1: They take a long time. So if you need to

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Speaker 1: communicate actually coming to be close enough together that you

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Speaker 1: could understand each other by shouting, would that's along? That's

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Speaker 1: a big time investment. So it's actually worth your time

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Speaker 1: to learn a whistle speech that will carry better across

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Speaker 1: longer distances and save you all of that climbing and

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Speaker 1: walking time. Now, what about the forests or the dense vegetation. Well,

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Speaker 1: here Myer writes quote the vegetation in dense tropical forests

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Speaker 1: and savannah's restricts visual contact and limits the propagation of sound.

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Speaker 1: In such contexts, Whistled speech frequencies are also well shielded

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Speaker 1: against acoustic energy loss due to reverberation, which is particularly

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Speaker 1: important in densely vegetated environments because the whistled frequencies belong

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Speaker 1: to the most favorable frequency window, ranging from one to

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Speaker 1: three kiloherts, within which reverberation in forests varies less with distance.

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Speaker 1: In dense vegetation, whistled language facilitates the coordination of individuals

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Speaker 1: during group movements, especially during hunting and fishing. Whistling all

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Speaker 1: so allows human dialogue to go undetected by animals, blending

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Speaker 1: in with natural sounds, since many animal species also use whistling.

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Speaker 1: Other advantages are that whistles are easy to locate and

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Speaker 1: difficult for strangers to recognize, especially other tribes, even those

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Speaker 1: that speak different dialects of the same language. Whistled communications

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Speaker 1: are used for distances from about ten ms up to

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Speaker 1: five hundred meters, depending on the density of vegetation. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so there are a lot of advantages in the forest

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Speaker 1: or thick savannah. So the idea is that, of course

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Speaker 1: whistling speech allows you to communicate without being able to

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Speaker 1: see each other. Sidelines are limited by the by the

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Speaker 1: vegetation itself. But also whistling just carries better in the forest.

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Speaker 1: It it propagates better through the forest without being drowned

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Speaker 1: out by the sort of the the reverberation effects of

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Speaker 1: having all that foliage there. Uh. And it also seems

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Speaker 1: to pierce through and and sound much better. And Holmes

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Speaker 1: also summarizes uh some of these advantages of whistling in

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Speaker 1: in the Smithsonian paper, saying that if you're good at whistling,

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Speaker 1: and you've been practicing this all your life, sometimes you

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Speaker 1: can reach a hundred and twenty decibels with a whistle,

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Speaker 1: which is loud. That's like uh. He compares it to

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Speaker 1: a car horn and says it's actually louder than a

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Speaker 1: car horn. Um, and that whistles pack almost all of

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Speaker 1: that energy into the perfect frequency range, the most piercing

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Speaker 1: frequency range, which Holmes says is between one to four

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Speaker 1: killer hurts. Meyer said between one to three killer hurts.

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Speaker 1: But it's roughly the same space um, which Holmes says

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Speaker 1: is above the pitch of most ambient noise. And this

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Speaker 1: is interesting because I was thinking about, um, why do

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Speaker 1: we keep noticing that whistling sounds, the ones made by

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Speaker 1: humans are similar to birds song. Well, one thing that

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Speaker 1: occurs to me here is that Earth's song is probably

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Speaker 1: shaped by natural selection to propagate through vegetation and to

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Speaker 1: cut through ambient noise from the environment so so as

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Speaker 1: to be clear, you know, to be clear and audible

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Speaker 1: at a distance where maybe a potential mate could hear it.

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Speaker 1: So whistle speech probably sounds like birds song, having similar

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Speaker 1: frequency ranges because similar forces are shaping them. In the

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Speaker 1: case of birds, it would be evolution, and in the

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Speaker 1: case of humans, it would be people intentionally selecting whatever

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Speaker 1: noise they are able to make with their bodies that

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Speaker 1: is the clearest at the longest distance, cutting through ambient noise,

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Speaker 1: and and losing the least energy to reverberation in the forest.

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Speaker 1: And that just happens to be the whistle that sounds

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Speaker 1: like a bird. Yeah, yeah, this this is interesting to

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Speaker 1: think think about it. On one hand, I'm a quiet whistler.

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Speaker 1: My whistler, my whistle was not very loud, and therefore

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Speaker 1: it can be a little surprising when I encounter someone

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Speaker 1: who has a very loud whistle, and you reminded just

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Speaker 1: how loud and whistle can be. So that's important to

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Speaker 1: factor into all of this. And uh. And another connection

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Speaker 1: that came up in some of the research I was

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Speaker 1: doing was that you you end up encountering this whole

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Speaker 1: realm of of non linguistic sounds that humans can make

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Speaker 1: that can be used to communicate ideas or to to

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Speaker 1: gain attention, etcetera. And you you also see things like

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Speaker 1: yodeling thrown in there. Yodeling um also an art form

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Speaker 1: if you will, or a performance are to sound that

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Speaker 1: developed that also had to do with communicating or calling

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Speaker 1: animals or or communicating with other herdsmen across across long

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Speaker 1: distances in the wild. When you're trying to speak normal

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Speaker 1: phonemes like we're using in words here, I think a

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Speaker 1: lot of that information probably easily gets lost to the distance.

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Speaker 1: Like you might be able to hear that somebody is shouting,

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Speaker 1: but you can't hear the difference between consonants. Are they

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Speaker 1: making a T sound or a case sound like I

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Speaker 1: don't know at a distance that that kind of all disappears.

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Speaker 1: But if you're if you're judging more on sequences of pitches,

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Speaker 1: then suddenly the confusion created by distance is reduced. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just just yelling doesn't necessarily cut it, right, because if

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Speaker 1: you can't, if you're particular words are not going to

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Speaker 1: be overheard, then you might end up having to do

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Speaker 1: something like just some sort of rhythmic barking. And if

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Speaker 1: you're doing some sort of rhythmic barking, well why not

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Speaker 1: further develop that and get somewhere and get to somewhere

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Speaker 1: where it is yodeling or you shift over into a

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Speaker 1: whistling uh, and that develops into some sort of a

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Speaker 1: whistling language. So yeah, it's just the more you look

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Speaker 1: at it, the more since it makes for this kind

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Speaker 1: of purpose than Now, another thing going on with whistled

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Speaker 1: languages is that, um, most of them, perhaps all of them,

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Speaker 1: but I'm not sure about that. So I'm going to

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Speaker 1: say at least the vast majority of whistled languages appear

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Speaker 1: to be not wholly independent languages of their own, but

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Speaker 1: whistled versions of spoken languages. So this was true of

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Speaker 1: all the examples I've talked about before. You know, the

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Speaker 1: maze Teco whistle speech was a whistled variant of the

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Speaker 1: tonal meze Teco language. Spherria appears to be a whistled

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Speaker 1: system for encoding spoken Greek. The whistle speech system of

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Speaker 1: the Canary Islands, called sill Bo, is a whistled version

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Speaker 1: of Spanish, and so forth, and for this reason, one

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Speaker 1: of the main differences in whistled languages appears to be

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Speaker 1: whether they are encoding a tonal language or a non

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Speaker 1: tonal language, and based on that distinction, the encoding process

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Speaker 1: is different. Tonal languages tend to be whistled in a

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Speaker 1: way that preserves the tones of the spoken words, and

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Speaker 1: in the last episode we talked about tonal languages. Tonal

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Speaker 1: languages where you know the syllables of the words, also

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Speaker 1: carry information based on the tone you use when speaking them.

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Speaker 1: So say like a high, high pitched version of the

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Speaker 1: syllable MA means something different than a lower pitched version

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Speaker 1: of the syllable MA, or an up gliding tone on

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Speaker 1: that syllable, and so forth, like the tone of the

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Speaker 1: syllable actually makes a difference. Uh, non tonal languages are

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Speaker 1: not like so in in English, we we don't encode

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Speaker 1: much information into the tones of syllables. It's just like,

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Speaker 1: what are the vowels and consonants. Yeah, the tone can

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Speaker 1: contain some information, but not nearly to the to the

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Speaker 1: extent that you find in true tonal languages. Right. No,

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Speaker 1: it's not not lexical information, more like, uh, maybe sort

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Speaker 1: of contextual mood information or inflection. Like the difference between

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Speaker 1: saying I would like you to walk the dog and

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Speaker 1: I would like you to walk the dog. Well, that

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Speaker 1: implies that maybe something the last time the dog was

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Speaker 1: walked it was not it was not good enough, or

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Speaker 1: it was or maybe you ran the dog, you know,

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Speaker 1: like that, that sort of thing. But it doesn't change

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Speaker 1: the actual yeah, uh information contained in the word. No,

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Speaker 1: it's more like about the implied information about the attitude

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Speaker 1: of the speakers, or I need you to walk the dog.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't walk the actual dog. Maybe you took

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Speaker 1: some other creature or item from the house with you

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Speaker 1: on the walk instead. Okay, so you've got a tonal

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Speaker 1: language and you want to make a whistled version of

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Speaker 1: that you In most cases, it seems like you preserve

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Speaker 1: the tones of the spoken words. Non tonal languages that

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Speaker 1: have whistled speech tend to involve a sort of approximation

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Speaker 1: of consonants and vowels, and the Homes article I mentioned

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Speaker 1: quotes the scholar Julian Meyer explaining that we already use

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Speaker 1: subtle differences in frequencies to distinguish between spoken phonemes, like

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Speaker 1: the differences between certain vowels and consonants. Uh So, think

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Speaker 1: about the vowels E and O. A long E vowel

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Speaker 1: sound has a higher pitch than along O vowel sound,

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Speaker 1: and if you say them back to back, you can

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Speaker 1: listen to the descending melody of those vowel sounds EO

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Speaker 1: E O, And in fact, though it's harder to hear

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Speaker 1: at first, the same is sort of true of consonants,

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Speaker 1: like a T sound contains more high frequencies than a

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Speaker 1: K sound, and these differences can to some extent be

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Speaker 1: reproduced in whistles and uh So, the discussion of this

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Speaker 1: in the article got me thinking about, even without having

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Speaker 1: an established version of a language like this, and without

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Speaker 1: any training, can you sort of attempt to whistle English

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Speaker 1: phrases and have people understand what you're saying. In some

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Speaker 1: cases you can. And I actually tried this out with

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Speaker 1: my wife Rachel before we recorded here, I, Uh, this

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Speaker 1: was a kind of weird exercise, but I was like, hey,

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Speaker 1: can you tell what I'm saying here? And so I

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Speaker 1: tried things like um, which she took a minute on

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Speaker 1: but decided I was saying hello, nice to meet you,

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Speaker 1: which is what I was trying to say. Uh, So

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Speaker 1: that one worked a few other phrases I tried did

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Speaker 1: not work as well, But the ones that really seemed

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Speaker 1: to work immediately were the ones where it was phrases

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Speaker 1: she had heard me say before, especially when I tried

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Speaker 1: to whistle, common phrases that we use with our dog,

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Speaker 1: so um immediately she heard as all buddy um. And

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Speaker 1: I think this ties into something we've talked about on

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Speaker 1: the show before, the exaggerated musicality that humans tend to

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Speaker 1: use when speaking to babies and pets for some reason. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there may be evolutionary reasons for this, that we when

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Speaker 1: we speak to cute things that need our care and attention,

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Speaker 1: you know, babies or pets as kind of it might

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Speaker 1: be creepy to think about them this way, but in

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Speaker 1: to some extent kind of psychologically sir at babies, um,

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Speaker 1: that we we speak with an exaggerated musicality or tonal

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Speaker 1: variation that we don't use when speaking to adults, and

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Speaker 1: that stereotyped phrases within this kind of highly musical speech

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Speaker 1: are much easier to recognize when you try to whistle

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Speaker 1: them instead of say them phonetically. So are you gonna

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Speaker 1: keep whistling? Have you? Was it? Was it a big

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Speaker 1: enough success? Oh? No, I think that would be a

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Speaker 1: horrible idea. Also, strangely, the dog did not seem to

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Speaker 1: get it. So when when I whistled all buddy Rachel

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Speaker 1: could tell what I was saying, but but Charlie did

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Speaker 1: not seem affected. I tried whistling to my cat whilst

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Speaker 1: researching information for for these episodes, and yes, you didn't care.

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Speaker 1: And my wife was like, like you, you can't speak

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Speaker 1: to a cat and whistles. You have to use the

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Speaker 1: kissy sound. That's what they understand. That's what that's the

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Speaker 1: language they speak. It is known. But the kissy sound clicks,

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Speaker 1: I mean, these are all these are not too far

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Speaker 1: are removed from whistling. Some of these these types of

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Speaker 1: sounds will come up again later on. Indeed. Now, one

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Speaker 1: of the most interesting lines of thought emerging from all

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Speaker 1: this is that some experts think that studying whistled languages

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Speaker 1: might help us understand the origin of human language as

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Speaker 1: a whole, because again, some linguists think that these whistled

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Speaker 1: languages could be similar to the first languages that probably

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Speaker 1: emerged in human evolution. Now why on earth would that be? Well,

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Speaker 1: a couple of thoughts here. One. I just want to

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Speaker 1: rate a passage from the Holmes article in Smithsonian quote.

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Speaker 1: One of the big challenges for of language is the

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Speaker 1: need to control the vocal chords to make the full

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Speaker 1: range of speech sounds. None of our closest relatives, the

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Speaker 1: great apes, have developed such control, but whistling maybe an

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Speaker 1: easier first step. Indeed, a few orangutans and zoos have

400
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Speaker 1: been observed to imitate zoo employee is whistling as they work.

401
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Speaker 1: When scientists tested one ape under controlled conditions, the animal

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Speaker 1: was indeed able to mimic sequences of several whistles. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so that's one line of evidence. Seems that our closest

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Speaker 1: biological relatives are better able to imitate and reproduce sequences

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Speaker 1: of whistled tones than they are to imitate and reproduce

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Speaker 1: vocal phonemes like we make with speech. But There's another similarity.

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Speaker 1: What is whistled speech especially good for it's communicating across distance,

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Speaker 1: and as I mentioned earlier, especially in the densely vegetated

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Speaker 1: contexts for hunting and fishing. And in these cases some

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Speaker 1: but not all, of course, but some whistled languages tend

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Speaker 1: to rely more on kind of formulaic sentences like you know,

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Speaker 1: go that way, go toward it, etcetera, than than on

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Speaker 1: like full lexical representation, which is also commonly thought to

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Speaker 1: be how languages first emerged. That there were probably stereotyped signals,

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Speaker 1: you know, a sort of more limited range of signals

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Speaker 1: and ideas that you could express with sound that carried

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Speaker 1: common meanings, before there was like a complete and endlessly

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Speaker 1: variable lexicon where you could make a sentence meaning anything. However,

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Speaker 1: I think it's important to point out that even if

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Speaker 1: it's true that these whistled languages might have some things

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Speaker 1: in common with the earliest proto languages, that does not

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Speaker 1: mean that today's whistled languages are descended from any hypothetical

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Speaker 1: whistled proto languages, Because if there were whistled proto languages,

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Speaker 1: they long ago turned into speech, and then you know,

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Speaker 1: many thousands of years passed, and then that speech in

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Speaker 1: some cases transformed back into a whistled variant. Yeah so, so,

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Speaker 1: sort of imagining like just the basic sounds one could

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Speaker 1: make and how one might draw from that palette to

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Speaker 1: communicate things. Some of those sounds become encoded, many of

430
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:01,520
Speaker 1: those sounds of at all those things. They evolve into

431
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:06,159
Speaker 1: more complicated forms. But then we we never completely forget,

432
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 1: we never completely abandon these other modes of of of

433
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: auditory communication, that the palette remains there for us to

434
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:18,479
Speaker 1: dip back into. Yeah. Yeah so. One last common feature

435
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 1: of these whistled languages is that in basically all cases,

436
00:27:22,600 --> 00:27:25,679
Speaker 1: with maybe a couple of exceptions, their uses declining. Most

437
00:27:25,760 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: of them are disappearing, And so we might wonder why, well, uh,

438
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:33,680
Speaker 1: several causes are cited in in the homes article. One

439
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 1: is strangely roads, you tend to find whistle speech only

440
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:42,440
Speaker 1: in places that are very remote, uh, And that apparently

441
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:46,199
Speaker 1: the presence of well paved roads tends to cause whistle

442
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:49,199
Speaker 1: speech to fall into disuse. Now you can imagine that

443
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:50,959
Speaker 1: could be for a couple of reasons. One could be

444
00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:55,600
Speaker 1: well paved roads to a place increase the connection of

445
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 1: that place to the rest of the world, So just

446
00:27:57,800 --> 00:28:00,879
Speaker 1: sort of uh in the same way that sort of

447
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:04,159
Speaker 1: connection to global culture would cause the would tend to

448
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:08,160
Speaker 1: cause the disuse of all types of local customs, and

449
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:09,920
Speaker 1: so the whistle speech would just be one of them.

450
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 1: But another reason I could think of is that, like

451
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:15,639
Speaker 1: we were saying earlier, a lot of the use for

452
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:19,600
Speaker 1: whistle speech tends to be communicating across distances that are

453
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:23,680
Speaker 1: difficult or time consuming to traverse. And if you make

454
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 1: it easier to get from place to place in a

455
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:29,000
Speaker 1: shorter amount a shorter amount of time, there's probably just

456
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:33,240
Speaker 1: less incentive to whistle across great distances. Yeah. Yeah, I

457
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,679
Speaker 1: also imagine that it's it's quite useful in communicating with

458
00:28:36,760 --> 00:28:39,960
Speaker 1: the not yet seen. So if you're if you're having

459
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: to travel traverse a distance and there are no roads involved,

460
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:47,120
Speaker 1: there's no reasonably fast travel, there's going to come a

461
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: point where you're approaching somebody and maybe you can't even

462
00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 1: see them yet, and it might be nice to just

463
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:55,880
Speaker 1: sort of check in with them, uh into like and

464
00:28:55,880 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 1: and the mere fact that they can they can speak

465
00:28:58,080 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: the whistle language like gives you an amount of information

466
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: on top of anything they provided in via the whistling. Yeah.

467
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 1: Another hypothesized explanation for the decline of whistle speech, especially

468
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 1: in places maybe like Brazil and Central Africa densely vegetated areas,

469
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 1: is that deforestation seems to be playing a role in

470
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 1: eliminating it, but mainly by eliminating one of the types

471
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: of environmental pressure that tends to motivate its use in

472
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:30,720
Speaker 1: the first place, which is the need to coordinate um

473
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:35,840
Speaker 1: hunting and other survival subsistence activities within thick forest. Remember

474
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 1: the motivations, the sort of bioacoustic motivations we talked about earlier.

475
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:43,720
Speaker 1: But despite these pressures, these languages don't have to disappear.

476
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 1: I was reading about that there are efforts in some

477
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:50,479
Speaker 1: places to UH, to like set aside special attention and

478
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 1: care to preserve them. I believe in the Canary Islands

479
00:29:53,920 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: the whistle speech is like is to some extent being

480
00:29:57,360 --> 00:30:00,520
Speaker 1: taught in schools to to help preserve it. And obviously

481
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 1: that could be uh could be instituted in other areas

482
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, that's that's great. I mean, it's wonderful

483
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:07,960
Speaker 1: that there are these these efforts to keep it alive

484
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: because of course, once once a language is no longer

485
00:30:12,440 --> 00:30:16,120
Speaker 1: properly spoken. It becomes so much harder to bring it back.

486
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 1: Not to say that it can't be, but you know,

487
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: but but clearly, like holding onto languages, keeping them alive

488
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:27,280
Speaker 1: are important even and even when they are not, uh,

489
00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:30,600
Speaker 1: you know, the traditional spoken languages, but they are these

490
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:39,960
Speaker 1: whistling tongues than However, despite all this talk we've been

491
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 1: using about how whistles can be used just like speech

492
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: to encode mundane information, to just transmit information between people,

493
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:53,480
Speaker 1: there's another way of understanding whistling. One that goes I

494
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: think way back and you know it's been around, uh

495
00:30:56,680 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 1: since ancient times, that whistling is also it has a

496
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:04,760
Speaker 1: kind of power, and that whistling is different than normal speech,

497
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:07,239
Speaker 1: and that in many ways it may be kind of

498
00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 1: divine or may have a may bring a magical danger

499
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah. This, if you've listened to everything we've

500
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:16,920
Speaker 1: discussed so far, you might you might be inclined to think, well,

501
00:31:17,040 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: whistling sometimes we do it, sometimes it's useful, but that's it.

502
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 1: We never have any additional values added to it. It's

503
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: never infernal or celestial, it's never vulgar or or or

504
00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:32,720
Speaker 1: anything of that nature. But of course this is this

505
00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:35,480
Speaker 1: is far from from the truth. Uh, there's this deep

506
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:39,520
Speaker 1: well across pretty much every culture here we can look

507
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: to where whistling has some sort of added meaning. It

508
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: takes on various supernatural tones, and some of these will

509
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:52,640
Speaker 1: will get into more in the next episode. But I

510
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:55,240
Speaker 1: wanted to dive in sort of almost really just go

511
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 1: right to the deep end and dive into this subject

512
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:03,240
Speaker 1: of transcendental whistling, particularly Chinese transcendental is whistling. But this

513
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 1: is a topic that also has connections to some other areas.

514
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 1: So uh, this should this should be a fun journey

515
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:12,920
Speaker 1: will take and then again come back in later and

516
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: discuss uh some more examples of whistling and Chinese culture

517
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:21,520
Speaker 1: um from a broader standpoint, as well as a great

518
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: number of whistling related superstitions that involve everything from you know,

519
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:30,240
Speaker 1: ghosts and monsters to more sort of societal pressures. Yeah,

520
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 1: this brings us to the topic of chin chow, which

521
00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 1: I believe translates to something like lengthy always or forever whistling.

522
00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:41,240
Speaker 1: It's an ancient Daoist practice that involves the use of long, drowned,

523
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:44,680
Speaker 1: drawn out whistling as a means of cultivating and balancing

524
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 1: one's vital force or chi And I think that just that,

525
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 1: that that one nugget of information there, Like, I feel

526
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 1: like that kind of balance as well with sort of

527
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 1: a broader experience with whistling. There is something about whistling

528
00:32:59,320 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: that certainly takes you out of um, out of your thoughts,

529
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:06,239
Speaker 1: and kind of puts you in the now, even if

530
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 1: you're just if you were to say, set there and

531
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 1: focus on whistling a single tone and sort of concentrate

532
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 1: on it without even bursting into song and so forth, yes,

533
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:16,920
Speaker 1: I would agree with that. And I guess one of

534
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: the first things that comes to my mind is that

535
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:23,400
Speaker 1: whistling seems very similar to breath. And of course many

536
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:27,800
Speaker 1: sort of traditional meditation practices involved manipulation of breath in

537
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:30,280
Speaker 1: one way or another. That seems to have some kind

538
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:33,640
Speaker 1: of um power of focusing in the mind in a

539
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 1: certain way, or unfocusing the mind if you want that.

540
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:39,880
Speaker 1: The control of breath is like that. And I guess

541
00:33:39,960 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: in a way, though um speech is also control of breath,

542
00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:45,640
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure why it's that different, but it

543
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 1: it seems a different kind of control of breath that's

544
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: more akin to the slow, steady breathing exercises that you

545
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: would be more likely to find in a meditative practice. Yeah.

546
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 1: Sometimes this whole sort of suite of ideas that sometimes

547
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 1: referred to as as like breath magic. Uh and and yeah,

548
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:03,960
Speaker 1: I think you could you could throw whistling in there.

549
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 1: But also some of the various sounds that are made

550
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 1: in meditative breathing practices, such as home uh, such as

551
00:34:11,719 --> 00:34:15,200
Speaker 1: there are also various meditation practices where the exhale takes

552
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 1: on more of the form of a of a of

553
00:34:17,280 --> 00:34:22,080
Speaker 1: an animal noise like a roaring, etcetera. But but yeah,

554
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:24,400
Speaker 1: in this case, yeah, we definitely are talking about some

555
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:28,720
Speaker 1: form of of breath magic and that the chang shao.

556
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: It frequently pops up in Chinese literature, with one classic

557
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 1: example being Rhapsody on Whistling by Ching Gong Psi, who

558
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 1: lived to thirty one through two seventy three. It's too

559
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 1: long of a work to read here in full, but

560
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:46,640
Speaker 1: but key passages about whistling as a practice of the

561
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:50,440
Speaker 1: uh secluded gentleman are as follows. I'm going to skip

562
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:52,839
Speaker 1: over many lines here, so this is not a full

563
00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 1: experience of the translated text. Distancing himself from the exquisite

564
00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 1: in the common, he abandons his personal concer earns. Then,

565
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,880
Speaker 1: filled with noble emotion, he gives a long drawn whistle.

566
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:08,600
Speaker 1: He sends forth marvelous tones from his red lips and

567
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:14,080
Speaker 1: stimulates mournful sounds from his gleaming teeth. The sound rises

568
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:17,919
Speaker 1: and falls, rolling in his throat. The breath rushes out

569
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:22,720
Speaker 1: and is repressed, then flies up like sparks. The whistle

570
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: floats like a wandering cloud in the grand imperiod. H

571
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:31,600
Speaker 1: And I'm told, okay, this is the transcendental void, and

572
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: gathers a great wind for a myriad miles. When the

573
00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:38,280
Speaker 1: song is finished and the echoes die out, it leaves

574
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:41,400
Speaker 1: behind a pleasure that lingers on in the mind. Indeed,

575
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:45,160
Speaker 1: whistling is the most perfect natural music, which cannot be

576
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:49,879
Speaker 1: imitated by strings or woodwinds. For every category, he has

577
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:54,240
Speaker 1: a song to each thing he perceives. He tunes a melody.

578
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:58,800
Speaker 1: Oh that's great. That that gives me chills, dude, Yeah, yeah,

579
00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 1: So this this is the copy of the text I

580
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 1: was looking at is in the Colombia Anthology of Traditional

581
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: Chinese Literature, and sinologist Victor H. Mayor provides some additional

582
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:15,800
Speaker 1: details on what is being described here. So he describes

583
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:19,680
Speaker 1: the Chinese transcendental whistling as being quote, a kind of

584
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:24,640
Speaker 1: nonverbal language with affinities to the spiritual aspect of meditation.

585
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: So it's a tool of the individual for self cultivation

586
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:33,319
Speaker 1: in search of enlightenment, and is mentioned in appendices to

587
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:37,360
Speaker 1: the Classic of Changes or the ea Ching. Okay, so

588
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 1: we actually, I think we did an episode on the

589
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:42,560
Speaker 1: eaching a long time ago. We did like three or

590
00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:45,239
Speaker 1: four years ago, now maybe, so, yeah, I think it

591
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:49,080
Speaker 1: was pretty pandemic. So the mind controls the breath, and

592
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:52,719
Speaker 1: with his breath he whistles, and with his whistle, well,

593
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:55,800
Speaker 1: here here's another quote from mayor quote from any given

594
00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: point of view, each object or situation fits into a category.

595
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:04,280
Speaker 1: For we, there is a corresponding hexagram. Each hexagram consists

596
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,759
Speaker 1: of yin and yang lines, which may be interpreted as

597
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:11,840
Speaker 1: patterns of sound. These are the songs. So whenever the

598
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:17,320
Speaker 1: whistler perceives something, he immediately transposes it into a melody.

599
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:20,879
Speaker 1: With his control of the vital breath, he can manipulate

600
00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:25,479
Speaker 1: these sounds and thereby control any phenomena. So I'm trying

601
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 1: to remember the the eaching, of course contains the hexagrams,

602
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:31,839
Speaker 1: but I'm trying to remember the significance of the hexagrams

603
00:37:31,920 --> 00:37:36,759
Speaker 1: beyond the divination purpose of the eaching. Um do do

604
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:39,279
Speaker 1: you recall more than I do? Here? Well? I think

605
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: the main thing to keep in mind is that these

606
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:45,160
Speaker 1: different heck, these hexagrams come together and they mean things,

607
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:49,040
Speaker 1: and then they mean things in particular sequences. And so

608
00:37:49,239 --> 00:37:51,319
Speaker 1: I think for our purposes here we might think of

609
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 1: these as being sort of un encoding of reality. And

610
00:37:56,000 --> 00:38:00,879
Speaker 1: then the whistle here, the the Chinese transcendental whistling, can

611
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:03,280
Speaker 1: be used as a way first of sort of meeting

612
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:08,880
Speaker 1: the coded reality, but then also controlling the encoded reality.

613
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:11,759
Speaker 1: And it is said that the whistle alone can can

614
00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: quote turn the pure Yang hexagram inside out to form

615
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 1: the pure Yen hexagram. So we're getting into like the

616
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 1: vital energies of the universe here. And the idea here

617
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 1: is that if if someone is is an expert in this,

618
00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:27,759
Speaker 1: if they know what they're doing, then not only are

619
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:31,560
Speaker 1: they sort of confronting reality with the whistle, but then

620
00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 1: they are they're able to change things and flip things,

621
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:39,280
Speaker 1: alter the universal energy involved in a given situation. Okay,

622
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:41,960
Speaker 1: I see. So it's a kind of a meaning magic

623
00:38:42,080 --> 00:38:45,319
Speaker 1: in the same way that language itself sometimes is used to,

624
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:49,560
Speaker 1: you know, the traditions that ascribe sort of magical power

625
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 1: to certain words or um or or symbols signifying words.

626
00:38:54,719 --> 00:38:58,399
Speaker 1: But it's just not the same as the language. It's

627
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 1: like an alternate version of meaning magic. Yeah. And and

628
00:39:02,400 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 1: I and I have to to stress you idea this

629
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:07,839
Speaker 1: is we're talking about those kind of lofty dallast practice here.

630
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:10,760
Speaker 1: So um, you know, we're we're only sort of loosely

631
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:13,720
Speaker 1: describing it. But but I believe this is the gist

632
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:16,400
Speaker 1: of it. Uh. And this is the way of looking

633
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 1: at it that is useful to move forward, and again

634
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:21,239
Speaker 1: we'll come back to perhaps in the next episode, we'll

635
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:25,200
Speaker 1: get back into some other uh traditional Chinese ideas concerning

636
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:28,279
Speaker 1: whistling in general, and some of these ideas will sort

637
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 1: of flow back into this topic of transcendental whistling. Now.

638
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 1: One of the things that I found really interesting about this,

639
00:39:34,680 --> 00:39:38,279
Speaker 1: this idea of using sound, using the whistle and then

640
00:39:38,320 --> 00:39:42,080
Speaker 1: sort of changing something about reality, is that uh. And

641
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:45,000
Speaker 1: ultimately the idea of breath, the breath becoming sound, and

642
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:50,399
Speaker 1: sound not only describing but transforming something. Um, I this

643
00:39:50,520 --> 00:39:53,319
Speaker 1: stirred something in my memory. So and uh and I

644
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 1: think another part was the eaching connection because I was

645
00:39:56,239 --> 00:40:00,120
Speaker 1: reminded of something that Terence McKenna discussed in his of

646
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:04,239
Speaker 1: True Hallucinations, a concept that his brother Dennis I think

647
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:10,160
Speaker 1: largely contemplated called the psycho audible warp phenomenon. And this

648
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:12,760
Speaker 1: is gonna also get you know, we're going from from

649
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 1: from from Dallas to uh uh transcendental practices here into

650
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: the work of Terence McKenna and his brother Dennis. So um,

651
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 1: you know this is another sort of lofty idea, but

652
00:40:24,960 --> 00:40:28,600
Speaker 1: it has to do as I've read. It has to

653
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:32,280
Speaker 1: do with the trip tomine metabolism and the electro spin

654
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:36,800
Speaker 1: resonance of the psilocybin molecule. And I don't pretend to

655
00:40:36,880 --> 00:40:39,960
Speaker 1: understand it entirely, but it does seem to boil down

656
00:40:39,960 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 1: to a sort of voice sound based manipulation of reality

657
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 1: while one is within an altered state of mind. Okay,

658
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:51,359
Speaker 1: So I, when you're talking about mckennay, you never know

659
00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 1: exactly It's it's hard to tell exactly how magical he's

660
00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 1: claiming something. Are they talking about literally actually changing external

661
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:03,840
Speaker 1: physical reality by the use of of UH sounds and

662
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:09,719
Speaker 1: and and hallucinations in the mind. Um, it's it's hard

663
00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:13,200
Speaker 1: to say, right, I mean, it's when with a lot

664
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 1: of this kind of stuff one gets the idea of

665
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:17,560
Speaker 1: it's like the chasing of some sort of of an

666
00:41:17,600 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 1: idea that it's all about, sort of, you know, the

667
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:24,240
Speaker 1: ideas coming together things that they've read and and taking

668
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:29,279
Speaker 1: on new forms within the psychedelic experience. So yeah, it's

669
00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:33,040
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to say, But I was curious on

670
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:35,760
Speaker 1: reading somebody else's take on all this, so I found

671
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: a paper titled The Weird Naturalism of the Brothers McKenna

672
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: by Eric Davis for the International Journal for the Study

673
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,239
Speaker 1: of New Religions, published in two thousand and sixteen. And

674
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:48,480
Speaker 1: this is an expert This is one of the things

675
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: that Davis says here. Davis writes, quote, Dennis believed that

676
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:55,360
Speaker 1: a psycho fluid could be generated through the vocal effect.

677
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: He had discovered a psycho audible warp phenomenon that generated

678
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 1: a specific kind of energy field that can rupture three

679
00:42:03,480 --> 00:42:07,880
Speaker 1: dimensional space. Of course, had this wild theory. The buzz

680
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: that Dennis hurt in his head was caused by the

681
00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:15,520
Speaker 1: electron spin resonance or es R of the metabolizing psilocybin

682
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 1: alkaloids inserting themselves into the base pairs of his neuronal DNA.

683
00:42:21,800 --> 00:42:24,799
Speaker 1: This sound was picked up and amplified through the antenna

684
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:29,560
Speaker 1: created through this Similarly, resonating harmine alkaloids let loose from

685
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 1: the ayahuasca vine that they nippled. By imitating this sound

686
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:37,439
Speaker 1: with his voice, it's harmonic frequencies would be canceled out,

687
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 1: calling the harmine psilocybine DNA complex to drop into a stable,

688
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 1: superconducting hyperdimensional state with apocalyptic results. Okay, okay, I don't

689
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:52,759
Speaker 1: want to be unkind, but this reads to me as

690
00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:55,239
Speaker 1: another one of these cases of somebody who's kind of

691
00:42:55,239 --> 00:43:00,840
Speaker 1: a psychonaut having a a profound, very person only meaningful,

692
00:43:01,080 --> 00:43:05,400
Speaker 1: ineffable experience on a psychedelic and then trying desperately to

693
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:09,640
Speaker 1: sort of literally externalize that experience and say, no, it

694
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 1: has some kind of literal, causative physical reality to it. Yeah,

695
00:43:15,080 --> 00:43:17,319
Speaker 1: and they're there. I think that's that's fair. And then

696
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:19,840
Speaker 1: they're also of course again, you go into a psychedelic

697
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:23,640
Speaker 1: experience bringing all of these other pre existing ideas and

698
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 1: certainly they seem to be tapping into some alchemical concepts

699
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 1: as well. Davis says that it's difficult to really figure

700
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 1: out what Dennis is getting at here, but there are

701
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: a lot of comparisons to the alchemical concept of the

702
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:40,560
Speaker 1: Philosopher's Stone and the creation of this belief that the

703
00:43:40,880 --> 00:43:45,399
Speaker 1: quote from Dennis's quote, the ultimate technological artifact that would

704
00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 1: hold a great deal of power over reality. That's getting

705
00:43:48,400 --> 00:43:52,920
Speaker 1: into the apocalyptic results. Uh so, uh so, yeah, yeah,

706
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:55,440
Speaker 1: there's there's there's more than a little alchemy tied up

707
00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:59,880
Speaker 1: into this concept. Now, the idea of the psychedelic ex

708
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:02,759
Speaker 1: arians and all of this is interesting and and elsewhere

709
00:44:03,200 --> 00:44:06,160
Speaker 1: mckinna does connect all of this to whistling in a

710
00:44:06,280 --> 00:44:09,640
Speaker 1: more well, I guess, grounded manner. So this is a

711
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:13,400
Speaker 1: quote I believe this is from one of mckinna's many talks.

712
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:16,920
Speaker 1: He says, quote, Ayahuasca is different by sound, by song,

713
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 1: by whistling, and its ability to transform sound, including vocal sound,

714
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:24,880
Speaker 1: into the visual spectrum indicates that some kind of information

715
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 1: processing membrane or boundary is being overcome by the pharmacology

716
00:44:29,480 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: of this stuff and things normally experienced as acoustically experienced

717
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:38,080
Speaker 1: become visibly beheld, and it's quite spectacular unquote. And this

718
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:40,880
Speaker 1: would definitely be I think an example of tarrance of

719
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 1: Terence speaking about something uh with a little more of

720
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:48,319
Speaker 1: the science hat on as opposed to the psychonod hat right.

721
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there he's describing the phenomenology of

722
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,880
Speaker 1: drug induced synesthesia, the idea that when under the influence

723
00:44:55,880 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 1: of some psychedelics, you can the perception of one normal

724
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:05,399
Speaker 1: uh piece of sense information can can bleed over into another. So,

725
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:09,320
Speaker 1: for example, people on certain psychedelics often report being able

726
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: to like hear colors or see sounds and so forth. Yeah,

727
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: now now getting into what Terrence is talking about here

728
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:20,880
Speaker 1: concerning ayahuasca. Um Aahuasca, for anyone unfamiliar, is a psychoactive

729
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:24,840
Speaker 1: brew used for ceremonial purposes among various indigenous peoples of

730
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:28,200
Speaker 1: the Amazon Basin. Taking it can result in an altered

731
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:32,160
Speaker 1: state of consciousness, complete with hallucinations. And for a little

732
00:45:32,160 --> 00:45:34,080
Speaker 1: more about whistling and all of this, I turned to

733
00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:38,000
Speaker 1: a paper. This is a paper by Fred Katz and

734
00:45:38,080 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 1: Maryline dobb Ken at De Rios published in the Journal

735
00:45:41,320 --> 00:45:45,480
Speaker 1: of American Folklore. Again, it's the ninety one and it's

736
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 1: titled Hallucinogenic Music, An Analysis of the role of Whistling

737
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:54,120
Speaker 1: in Peruvian ayahuasca healing sessions and in at the author's

738
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:57,279
Speaker 1: point out that drug induced states and music tend to

739
00:45:57,280 --> 00:46:00,400
Speaker 1: go hand in hand, and traditions around the world that

740
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: involves psychoactive substances. They're talking about religious traditions here, But

741
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:08,040
Speaker 1: I think this this also carries on into modern psychedelic

742
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 1: culture as well. Only ancient societies they didn't have Steve

743
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:14,319
Speaker 1: Roach albums to listen to. They couldn't just play something

744
00:46:14,320 --> 00:46:17,560
Speaker 1: on their iPhone. They had their traditional musical instruments, they

745
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 1: had their voices, they had their songs, and they had

746
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:23,239
Speaker 1: their whistles. Yeah, I think it is totally not an

747
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 1: accident that psychedelic drugs are widely associated with music in

748
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. I don't think that's a coincidence because

749
00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:32,720
Speaker 1: I don't know, because The Grateful Dead was a band

750
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 1: instead of visual artists or filmmakers or something. I mean,

751
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 1: I think that there is sort of an inherent connection

752
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:43,160
Speaker 1: between psychedelics and music, that the altered state of consciousness

753
00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 1: for some reason is very well complimented by music. We

754
00:46:48,200 --> 00:46:50,880
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. The patterns created by music

755
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:54,240
Speaker 1: tend to be very pleasing to people in in altered

756
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 1: states of consciousness and uh, and it's sort of a

757
00:46:57,160 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 1: feedback loop to right that there's there's this idea that

758
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:03,279
Speaker 1: people on psychedelics often enjoy listening to music but also

759
00:47:03,320 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 1: want to create music. Yeah, I mean, the psychedelic experience

760
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:09,920
Speaker 1: can change the way the music is heard, the way

761
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:12,600
Speaker 1: it's interpreted, and so forth. And they get into this

762
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:14,839
Speaker 1: a little bit in the paper. They describe the use

763
00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:20,200
Speaker 1: of whistling incantations with these ayahuasca ceremonies, which are thought

764
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:24,240
Speaker 1: to allow one to evoke the spirit of the vine

765
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:26,880
Speaker 1: for healing purposes. And they point out that on one hand,

766
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 1: the uses of sacred music and a sit in these

767
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:31,719
Speaker 1: sorts of situations, this is not all that different from

768
00:47:31,760 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: the use of say Gregorian chant and med evil Christianity.

769
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 1: You know, we we also do we can't we can't

770
00:47:37,239 --> 00:47:39,720
Speaker 1: go into a scenario like this and forget that music

771
00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:43,880
Speaker 1: on its own is already this powerful thing that that

772
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 1: alters thought, um, you know, and can can make minds

773
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:51,080
Speaker 1: work in unison with each other. But we do have

774
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 1: the added psychedelic factor here to take into account, um

775
00:47:54,800 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: and uh and and this is where where it gets

776
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:00,600
Speaker 1: perhaps a little more interesting with the ayahuasca scenario. They

777
00:48:00,640 --> 00:48:04,240
Speaker 1: write quote such phenomena as the slowing down or changing

778
00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: of time. Perception must be related to how music is

779
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:12,240
Speaker 1: perceived by the individual under the effects of powerful alkaloids

780
00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:17,240
Speaker 1: harmone and harmline present in the ayahuasca potion. The number

781
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 1: of metronomic markings listed earlier the paper includes some sheet

782
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 1: music notations of the whistling may not indeed be perceived

783
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:28,640
Speaker 1: as they would in an ordinary state. So that's worth

784
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:31,279
Speaker 1: thinking about the idea of of music that is is

785
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 1: not only not not only is it interesting when it

786
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 1: is heard during this particular altered state of consciousness, but

787
00:48:39,160 --> 00:48:41,759
Speaker 1: it is created to be heard in this altered state

788
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:45,439
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Yeah, well, I would say that that there

789
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:49,120
Speaker 1: are other parallels to modern popular music there. Um, what

790
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 1: would you say about genres of music that are most

791
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:56,839
Speaker 1: often associated with the psychedelic experiences. I would say they

792
00:48:56,880 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 1: tend to be more sort of meandering and repetitive. And

793
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:03,759
Speaker 1: I think that's because you know, like jam bands and

794
00:49:03,800 --> 00:49:06,759
Speaker 1: stuff for or stoner metal or any of those things,

795
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:10,280
Speaker 1: that they tend to create these um patterns that repeat

796
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: a lot and are are less tight and focused than

797
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:17,239
Speaker 1: say a normal two and a half minute pop song. Uh,

798
00:49:17,280 --> 00:49:19,920
Speaker 1: and that has that clearly has something to do again

799
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 1: with the phenomenology of the psychedelic experience, that there's something

800
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:25,520
Speaker 1: about like sort of getting into a state of mind

801
00:49:25,600 --> 00:49:28,760
Speaker 1: and lingering there and maybe changes in the perception of

802
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:31,840
Speaker 1: time and patterns and stuff. Yeah, that's a that's a

803
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 1: good point about the repetition because you think you can

804
00:49:34,120 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: think of various, right or different genres of popular music

805
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 1: today that have strong connections to like psychedelic drug culture things.

806
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:46,799
Speaker 1: Is different to say citrants and say doom metal. You know,

807
00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:49,360
Speaker 1: you wouldn't mistake one for the other. But when you

808
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:53,520
Speaker 1: get into like long h uses of repetition, there are

809
00:49:53,560 --> 00:49:57,439
Speaker 1: similarities there. But so, okay, that's music specifically and why

810
00:49:57,760 --> 00:50:00,320
Speaker 1: certain kinds of music might traditionally be a so seated

811
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,719
Speaker 1: with these ceremonies that involves psychedelics. But like, what what

812
00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: about the specific characteristics of whistling would come in right,

813
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 1: So to bring us back to this ayahuasca scenario, you

814
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:14,640
Speaker 1: have someone taking the ayahuasca beginning to have this experience

815
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:17,640
Speaker 1: and they're being guided by a shaman the shaman is

816
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:22,360
Speaker 1: using whistling as part of their guidance. So the authors

817
00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 1: point out in the seventy one paper, the music seems

818
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:27,520
Speaker 1: to have an effect on the visuals that the individual

819
00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:31,600
Speaker 1: under the influence of ayahuasca reports, and that the shaman

820
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 1: leading the ceremony and guiding the individual through the experience

821
00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:38,839
Speaker 1: will alter their use of melodies as needed, such as

822
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:43,360
Speaker 1: one example being in response to the patient UH, the

823
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:47,960
Speaker 1: individual taking that has taken the drug, experiencing nausea or

824
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:51,520
Speaker 1: or vomiting. Different melodies are said to evoke different sorts

825
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:54,719
Speaker 1: of visions, and the music the whistling is said to

826
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: help push the individual past the naza nasea, past the vomiting,

827
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:02,640
Speaker 1: past and initial anxiety that is a part of the UH,

828
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:06,319
Speaker 1: the the experience, and into the desired alternate state that

829
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:09,800
Speaker 1: is often said to sort of exist beyond the nausea,

830
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:14,200
Speaker 1: beyond the vomiting, beyond the initial like physical reaction to

831
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:20,319
Speaker 1: the substances. I wonder if the specific potency of whistling

832
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:23,120
Speaker 1: there and not just any type of singing or drumming

833
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:26,440
Speaker 1: or anything like that. UH. It might have something to

834
00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:29,799
Speaker 1: do with the specific bioacoustic properties of whistling that we

835
00:51:29,800 --> 00:51:33,840
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, like the ability of whistling to cut

836
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:38,399
Speaker 1: through other ambient sounds and to use a music engineer's term,

837
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:41,440
Speaker 1: to cut through the mix uh in a way that

838
00:51:41,480 --> 00:51:45,960
Speaker 1: many other types of of naturally produced music wouldn't, say,

839
00:51:46,040 --> 00:51:49,239
Speaker 1: you know, singing or drumming or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, because

840
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:51,319
Speaker 1: you can imagine this scenario where the shaman is is

841
00:51:51,320 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 1: having to cut through probably quite a bit. I mean,

842
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:56,120
Speaker 1: obviously this is not something that this experience is likely

843
00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:59,400
Speaker 1: not taking place in an urban environment. But there there

844
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 1: may be the sound sounds of of nature outside of

845
00:52:02,680 --> 00:52:06,279
Speaker 1: the enclosure that one is having this experience in. There

846
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:10,920
Speaker 1: may be other you know, sounds within the uh, the enclosure,

847
00:52:11,600 --> 00:52:14,319
Speaker 1: and of course there is the physical experience that's going

848
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:16,960
Speaker 1: on that coul that would be quite distracting. And here

849
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:19,759
Speaker 1: is the shaman with this whistle, this music that is

850
00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:23,280
Speaker 1: cutting through all that, or to cut through hallucinated sounds.

851
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:26,440
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, I thought there's one more quote from

852
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 1: the paper here I thought was key quote. It is

853
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:33,880
Speaker 1: possible that the patients augmented suggestibility encounters in the presence

854
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:37,200
Speaker 1: of the healer a creative source and origin of music

855
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:42,920
Speaker 1: which alleviates anxiety, tranquilizes and causes a turning inward by

856
00:52:42,920 --> 00:52:48,240
Speaker 1: the musical evocation of particular visions. And so that turning

857
00:52:48,280 --> 00:52:52,440
Speaker 1: inward reminds me once more of those descriptions of Chinese

858
00:52:52,480 --> 00:52:57,160
Speaker 1: transcendental whistling and the inward journey there so, and in

859
00:52:57,160 --> 00:52:58,759
Speaker 1: a way, I kind of feel like it comes comes

860
00:52:58,800 --> 00:53:03,279
Speaker 1: full circle there um. So you know. So, so this

861
00:53:03,360 --> 00:53:06,600
Speaker 1: is all I think it accounts for a handful of

862
00:53:06,600 --> 00:53:11,480
Speaker 1: of probably um extreme examples of whistling that is not

863
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:16,200
Speaker 1: mundane whistling that takes on this heightened meaning. Be be

864
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:21,280
Speaker 1: that heightened meaning reliant upon some sort of uh, psychoactive property,

865
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:25,000
Speaker 1: or merely just some sort of an intense thought process

866
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:28,239
Speaker 1: and meditation ritual. Yeah. So I was just looking back

867
00:53:28,239 --> 00:53:30,680
Speaker 1: at those lines you quoted from the Rhapsody on whistling,

868
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:34,760
Speaker 1: the translation of it um, and so I'm thinking about

869
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:37,840
Speaker 1: that with reference to the psychedelic experience, which you know,

870
00:53:37,920 --> 00:53:39,759
Speaker 1: in many cases, I think it is thought to be

871
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:45,359
Speaker 1: largely associative. That a big characteristic of the religious psychedelic experiences,

872
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 1: maybe um, forming associations between things in the mind where

873
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:52,840
Speaker 1: the cause of that association is not obvious or is

874
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: not literal. And to that point, I think of the

875
00:53:56,239 --> 00:53:59,279
Speaker 1: line in the Rhapsody that says, for every category he

876
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:02,880
Speaker 1: has a song to everything he perceives. He tunes a

877
00:54:02,960 --> 00:54:07,040
Speaker 1: melody the idea that there are certain whistles or or

878
00:54:07,160 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 1: or sequences of whistles, maybe like tunes connected to ideas,

879
00:54:11,520 --> 00:54:14,960
Speaker 1: even though there there's no way that that tune that

880
00:54:15,000 --> 00:54:19,279
Speaker 1: you just whistled actually means a leopard, or actually means

881
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:23,080
Speaker 1: a house, or means a tree, But for some reason

882
00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:25,640
Speaker 1: in your mind, suddenly it does. And in fact, the

883
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:27,640
Speaker 1: same thing is true of language. That's you know, one

884
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:30,239
Speaker 1: of the weird fundamental features of language, when you stop

885
00:54:30,280 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 1: to think about it, is that the word tree has

886
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:35,799
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the tree, that the association that

887
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:38,960
Speaker 1: you make between them is is purely a learned association.

888
00:54:39,320 --> 00:54:42,920
Speaker 1: That it's not to be found anywhere in nature. The

889
00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:45,200
Speaker 1: same would be true of the melody. Yet for some

890
00:54:45,280 --> 00:54:48,640
Speaker 1: reason in your mind you kind of create a language

891
00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:52,319
Speaker 1: that suddenly that melody means the concept. Yeah. So I

892
00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:55,000
Speaker 1: think on one hand these examples are are the extreme,

893
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 1: but they also do get to some of the core

894
00:54:57,600 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: realities of whistling that we've been discussing all along. Uh so, so, yeah,

895
00:55:02,160 --> 00:55:04,319
Speaker 1: this is this has been a fascinating journey thus far,

896
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:06,359
Speaker 1: and we're not done yet. We have so much more

897
00:55:06,480 --> 00:55:09,759
Speaker 1: to discuss. In the next episode, we're going to get

898
00:55:09,800 --> 00:55:13,799
Speaker 1: into whistling and antiquity, uh basic questions like did the

899
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:17,120
Speaker 1: ancient Romans whistle? Well, it's it's a more complicated question

900
00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: than you might think, as well as what happens when

901
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:23,640
Speaker 1: God whistle? Oh God, the whistling, the whistling and the

902
00:55:23,680 --> 00:55:26,840
Speaker 1: divine Yes, that's that also, that was the whole question

903
00:55:26,840 --> 00:55:28,600
Speaker 1: that took me off guard. But that'll be fun to

904
00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:31,319
Speaker 1: discuss as well. Also, I think we want to talk

905
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:33,920
Speaker 1: something about the psychology of whistling that might further inform

906
00:55:34,040 --> 00:55:37,239
Speaker 1: some of the discussions we've had today. Yeah, all right,

907
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:39,399
Speaker 1: well we were We hope that you're enjoying this, uh,

908
00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:41,640
Speaker 1: this journey as much as we are. And of course

909
00:55:41,640 --> 00:55:44,880
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everybody, because whistling is something

910
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:48,160
Speaker 1: that that all or or most of you are are

911
00:55:48,200 --> 00:55:50,759
Speaker 1: somewhat familiar with, or you're gonna have particular connections to

912
00:55:50,800 --> 00:55:53,759
Speaker 1: it in general or specific connections even to some of

913
00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:56,640
Speaker 1: the traditions that we've discussed here. We'd love to hear

914
00:55:56,680 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 1: from you, so definitely right in about your whistle and

915
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:03,840
Speaker 1: the whistling of others. In the meantime, new episodes of

916
00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:06,279
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the core episodes published on

917
00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:08,919
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesday's we do a short form

918
00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:11,600
Speaker 1: artifact or monster fact. On Monday's we do listener mail.

919
00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:14,560
Speaker 1: On Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns and just

920
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:17,239
Speaker 1: talk about a strange film. Huge thanks as always to

921
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:20,600
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would

922
00:56:20,600 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on

923
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:25,360
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,

924
00:56:25,440 --> 00:56:27,480
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at

925
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff

926
00:56:38,160 --> 00:56:40,360
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

927
00:56:40,719 --> 00:56:43,040
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart

928
00:56:43,080 --> 00:56:45,839
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your

929
00:56:45,840 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: favorite shows by Bliss has a time back by a

930
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:03,239
Speaker 1: pro