WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Whistling, Part 4 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:08.240 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:09.600 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:12.520 And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We're going on 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:17.000 into the vault. This episode originally aired August sixteenth, twenty 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:21.080 twenty two, and it's Part four of our series on whistling. 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:26.560 Enjoy the Whistling, Part four, The Final Conflict, Let's Do It. 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:38.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:41.920 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:43.280 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:45.680 And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part four 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.199 of our series about whistling. This episode's going to be 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:53.720 a little weird today because we literally already recorded this 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:59.000 episode and then lost the whole thing to a technical glitch. Rob, 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.240 I'm understand that as I was talking when we were 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:06.039 recording this episode the first time, it was just constantly 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:08.959 making the sounds of hell in your ears and can 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:11.960 you describe the terror and the anguish? 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:14.920 It was kind of like your dialogue was an Afix 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:18.800 twin remix the entire time, and so at first it 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:20.840 was I was like, Okay, I can I can put 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:23.800 up with this. This is fine. We've already gone so 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:25.520 far into the episode, we should just you know, finish 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:28.479 it out. By the end of it, it was kind 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:30.680 of headache and doucing. But I was like, well, at 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:33.640 least we got the episode. This is just audio distortion 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:35.840 that I'm hearing. It's not going to transfer over to 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:40.240 the recorded finished product. Sadly it did, and so here 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:40.600 we are. 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:42.040 It's the worst. 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:42.320 Yeah. 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:43.760 We were like, well, at least it won't be on 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:48.320 the actual audio, and then it was, and so here 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:50.920 we are. Okay, so this is this is take two. 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.840 Yeah, I could have been much worse, So no big deal. Hey, 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:57.840 looking on the bright side, we got a rehearsal in there. 0:01:57.880 --> 0:01:59.920 How often do we have a rehearsal for a by 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:02.360 guest episodes? So I think it's going to be stronger 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:03.160 because of that. 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:03.640 Do you think? 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:03.760 So? 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:05.800 I was like, is it gonna make the episode better 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:07.920 or worse? I really don't know. We'll see. 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:10.120 We'll see out better better for sure. 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:14.040 All Right, So we're picking up in this series about whistling. 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.079 Let's see, what did we talk about in the previous episodes. 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:20.240 Yeah, so we're picking up where we left off from 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:24.400 the last Whistling episode, which was Whistling, Part three regarding 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:28.799 superstitions and beliefs concerning whistling. We were talking about whistling 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:32.800 as an ill omen at sea, as a potential mark 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:37.760 of witchcraft, and women as bad theater luck in England 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:42.359 and much more. So we're going to continue this journey 0:02:42.400 --> 0:02:46.400 through folklore and mythology concerning whistling, and we're going to 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:49.720 be referencing some of what we covered in another previous 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:55.400 episode about Chinese transcendental whistling, in which a specialized Taoist 0:02:55.560 --> 0:03:00.360 form of whistling was almost like meditation, but was also 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.320 said to give one both insight and perhaps even power 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.200 over the energy of things in the world. So once 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.079 more I'm going to be referencing that excellent whistling and 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:14.840 Antiquity paper by AV Van Stakellenberg, but also some other sources. Now, 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:17.760 according to Ed Edwards, in the two thousand and nine 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:21.639 paper The Principles of Whistling, a ten dynasty text called 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:25.560 the shau Chi says that whistling simply calls out to 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:29.799 all spirits, good or bad, and sta Kellenberg summarizes this 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:35.040 as kind of a supernatural neutrality concerning whistling. So whistling 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:39.320 isn't something that is used by bad people or necessarily 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.280 use by good people. It's just it's this thing that 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:47.200 signals out into the world around us, into the unknown, 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:51.040 and you know, you could potentially attract the attention of 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:53.880 things you don't want to attract the attention of. But 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.440 it also could be basically harmless. It kind of depends 0:03:57.480 --> 0:03:58.400 on the circumstances. 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:02.320 Yeah. The raps Un whistling, which was a text we 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:05.520 cited in a previous episode. It talks about whistling having 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:10.120 a kind of withdrawing or distancing power on the whistler. 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:12.640 It says, you know, like the whistling gentleman sort of 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.600 distances himself from the things of the world and lets 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:17.080 out a long drawn whistle. 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:19.360 Yeah, and that's a thread we're going to definitely come 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:22.440 back to. But first I wanted to add another note 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:25.240 on whistling in Chinese history. So first of all, you know, 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:30.000 anytime we're talking about Chinese history, Chinese culture covers a 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.880 great deal of territory, both in terms of distance and 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:37.760 in terms of years, So you know, it's hard to 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:41.800 say with any certainty like this is the traditional Chinese 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:45.120 view of it versus another thing. But mainly, I don't 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:48.279 want to imply here that that whistling was just something 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.360 that Dallas sorcerers engaged in. I was looking at a 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:54.240 paper by Julungsu from two thousand and six titled Whistling 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:59.359 and its Magico Religious Tradition, A comparative Perspective, and at 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:01.920 this points out that there are Han Dynasty accounts of 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:06.560 women whistling for both sorrow and this seems in some 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:12.279 cases to tap into this idea of sighing as well. Again, 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:15.640 look thinking back to previous episodes where we've discussed whistling 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:20.320 and it's similarity to other non linguistic sounds that we make, 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:24.920 other breath based sounds that can be used to communicate 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:27.920 something or to get somebody's attention. 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:31.279 Yeah, and we were talking about cases where sometimes it's 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:35.960 maybe difficult to precisely translate a word because a word 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:39.000 could be interpreted as meaning like whistling, or could mean 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.520 hissing or some other kind of controlled expulsion of breath. 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:47.120 There's sort of some blurriness in the breath based lexicon. 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:50.640 Now, according to Sue here, it's not just for sorrow. 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.960 There are also accounts of women whistling out of happiness 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:57.080 or joy. It does seem like it is linked to 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.919 traditions of wailing in some cases, and sort of wailing 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:06.200 one might might might engage in, say at a grave, 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:09.680 that sort of thing, but also not just women. In 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:13.480 other sources as well, even the Yellow Emperor is said 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:17.840 to whistle, but the terminology here might actually mean hiss, 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:21.039 or it might mean a sigh. And in the Classic 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.880 of Mountains and Seas, the Queen Mother uses a whistle 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.280 as a kind of battle cry to disply her ferocity. 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:32.240 So it's kind of a wide spectrum of possible uses 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:37.320 for the whistle even within Chinese tradition here now. Sue 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:40.359 also points out that while yes, in English customs and 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.640 Western customs there are a lot of these superstitions against 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:47.479 women whistling particularly, and we don't really see this in 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:50.960 Chinese traditions, though it is sometimes seen as ominous in 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:54.880 general whistling due to the connection between whistling and various 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:59.120 death rituals and you know, and attracting the spirits, but 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:03.200 it is more in inherently magical and not gendered. Sue 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.480 also shares some other examples from Western traditions to you know, 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.320 for a comparative experience here, but they point out here 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:13.040 quote the Germans believe that a woman's whistling will make 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:15.960 the angels weep and the devil's rejoice. 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:18.800 This is This would be a fantastic basis for a 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:22.400 German metal band, all female metal band that just employs 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:23.840 whistling instead of singing. 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.880 Oh, now, that's a question to what extent has whistling 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:32.360 been used in metal? The metal scene has come to 0:07:32.480 --> 0:07:36.120 encompass a lot of different sounds and ideas, but I 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:38.040 don't know if they've gotten around a whistling have they? 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:41.640 Well, what's the metal version of the rule thirty four idea? 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:43.680 It's kind of like, if you can imagine it, there 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.160 is a metal a metal band of it, right. 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:48.280 I guess it depends on what you classifies metal too, 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.280 Like are the Scorpions metal? I don't know, probably not, 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:56.720 probably not now. Sue also shares that among various Chinese minorities, 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.320 whistling while you work, as in Snow White and the 0:08:00.360 --> 0:08:04.000 song the Dwarfs Sing, whistling while you work, at least 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:08.600 in the field was thought to summon demons to damaged crops, 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:11.040 or it could summon demons to damage crops, so it 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.520 was discouraged. This Sioue Stresses does not seem to be 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:18.000 linked to say dallast ideas regarding whistling, but is instead 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:22.440 rooted in particular folk traditions. Now here's another really interesting 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:26.680 one that Sue brings up. Sue shares an example from Mythraism. 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:31.120 So Mythraism for sci fi fans out there, some of 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.640 you might be familiar with this religion because you may 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:39.240 have watched the really excellently weird HBO mac sci fi 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:43.640 series Raised by Wolves, in which one of the two 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:46.920 factions that's going out into space and colonizing other worlds 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:53.079 are are devoted Mithraists. And you might well think, oh, 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.520 this is some sort of cool religion they made up 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.400 for the show, but it is not. It is this 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:01.400 is a reference to the Roman street cult of mithras 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:06.240 and in there recorded rituals, and Joe, You're going to 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:08.319 get into this a little bit and talk about what 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:11.440 we mean when we when we bring out the idea 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:15.839 of recorded rituals of Mithraism. But supposedly there is a 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:19.400 system of whistling and tongue clicking that was used to 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:24.679 attract what Sue refers to as theeomorphic star deities. 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:30.240 Oh, theeomorphic meaning animal formed, so like beast beast forms 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:31.400 of star gods. 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:32.400 Yeah. 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.600 Now I haven't seen the show Raised by Wolves, but 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:38.319 I think i'm to understand you were saying that the 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:41.280 title there is a reference to like the myth about 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:43.640 the founding of Rome, the Romulus and Rima story. 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:46.439 Yeah, that's right. That seems to be the direct reference 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:49.280 made there, and there are other references as well, and 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.360 just a lot of just sheer weirdness on top of it. 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:54.160 So if nothing else, it's a show that's going to 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:56.880 give you lots of strange imagery. It's kind of like 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:04.520 Ridley Scott's continuation of the android centered alien sequels or 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:06.040 prequels that he was working on. 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:10.800 Hmm, okay, so well anyway, I love the idea that 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:14.920 the show would incorporate actual things about Mithraism because I've 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:18.000 long thought we should do a series or at least 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:21.600 an episode on Mithraism because I find it really interesting 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:25.760 because it is a religion that clearly commanded an enormous 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.600 following and had huge cultural significance in the Roman Empire. 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.880 Like you can find the ruins of their underground temples 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:38.120 called Mithrium, and they're all throughout Roman settlements, and yet 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:41.960 we know way less about this religion than one might assume. 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:44.480 And one of the big reasons for that is that, 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.040 as far as I understood, and I guess the text 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.600 that you just referred to maybe a counterexample to this, 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:55.800 but modern scholars generally thought, we have basically no access 0:10:55.840 --> 0:11:00.360 to any primary literary sources about the religion. So if 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:03.040 it had religious texts, we don't have any of them, 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:05.680 and so what we know about it we've had to 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:09.319 try to piece together through detective work based on imagery 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:15.080 and simple inscriptions and archaeological clues and comments and references 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:17.960 made by external writers trying to say, hey, you know, 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:21.080 this is what's going on with Mithraism. So for a 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:26.600 kind of hopefully interesting analogy, imagine trying to understand what 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:31.079 Christianity was if it like mostly died out and disappeared 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:34.160 in the fourth century or so, and we did not 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.360 have any of the writings of the New Testament or 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:41.040 any other writings by Church fathers or any other early Christians, 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:45.480 and we were trying to reconstruct what Christianity was based 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:50.560 entirely on like imagery and artifacts and what other external 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:55.160 writers said about it. So it's a really fascinating problem, 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:58.720 and one of the most common images in Roman mythraism 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.800 is apparently important scene from their mythology of the god 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:07.880 Mithras slaughtering some kind of divine bull. But there's another 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.560 interesting complication here too, which is that there is a 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:16.040 pre Roman Persian cult of Mithras or Mitra, which is 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:19.960 a Zoroastrian or pre Zoroastrian god of the Persian people 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.079 who's kind of a solar deity of justice who I 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.800 think was associated with contracts and the honoring of bargains. 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.920 And then later you get this widespread Roman mystery cult 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:34.920 that seems to be based on an appropriated version of 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.600 that deity. And of course we know the Romans loved 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:42.840 absorbing and reprocessing other cultures gods, like the main Roman 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:47.040 pantheon is mostly a photocopy of the Greek. And then 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:50.760 you've got the Persian Mithras becoming the Roman savior god 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.319 of some kind, and even the way you can think 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:57.040 about a Jewish messianic figure in Jesus and the original 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:01.440 context of monotheistic Judaism rather quickly becomes a popular savior 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:04.679 god to people throughout the empire who had been Polytheists 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.920 up until the moment they converted to Christianity, So that 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:12.040 whole process is really interesting. But the idea of a 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:15.120 text of Mithraism was very interesting to me because I 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:17.320 didn't think we had one of these. But this is 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:20.199 referring to something called the mithras Liturgy, which I think 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.880 is commonly dated to roughly the fourth century. But there's 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:31.079 dispute about whether it actually reflects original Mithraic theology or 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:33.640 whether it's some kind of later synthesis. 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.360 Yeah, this is the quote from it that Sue shares 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.880 in the paper. Quote. But after you have said the 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:43.760 second prayer, where silence is twice commanded, then whistle twice 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.120 and click twice with the tongue, and immediately you will 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:49.960 see stars coming down from the disk of the sun, 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:54.600 five pointed in large numbers and filling the whole air. 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:58.319 But say once again, silence, silence. 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:02.680 Whistle twice, click twice, and then shut up. Here come 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:03.280 the gods. 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:08.840 Now, coming back to we were talking earlier about scholars 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:13.640 in the woods. In Chinese history, there is this idea 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:15.880 that comes up, Sue mentions, and we see this in 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:20.440 the Han dynasty, for example, where you would have Confucian scholars, 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.400 other reclusive scholars who would whistle as a means of 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:29.360 expressing disdain for the world and or their absolute freedom. 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.120 So this is an interesting concept, and it was also 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:38.480 done by other classes as well, Sue writes quote in general, poets, hermits, 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:42.200 and people of all types in the Six Dynasties utilized 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:47.160 whistling to express a sense of untrammeled individual freedom, or 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:51.600 an attitude of disobedience to authority or traditional ceremony, or 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.920 to dispel suppressed feelings and indignation. Whistling was not limited 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.160 to a certain class, but was practiced by men from 0:14:58.200 --> 0:14:59.480 all walks of life. 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:03.080 This idea of whistling as a kind of like middle 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:06.000 finger to social customs and authority. So it's like you 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:10.560 might imagine the behavior of Diogenes the cynic, or something 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:14.920 just completely behaving in inappropriate ways in public as an 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:17.720 expression of contempt for norms and authority. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.720 Yeah, I whistle, I do what I want Now another 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:23.960 paper I look to when I was looking around for 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:28.120 various superstitions, we of course found superstitions regarding whistling at sea, 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:32.240 but we also find them in another interesting place below 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:37.480 the surface of the earth, in mines ooh, yeah, And 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:39.480 I hadn't really thought about this, but this is apparently 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:42.720 a big one paper I was looking as an older paper. 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:46.280 This is California Miners Folklore. This is from a nineteen 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:51.400 forty two edition of California Folklore Quarterly written by Waylan 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:56.760 d Hand. And yeah, it's a really interesting read. This 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:58.680 one's out there on the internet if anyone wants a 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:03.720 deeper dive into it. But for example, he goes into 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:07.960 the fear of the Tommy Knockers in the tunnels. 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.760 Now, Rob, I am only familiar with Tommy Knockers from 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:15.520 the Stephen King novel or actually I never read the novel. 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.560 I think I watched the made for TV movie adaptation 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:21.880 of it, which is quite bad, and I think Stephen 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:26.720 King himself regards that as a terrible book. But I 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:29.680 don't know what the original reference here is in the book. 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:31.479 I think it's aliens. 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:33.920 Yeah, I can never get very far with the book, but. 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:36.320 Not aliens here. 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:41.400 No, but it apparently refers to a fair variety of things, 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:43.640 and they're very haunting and they kind of I feel 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.400 like they also kind of connect to perhaps older European 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:51.280 ideas of creatures that live in the Earth, getting into 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:55.480 various ideas of dwarfs and so forth. The Cobald, Yeah, 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:59.040 the Cobald. This is what Hand writes in the paper. 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:02.760 These daizens of the deep dark chambers of the Earth 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:07.600 are conceived in different forms as disembodied spirits of dead 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:12.160 miners hovering in a working as patrons, or as little 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:16.679 men elf like be whiskered and wizened. They are usually 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:20.480 thought of as benign, occasionally even assisting in the location 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:24.240 of ore bodies. If they are not so well disposed, 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:29.760 their conduct tends to be mischievous rather than malignant. Many 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:33.679 California miners, though not having themselves seen these creatures in person, 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.399 recall having seen small effigies of them made of clay 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:41.040 and set upon portal, sets to a tunnel or on 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:45.880 the lagging or elsewhere where their patronage is desired. So 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:48.640 I love that image of not only the idea that 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:53.359 there are these beings living elsewhere in the tunnels, but 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:57.840 there's this kind of we talked about a little, you know, 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:00.480 we were talking about when people set to sea, when 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.399 they return, when they're when seamen are out there on 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:06.480 the waters, there the newer religions that they have taken 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.399 to might be set aside for the older ways, the 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:14.280 older gods. And here we have this example of California 0:18:14.320 --> 0:18:20.840 miners potentially having little altars to kind of dwarven elven 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:22.240 beings in the mines. 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:23.400 That's too good. 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:26.679 So Hand discusses some other ideas as well, you know, 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:30.560 the ghosts of dead miners working in the tunnels, also 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:36.520 phantom white mules, headless mules, and strange lights. Apparently he 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:39.240 said that there weren't really that many creature myths concerning 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.040 the minds, though occasionally you would have like a cat 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:44.040 come down into the mines and would just scare the 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:47.280 Bejesus out of everybody, because it would either way, I'm imagining, 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:49.960 you know, the cat would get down there, it would 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:54.359 be lurking about, its eyes gleaming and the light and 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:58.720 just give everyone the proper spooks. But there were also 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:02.760 these superstitions about the about bad luck concerning well, first 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:05.679 of all, bringing women anywhere near the cave, but also 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:09.840 there was a widespread superstition against anyone whistling down there, 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.240 and it seems to be sort of twofold. On one hand, 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.400 there was a real fear of vibrations in the caves 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:20.760 and So there's this idea that you shouldn't whistle because 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:22.240 you don't know what that's going to do. You're going 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.840 to set up vibrations that could potentially cause a cave in. 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.400 But it also seems linked to this older, wider idea 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:33.359 that if you're whistling, you could draw in spirits and 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:37.080 hand shares. A fun little rhyme here quote whistle by 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:41.000 night you'll bring the sprite. Whistle by day you'll drive 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:41.480 them away. 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.040 And this is not a sprite you want to bring. 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:47.080 Right, right, or certainly you don't want them. You don't 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:48.800 want anything going on down there in the mind. You 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:51.800 don't want you don't want any spirits bonking about. You 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:55.080 don't want any vibrations going wild. You want everything to 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:57.400 just be as safe and quiet as possible. 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:00.640 Right, Okay, so this is not like a friendly tinker bell. 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:02.560 This would be a sprite that's going to maybe pollute 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:04.440 your ore or make a rock fall on your head 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:04.959 or something. 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:07.000 Yeah, yeah, I guess coming back to the idea of 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.000 the Tommy Knockers, it kind of comes back to the 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:12.040 sort of neutrality of spirits, right. It's the idea that well, there, 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:16.840 there are, or may be spirits around. They might do 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:18.919 some bad things, they might do some good things. We 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:22.400 probably shouldn't call them. We shouldn't call in extra spirits, 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:25.080 and we should try and be on the good side 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:26.399 of any spirits that are present. 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:35.160 Now, I think all of the examples we've talked about 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:40.760 so far are superstitions. That the way that whistling relates 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:44.120 to monsters or spirits or dangerous entities is that it's 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:48.320 something humans could do that might in some cases attract them. 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.800 So you know, be careful about whistling because you might 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.360 get a monster on your tail. But I was thinking 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:59.600 about are there stories of monsters that themselves whistle or 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:00.960 do some thing like whistling? 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:03.760 Yeah, I was curious about this. So first of all, 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:06.560 I turned to Carol Rose, who has two Extraordinary volumes, 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:08.560 one about monsters and giants and so forth, and the 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.280 others more about fairies and sprites. And there's some overlap 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:14.520 between the two books, but there are also things in 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:16.920 each book that are not covered by the other, and 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:19.520 so there were at least a couple of examples that 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:23.520 stood out. One of them is an interesting monster of 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:27.719 the people of the Xingu River in Brazil, and this 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:32.600 creature is called midhata karaya, and these are said to 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:35.240 have been giants that were as tall as the trees, 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:38.879 with fruit growing out of their armpits, which the giants 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:42.159 then consume to sustain themselves. So it sounds like they 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:46.480 weren't themselves dangerous. They weren't like eating humans. But they're big, 0:21:46.520 --> 0:21:49.120 tall giants. So if they're coming your way, you want 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:51.520 to know to get out of their way. And the 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:55.040 way you knew this is because the male giants had 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:59.119 a hole in the top of their head and it 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:01.719 emitted a high pitched whistle when they moved. 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:05.760 This is a good monster. Okay, so we got armpit autophagi. 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:08.520 They eat the fruit of their own armpits and their 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:09.280 heads whistle. 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:16.560 Yeah. Now another monster that Rose shares Here is a 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:20.200 Russian creature that I think we might well describe as 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:22.240 a sort of a harpie, or at least a harpy 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:26.359 in them the way that modern people will think of 0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:29.080 the harpy a kind of bird human hybrid, though in 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:31.280 this case I think they tend to be more male 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:36.919 than female. And its name is soleve Rachtmash, and in 0:22:37.000 --> 0:22:41.040 Russian folklore it's said to give a piercing whistle, and 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:44.560 this whistle will kill anyone who hears it, and then 0:22:44.600 --> 0:22:46.320 the monster will come and rob. 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:49.280 Your corpse, rob your corpse. So it's looking for money. 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:53.360 Yeah, yeah, it's not here to eat you either. It's 0:22:53.359 --> 0:22:56.560 interested in one thing, and it's whatever money you got on. 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:58.679 You checking your armpits for fruit. 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:04.080 Yeah. But and it's kind of an interesting thing because 0:23:04.119 --> 0:23:06.720 the next monster I wanted to mention also is not 0:23:06.840 --> 0:23:09.399 going to kill you. This one just wants to scare 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:12.760 you real bad. This is a yokai. I was looking 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:15.520 around in yokai traditions because I'm thinking, well, that's just 0:23:15.560 --> 0:23:19.879 such a rich font of creatures and beings that it 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:22.040 makes sense that there'd be something out there that whistled. 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.760 And the one that I found, some descriptions of it 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:29.200 that I found translated, of course mentioned whistling as something 0:23:29.200 --> 0:23:32.600 it does. Others don't mention it, so I can't be 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:35.280 one hundred persent certain if this is something that is 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:39.000 actually part of it or a lot of these yokaia too. 0:23:39.040 --> 0:23:42.200 They and when you get into modern ghost stories as well, 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:44.560 like there's there's there's still kind of rich in alive, 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:46.840 so something's could add it and also somethings could added 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:53.320 in translation, but this one is called Oa Guru Batari 0:23:53.800 --> 0:23:58.400 and its name apparently means nothing but blackened teeth, which 0:23:58.440 --> 0:24:01.800 already sounds pretty pretty amazing. So this is the way 0:24:01.800 --> 0:24:05.080 this okais encountered. She appears as a beautiful woman in 0:24:05.080 --> 0:24:08.240 a traditional wedding kimono, and I guess you might see 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:10.840 her at a distance, and in some cases as you 0:24:10.960 --> 0:24:13.560 get as you're interested and you move closer, she may 0:24:13.560 --> 0:24:16.760 whistle to get the attention of single men. Other accounts 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:19.800 say that she may speak in the voice of a 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:22.480 loved one. Others don't seem to mention any kind of 0:24:22.520 --> 0:24:25.080 real sound at all. But as you get closer, this 0:24:25.160 --> 0:24:28.000 is the main thing that happens. She, like a lot 0:24:28.000 --> 0:24:31.240 of these type creatures, will reveal her face. And when 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:33.760 she reveals her face, you find not a not a 0:24:33.920 --> 0:24:38.280 beautiful humanoid face, but instead a face that is largely 0:24:38.359 --> 0:24:41.600 blank except for a great, big, gaping mouth that's filled 0:24:41.640 --> 0:24:45.400 with nothing but blackened teeth. And then she cackles, and 0:24:45.480 --> 0:24:48.919 you just scream and run away terrified, And that's it. 0:24:48.960 --> 0:24:51.159 She's not interested in hurting you. She's just here to 0:24:51.200 --> 0:24:52.919 scare the Bejesus out of you. 0:24:52.960 --> 0:24:57.160 No eyes, no nose, just the teeth. And but yeah, 0:24:57.320 --> 0:24:59.840 so she doesn't bite your head off. It's just a 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:02.000 show you the teeth and get you upset. 0:25:02.240 --> 0:25:06.480 Yeah, yeah, just a ghost. Now. I didn't look super 0:25:06.520 --> 0:25:11.040 close at various pop culture and modern whistling entities, but 0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:14.160 I thought I would mention briefly that there is something 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:17.840 called the whistling Fiend in Dungeons and Dragons raven Loft setting. 0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:22.240 It's supposed to be just like this horrible monster, like 0:25:22.280 --> 0:25:25.880 a fiend from the pits of Hell, but it will 0:25:25.920 --> 0:25:30.600 whistle beautifully as it's approaching, so before anything goes terribly wrong, 0:25:30.840 --> 0:25:34.119 you'll hear the whistling. And then if you happen to 0:25:34.240 --> 0:25:36.560 witness what it does when it gets there, well it's 0:25:36.560 --> 0:25:39.639 whistling the whole time as well as it's doing, you know, horrible, 0:25:39.680 --> 0:25:43.560 gruesome things to people. Now I was I was interested 0:25:43.600 --> 0:25:45.920 to run across this. I don't really know much about 0:25:45.920 --> 0:25:49.280 old radio dramas, but there was also an old radio 0:25:49.359 --> 0:25:54.040 drama about crime and fate titled The Whistler, And apparently 0:25:54.080 --> 0:25:58.520 on this show, the titular whistler kind of emerges out 0:25:58.560 --> 0:26:01.240 of the night. It's very much a kind of you know, 0:26:01.320 --> 0:26:05.080 crime noir kind of a figure. You hear him whistling 0:26:05.080 --> 0:26:07.760 a catchy tune, and then he serves as the narrator 0:26:08.040 --> 0:26:10.760 and kind of host of the program. And there were 0:26:10.840 --> 0:26:15.359 apparently eight different Whistler films during the nineteen forties, and 0:26:15.440 --> 0:26:18.800 the first of them was nineteen forty four is the Whistler, 0:26:18.840 --> 0:26:20.840 and it was directed by William Castle. 0:26:21.200 --> 0:26:24.320 Uh, William Castle of the Tingler fame. 0:26:25.000 --> 0:26:26.480 Yeah. Yeah, so I. 0:26:26.440 --> 0:26:30.720 Have to assume he installed special seats in the movie 0:26:30.760 --> 0:26:34.159 theaters that what would the whistle into your bud or something. 0:26:35.320 --> 0:26:36.720 I don't know, it sounds like the kind of thing 0:26:36.720 --> 0:26:39.560 he would do. Yeah, I mean, he is perhaps best 0:26:39.600 --> 0:26:42.600 remembered for figuring out what kind of gimmick would get 0:26:42.600 --> 0:26:45.000 people into the theater. Maybe just the gimmick here was 0:26:45.040 --> 0:26:49.640 just the existing ip. I don't know. But I don't 0:26:49.640 --> 0:26:52.200 think you really hear about the Whistler much anymore. I 0:26:52.240 --> 0:26:54.600 think there was a nineteen fifties TV series, and I 0:26:54.600 --> 0:26:56.760 don't know that anyone's really gone back to this, but 0:26:57.080 --> 0:26:58.840 I like this idea because it's essentially it's kind of 0:26:58.880 --> 0:27:03.080 like a cripkeeper, you know, it's an anthology host and Apparently 0:27:03.119 --> 0:27:05.919 the deal with the movies is you would have the 0:27:05.960 --> 0:27:10.320 same star actor in each of them, not the Whistler 0:27:10.359 --> 0:27:13.080 but somebody else, though each story is different, and so 0:27:13.119 --> 0:27:15.040 he's playing a different character. So it's kind of like 0:27:15.080 --> 0:27:17.680 the modern version would be. I don't know, Ryan Gosling 0:27:17.800 --> 0:27:21.080 is in every Whistler movie, but Ryan Gosling plays a 0:27:21.119 --> 0:27:26.840 different protagonist, a different character that's all wound up in 0:27:26.920 --> 0:27:28.800 some sort of tale of crime and fate. 0:27:29.240 --> 0:27:31.560 We just got a producer chime in from Seth who, 0:27:31.640 --> 0:27:35.400 by the way, is actually a devoted listener to The Whistler. 0:27:35.440 --> 0:27:36.960 I mean, I don't know if you can be devoted 0:27:36.960 --> 0:27:39.800 to something that is not currently produced, but he's a fan. 0:27:39.960 --> 0:27:40.760 He says, it's great. 0:27:41.040 --> 0:27:44.960 You know this idea of the stranger who whistles, and 0:27:45.160 --> 0:27:48.960 it's unknown exactly what their knowledge is, what their powers 0:27:49.040 --> 0:27:50.520 may be. I guess you do see that in a 0:27:50.560 --> 0:27:53.719 lot of a lot of cinema. It's often We've had 0:27:53.720 --> 0:27:56.240 some listeners right in and mentioned that Westerns are a 0:27:56.240 --> 0:27:59.879 place where we see a lot of such suspicious whistling. 0:28:01.320 --> 0:28:05.479 It brings to mind a nineteen ninety one TV movie 0:28:05.520 --> 0:28:09.880 that I don't remember was especially good, but it was creepy, 0:28:10.359 --> 0:28:13.000 and it was called Into the bad Lands, and it 0:28:13.080 --> 0:28:18.440 starred Bruce Dern as this creepy old bounty hunter in black, 0:28:18.840 --> 0:28:23.080 and if memory serves, he does various things. He cooks 0:28:23.080 --> 0:28:27.560 some eggs, he shoots some outlaws, and drags him around 0:28:27.600 --> 0:28:31.000 kind of rotting behind his cart. He smiles a big 0:28:31.080 --> 0:28:33.720 creepy grin. But I think he also whistles in that one, 0:28:33.760 --> 0:28:38.120 And there's a particular ditty that's reoccurring, So there is 0:28:38.160 --> 0:28:41.160 something to this. The stranger who whistles, what is he 0:28:41.160 --> 0:28:43.959 whistling about? He kind of ties into some of these 0:28:44.000 --> 0:28:48.240 other ideas, like he's an outsider that is not tied 0:28:48.280 --> 0:28:50.760 to the same rules as everything else. He may have 0:28:51.000 --> 0:28:55.040 some sort of communication with knowledge beyond himself, with spirits, 0:28:55.080 --> 0:28:55.560 et cetera. 0:28:56.000 --> 0:28:59.240 Another producer, Chime ins Seth, had a great example of this, 0:28:59.400 --> 0:29:02.520 and it's Earl Hannah and kill Bill, who does a 0:29:02.600 --> 0:29:06.440 very creepy whistling while she is on the way to 0:29:06.520 --> 0:29:07.560 kill the protagonist. 0:29:08.160 --> 0:29:10.560 And that's a great example too, because this is this 0:29:10.640 --> 0:29:13.360 is a female character whistling. So many of these examples, 0:29:13.400 --> 0:29:16.880 even if we're touching on traditions where where whistling is 0:29:16.920 --> 0:29:19.000 not gendered. It seems like a lot of them tend 0:29:19.080 --> 0:29:22.760 to involve male figures that are whistling. So so yeah, 0:29:22.800 --> 0:29:25.239 great example seth. All right, So that's all I have 0:29:25.920 --> 0:29:30.920 for now anyway, concerning whistling superstitions and whistling monsters. Certainly 0:29:30.960 --> 0:29:32.840 we'd love to hear from everyone out there who has 0:29:32.880 --> 0:29:35.160 additional things they would like to bring up, be it 0:29:35.560 --> 0:29:39.760 you know, folkloric creatures, strange traditions, and certainly any kind 0:29:39.760 --> 0:29:43.600 of you know, movie tie in characters who whistle. I'd 0:29:43.600 --> 0:29:45.400 love to hear about any of that. So yes, by 0:29:45.400 --> 0:29:46.120 all means right in. 0:29:46.560 --> 0:29:48.320 So, I guess the next thing we should look at 0:29:48.520 --> 0:29:52.640 is some of the psychology research on whistling, which I 0:29:52.720 --> 0:29:56.560 have to say, I was shocked how sparse this literature is. 0:29:56.680 --> 0:30:01.680 There is, from what I could tell, very little psychological 0:30:01.720 --> 0:30:05.400 research about when and why people whistle. One of the 0:30:05.440 --> 0:30:08.040 only major papers I could find on it wasn't really 0:30:08.080 --> 0:30:12.280 experimental in nature. It was very theoretical, and though it 0:30:12.320 --> 0:30:14.520 had a few interesting ideas in it that I do 0:30:14.600 --> 0:30:17.360 want to talk about, to the extent that it is theoretical, 0:30:17.360 --> 0:30:20.800 it seems kind of based in Freudianism, So it's gonna 0:30:20.800 --> 0:30:23.080 be a big caveat there. But before we get to that, 0:30:23.680 --> 0:30:27.600 I did want to talk about a medical case report 0:30:27.680 --> 0:30:32.000 I came across that had a title that really grabbed 0:30:32.040 --> 0:30:37.080 my attention. So this is a paper by pallac at 0:30:37.080 --> 0:30:41.080 All published in BMC Psychiatry in twenty twelve, and it's 0:30:41.120 --> 0:30:47.120 called Compulsive Carnival Song Whistling following Cardiac arrest. A case 0:30:47.160 --> 0:30:50.480 study Compulsive Carnival Song Whistling. 0:30:50.880 --> 0:30:55.880 Oh my goodness, So is it the pro is that 0:30:55.920 --> 0:30:57.080 the music? You think that? 0:30:57.080 --> 0:31:00.240 That's what I was assuming. Unfortunately, the case report is 0:31:00.280 --> 0:31:03.960 not attached a recording or sheet music or anything. So, 0:31:04.200 --> 0:31:06.239 and it doesn't name the tunes, so I don't know 0:31:06.280 --> 0:31:08.720 what song it is. The most they say about it 0:31:08.760 --> 0:31:12.479 is that it is a carnival song. All right, what 0:31:12.520 --> 0:31:14.920 are the options? Yeah, so you got that one is 0:31:15.000 --> 0:31:17.440 like the Binny Hill theme? Possible? I don't know. 0:31:17.920 --> 0:31:20.760 Yeah, I think I don't want to get too far 0:31:20.800 --> 0:31:22.520 into this because this is like, this is a realm 0:31:22.560 --> 0:31:25.560 I know virtually nothing about. But apparently there's a there's 0:31:25.560 --> 0:31:27.520 a fair amount of what we might think of his 0:31:27.640 --> 0:31:31.840 circus music that you know, we're talking about circus band stuff. 0:31:31.840 --> 0:31:36.000 We're talking about waltzes and fox trots, so there there's 0:31:36.040 --> 0:31:40.560 there's probably a lot there, but them is the thing 0:31:40.600 --> 0:31:44.200 that that mostly comes to the surface for folks like me. 0:31:44.880 --> 0:31:48.920 Okay, So in this case, report the medical history the patient. 0:31:48.960 --> 0:31:51.320 In this case it's anonymous of course, so we don't 0:31:51.360 --> 0:31:53.960 know their name. But it was a man who was 0:31:54.280 --> 0:31:57.600 found unconscious in his car in February nineteen ninety two 0:31:58.120 --> 0:32:01.040 at the age of forty eight, having so a heart attack. 0:32:01.960 --> 0:32:04.440 He was in cardiac arrest for some period of time, 0:32:04.520 --> 0:32:08.160 but he was reanimated successfully in the emergency room at 0:32:08.200 --> 0:32:12.120 a nearby hospital, so he survived the heart attack he had. 0:32:12.760 --> 0:32:15.720 His heart had stopped, there was reduced a supply of 0:32:15.720 --> 0:32:19.720 oxygen to the brain, but they resuscitated him and he 0:32:19.840 --> 0:32:25.000 was all right. But during rehabilitation he presented with some symptoms, 0:32:25.040 --> 0:32:29.200 including neurological impairment, and so several of the things they 0:32:29.240 --> 0:32:35.320 report are disorientation, apathy, what they call bradyphrenia meaning slowness 0:32:35.320 --> 0:32:38.640 of thought, short term memory problems and things like that. 0:32:38.960 --> 0:32:44.400 And imaging, particularly EEG showed decreased functioning in the brain, 0:32:44.520 --> 0:32:47.840 especially in the bezo temporal areas, and he continued to 0:32:47.960 --> 0:32:51.720 exhibit some neurological symptoms in the following years. And here's 0:32:51.720 --> 0:32:54.160 where we get to the music. I'll read straight from 0:32:54.160 --> 0:32:57.680 the case report quote. We were approached in May two 0:32:57.760 --> 0:33:00.480 thousand and eight by the patient's wife, who got to 0:33:00.520 --> 0:33:03.800 know our center of expertise through the internet. She was 0:33:03.840 --> 0:33:07.760 close to desperation from listening to the whistling of the 0:33:07.840 --> 0:33:12.400 same carnival song for nearly sixteen years. It would go 0:33:12.480 --> 0:33:15.840 on for five to eight hours every day and got 0:33:15.880 --> 0:33:19.560 worse when the patient was tired. Oh wow, so it's 0:33:19.600 --> 0:33:24.080 a mix. Like obviously it's you know, I was snagged 0:33:24.080 --> 0:33:27.200 by the idea of repetitive whistling of a carnival song, 0:33:27.200 --> 0:33:29.840 but when you actually hear the details, it is I 0:33:29.840 --> 0:33:33.040 don't know, it's a very unfortunate situation to imagine that, 0:33:33.400 --> 0:33:36.800 like the whistling of the same song goes on for 0:33:36.960 --> 0:33:40.120 five to eight hours a day for sixteen years. 0:33:40.680 --> 0:33:41.080 Wow. 0:33:41.360 --> 0:33:44.040 Now, the authors here talk about treatments that were tried, 0:33:44.520 --> 0:33:49.760 including a drug called clomipramine, which is a tricyclic antidepressant 0:33:49.880 --> 0:33:53.520 that is sometimes used to treat obsessive compulsive disorder, which 0:33:53.600 --> 0:33:57.520 obviously share some features with what's being described here. That 0:33:57.640 --> 0:34:02.160 among other conditions. But basically this drug regimen did manage 0:34:02.200 --> 0:34:05.120 to decrease the whistling by about half, but it also 0:34:05.200 --> 0:34:08.320 came with some very difficult side effects in this man's case, 0:34:09.120 --> 0:34:12.200 and the repetitive whistling of a carnival song non stop 0:34:12.280 --> 0:34:14.440 for five to eight hours a day could be considered 0:34:14.480 --> 0:34:18.640 an example of what psychiatrists would call compulsivity, which the 0:34:18.680 --> 0:34:23.120 authors describe as quote, the repetitive, irresistible urge to perform 0:34:23.160 --> 0:34:27.200 a behavior, the experience of loss of voluntary control over 0:34:27.239 --> 0:34:31.279 this intense urge, and the tendency to perform repetitive acts 0:34:31.360 --> 0:34:35.040 in a habitual or stereotyped manner. So they talk about 0:34:35.040 --> 0:34:38.520 how the man would whistle the song on a loop 0:34:39.120 --> 0:34:42.040 all day pretty much, and that at certain points they 0:34:42.040 --> 0:34:45.080 could make him stop doing it, though he reported after 0:34:45.120 --> 0:34:50.080 he stopped that he experienced anxiety. And in their discussion, 0:34:50.160 --> 0:34:53.680 the authors explain how the man in this report showed 0:34:53.680 --> 0:34:57.560 symptoms that could be consistent with three different interpretations of 0:34:57.600 --> 0:35:00.279 his condition. So, first of all, they talk about the 0:35:00.320 --> 0:35:05.160 idea of a frontal syndrome characterized by impulsivity and disinhibition. 0:35:05.840 --> 0:35:08.640 I think frontal syndrome there because it's the frontal lobe 0:35:08.680 --> 0:35:11.560 that is very important for inhibiting behavior that's your sort 0:35:11.560 --> 0:35:16.840 of like self control mechanism. And then second a compulsivity 0:35:16.880 --> 0:35:20.799 condition known as punding, which is characterized by quote purposeless 0:35:20.800 --> 0:35:25.800 and repetitive behavior such as collecting or arranging things often 0:35:25.840 --> 0:35:29.920 related to the patient's personal hobbies or occupation, and attributed 0:35:29.920 --> 0:35:33.080 to alterations of the brain's reward and motor systems in 0:35:33.120 --> 0:35:35.840 both the ventral and dorsal stra atom. And then the 0:35:35.840 --> 0:35:38.920 final interpretation would be a sort of acquired form of 0:35:39.160 --> 0:35:43.960 obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. And there are other examples 0:35:44.000 --> 0:35:47.680 of people acquiring OCD after a brain injury later in life. 0:35:47.760 --> 0:35:51.880 The OCD is usually acquired gradually earlier on in life. 0:35:52.360 --> 0:35:55.720 And they say all of these explanations match the observations 0:35:55.760 --> 0:35:59.399 in some ways but not in others. But one thing 0:35:59.640 --> 0:36:02.160 they got into that I thought was interesting here was 0:36:02.200 --> 0:36:07.160 talking about the different characteristics of impulsivity versus compulsivity in 0:36:07.160 --> 0:36:10.600 the brain. So they write, quote, one may conclude that 0:36:10.640 --> 0:36:15.160 the whistling with its repetitions is primarily compulsive rather than 0:36:15.200 --> 0:36:19.640 impulsive or disinhibitive, as the patient had a constant urge 0:36:19.680 --> 0:36:23.359 to whistle and felt anxiety when asked to stop rather 0:36:23.440 --> 0:36:27.480 than acting without foresight. The fact that anxiety was felt 0:36:27.600 --> 0:36:31.239 is in line with compulsivity rather than impulsivity, assuming that 0:36:31.280 --> 0:36:36.440 compulsive behaviors are performed to prevent perceived negative consequences from happening. 0:36:36.960 --> 0:36:40.160 So this is a useful distinction for thinking about because 0:36:40.200 --> 0:36:42.759 when we you know, outside of the medical context, when 0:36:42.800 --> 0:36:46.960 we think about these words impulsive or compulsive, they both 0:36:47.080 --> 0:36:50.160 I think usually refer to situations where a person seems 0:36:50.200 --> 0:36:53.720 to lack executive control. They lack the ability to control 0:36:53.760 --> 0:36:57.920 their own behavior or prevent themselves from doing something, but 0:36:58.040 --> 0:37:02.520 in very different ways. So in impulsivity, you feel an 0:37:02.640 --> 0:37:06.160 urge to do something, but some process taking place in 0:37:06.160 --> 0:37:09.600 your frontal lobe tells you that's not appropriate and stops 0:37:09.640 --> 0:37:12.400 you from doing it. But the urge itself might be 0:37:12.440 --> 0:37:16.000 something normal that like we would all think of doing 0:37:16.080 --> 0:37:18.680 for a second. It might cross our mind to do it, 0:37:18.760 --> 0:37:21.600 but then we would turn away from actually doing it 0:37:21.640 --> 0:37:25.719 because of some inhibition mechanism in the brain. Examples of 0:37:25.760 --> 0:37:28.480 this include all kinds of stuff, spitting on the floor 0:37:28.960 --> 0:37:33.080 or making a rude or inappropriate comment and conversation, or 0:37:33.200 --> 0:37:36.720 jumping out of a moving car. They can vary wildly 0:37:36.800 --> 0:37:39.919 from you know, minor things to extreme things. They would 0:37:39.920 --> 0:37:43.080 all be things though, that even a person with typical 0:37:43.120 --> 0:37:46.759 neuroanatomy might think for a second about doing, but then 0:37:46.800 --> 0:37:48.560 they would be able to stop themselves. 0:37:48.760 --> 0:37:50.560 All right. I think we can all think of examples 0:37:50.600 --> 0:37:53.040 of this from our own life, where yeah, you're just 0:37:53.120 --> 0:37:55.760 in a situation and you may think of like something 0:37:55.800 --> 0:37:59.480 just ridiculous or absurd or antisocial that you theoretically could do, 0:38:00.440 --> 0:38:02.600 and then you sort of but you recoil from it 0:38:02.960 --> 0:38:04.920 and you realize, oh, well, of course I'm not going 0:38:05.000 --> 0:38:06.480 to do that. And it can be a little shocking 0:38:06.480 --> 0:38:08.439 to think that you even thought about doing that. Why 0:38:08.480 --> 0:38:11.240 did I think that, hey, I could take my wallet 0:38:11.280 --> 0:38:13.440 out and throw it off of this building or off 0:38:13.440 --> 0:38:15.239 of this bridge that I'm on. Yeah. 0:38:15.320 --> 0:38:17.640 Yeah. We did a whole episode one time called The 0:38:17.680 --> 0:38:20.839 imp of the Perverse that was about this idea that 0:38:20.960 --> 0:38:23.239 like that there is some kind of It was about 0:38:23.239 --> 0:38:25.680 the first half before the inhibition comes in. It's like, 0:38:26.080 --> 0:38:28.879 what is that urge to do things that are obviously 0:38:28.960 --> 0:38:31.799 not in your best interests but you suddenly just feel like, ooh, 0:38:31.800 --> 0:38:33.759 I should do that. But then you're able to put 0:38:33.760 --> 0:38:35.440 the you know, put the lid on it and say no, 0:38:35.640 --> 0:38:38.440 I shouldn't do that. People with a frontal syndrome often 0:38:38.520 --> 0:38:44.160 have impulsivity problems because they whatever the normal disinhibition mechanism 0:38:44.160 --> 0:38:46.160 in the brain is, that has been damaged in some 0:38:46.280 --> 0:38:50.480 way by their injury. Right, So contrasts that that impulsivity 0:38:50.520 --> 0:38:54.040 with compulsivity, where a person also lacks the ability to 0:38:54.040 --> 0:38:56.959 stop themselves from performing an action, but it's an action 0:38:57.120 --> 0:39:01.680 that they feel they must do repetitively in order to 0:39:01.760 --> 0:39:06.080 prevent some kind of bad consequence from happening. So remember 0:39:06.120 --> 0:39:08.920 it was said that the man here would whistle constantly, 0:39:09.480 --> 0:39:12.480 but he felt the immediate onset of anxiety if he 0:39:12.600 --> 0:39:15.759 stopped whistling the carnival song. So that makes it sound 0:39:15.840 --> 0:39:18.920 more like it's compulsivity here, that it's something that he 0:39:19.080 --> 0:39:23.439 felt he had to do repetitively or else negative consequences 0:39:23.480 --> 0:39:27.600 would emerge. And the case history here mentions that the 0:39:27.600 --> 0:39:31.360 man once worked as head of a carnival association, and 0:39:31.400 --> 0:39:33.360 the authors don't say this, so we don't know this, 0:39:33.440 --> 0:39:36.719 but it seems like a reasonable guess that the carnival 0:39:36.760 --> 0:39:39.239 tune he was whistling was one he was familiar with 0:39:39.280 --> 0:39:42.200 from his own past to working as the head of 0:39:42.239 --> 0:39:46.160 a carnival association, maybe even one he associated with a 0:39:46.239 --> 0:39:48.200 time when he was more in control. 0:39:48.600 --> 0:39:51.239 That's fascinating because it also this ties into sort of 0:39:51.280 --> 0:39:55.279 the power of music, right. We all use music, I think, 0:39:55.280 --> 0:39:59.200 at times to augment our current mental state, to draw 0:39:59.320 --> 0:40:08.120 in mental feelings of power or assertiveness, but also sadness, 0:40:08.400 --> 0:40:10.560 whatever the case might be, whatever we feel like we 0:40:10.640 --> 0:40:14.680 need to connect with that is not our current state exactly. 0:40:14.719 --> 0:40:16.799 But it also ties into something that came up in 0:40:16.880 --> 0:40:19.239 previous episodes. So here again we have a case of 0:40:20.160 --> 0:40:23.000 a man who suffers neurological damage after a period where 0:40:23.040 --> 0:40:26.359 his brain isn't getting enough oxygen. He never had any 0:40:26.360 --> 0:40:29.759 symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder or anything before this, but 0:40:29.880 --> 0:40:33.560 after this event he acquired this tendency to engage in 0:40:33.600 --> 0:40:37.600 compulsive whistling. And I thought it was interesting that the whistling, 0:40:37.760 --> 0:40:40.560 if it is best interpreted as a way of staving 0:40:40.600 --> 0:40:44.359 off anxiety, which the authors here suggested, is it made 0:40:44.400 --> 0:40:47.759 me think of our discussion about whistling past the graveyard 0:40:47.840 --> 0:40:52.040 or whistling in the dark, other cases where it's commonly 0:40:52.080 --> 0:40:55.359 observed that people whistle in order to push out a 0:40:55.440 --> 0:40:57.759 fear or thoughts of danger. 0:40:58.040 --> 0:41:02.200 Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, more whistling past the graveyard for sure. 0:41:08.840 --> 0:41:10.600 Now, again, as I mentioned earlier, it seemed like the 0:41:10.600 --> 0:41:14.279 psychological research on whistling was far less developed than I 0:41:14.280 --> 0:41:16.560 would have expected. Maybe there are some great studies out 0:41:16.560 --> 0:41:19.440 there that I just wasn't able to find, So if 0:41:19.480 --> 0:41:21.359 you know of them, please send them into the show 0:41:21.400 --> 0:41:23.760 account contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. 0:41:24.040 --> 0:41:26.319 But the other major one I found, and this was 0:41:26.440 --> 0:41:30.320 cited in some other papers, is a paper from nineteen 0:41:30.400 --> 0:41:33.720 fifty nine published in the journal Language and Speech called 0:41:33.880 --> 0:41:37.840 When People Whistle, and it's by the UC San Francisco 0:41:37.920 --> 0:41:42.240 professor of psychiatry, Peter F. Austwald. As I said earlier, 0:41:42.480 --> 0:41:44.279 I do want to mention this one because it has 0:41:44.360 --> 0:41:46.680 some interesting ideas in it, but also it is an 0:41:46.680 --> 0:41:50.479 older paper. It clearly is not constricted by empirical method. 0:41:50.560 --> 0:41:53.759 This is not like reporting on original experiments. It's more 0:41:53.840 --> 0:41:58.760 kind of theorizing about what whistling might mean and why 0:41:58.800 --> 0:42:03.600 people whistle, based on models that seem at least influenced 0:42:03.600 --> 0:42:07.560 by Freudianism. A lot of it's about fixations that are 0:42:08.080 --> 0:42:11.080 sort of emerge from childhood development. But anyway, okay, so 0:42:11.120 --> 0:42:14.080 who is this guy who wrote this? Ostwald? He seems 0:42:14.080 --> 0:42:16.000 like a kind of interesting guy. So he lived from 0:42:16.120 --> 0:42:19.720 nineteen twenty eight to nineteen ninety six, and his life 0:42:19.840 --> 0:42:23.320 is sort of divided between an interest in psychiatry on 0:42:23.600 --> 0:42:26.839 one hand, and music and music history on the other. 0:42:26.920 --> 0:42:31.120 So he wrote biographies of musicians and composers like Schumann 0:42:31.160 --> 0:42:34.200 and Glenn Gould. But also, to quote from his New 0:42:34.280 --> 0:42:38.040 York Times obituary quote, in nineteen eighty six, he founded 0:42:38.080 --> 0:42:42.319 the Health Program for Performing Artists, a voluntary group of 0:42:42.360 --> 0:42:46.640 specialists engaged in research, education, and clinical care of the 0:42:46.719 --> 0:42:51.200 particular mental and medical problems afflicting musicians, dancers, and other 0:42:51.280 --> 0:42:55.600 performing artists, both professionals and students. And I thought that 0:42:55.680 --> 0:42:58.600 was very interesting because now that I think about it, 0:42:58.600 --> 0:43:00.800 it clearly makes sense that you could have medical center 0:43:01.400 --> 0:43:04.760 focused on the mental and physical health needs of performing 0:43:04.840 --> 0:43:07.600 artists in particular, because I'd imagine there would be patterns 0:43:07.680 --> 0:43:10.840 in their needs. But it never occurred to me that 0:43:10.880 --> 0:43:11.880 such a thing would exist. 0:43:12.239 --> 0:43:14.279 Yeah, I mean it makes sense, right, because we have 0:43:14.320 --> 0:43:18.040 sports medicine athletes do extreme things with their bodies. It 0:43:18.040 --> 0:43:20.799 puts special types of wear and tear on them, and 0:43:20.840 --> 0:43:23.480 you could I think you can very fairly say the 0:43:23.520 --> 0:43:26.600 same thing for performers, especially when you're thinking about something 0:43:26.680 --> 0:43:28.960 like dance or vocal performance. 0:43:29.320 --> 0:43:32.520 Totally, but okay, what does ast Falds say in this 0:43:33.040 --> 0:43:37.200 language psychology paper? Mainly this article is focused on questions 0:43:37.200 --> 0:43:41.120 of why humans whistle, what purpose it serves, what whistling 0:43:41.160 --> 0:43:44.000 tends to mean, and how it differs from other forms 0:43:44.000 --> 0:43:47.400 of noise production. I'm not gonna get into everything he 0:43:47.440 --> 0:43:49.239 theorizes about in this paper, but I did want to 0:43:49.239 --> 0:43:53.759 focus on one part where he's sort of taking a 0:43:53.800 --> 0:43:56.520 look at the phenomenology of whistling. What does it feel 0:43:56.600 --> 0:43:57.280 like to whistle? 0:43:57.360 --> 0:43:57.440 Like? 0:43:57.560 --> 0:44:00.520 Is it pleasurable to people? And if it is, which 0:44:00.520 --> 0:44:03.840 it often seems to be, why is it pleasurable? So 0:44:04.040 --> 0:44:07.560 to check one of the very Freudian boxes, he argues that, 0:44:07.800 --> 0:44:11.200 first of all, the act of whistling involves manipulation of 0:44:11.239 --> 0:44:13.640 the muscles in the face and the mouth in a 0:44:13.640 --> 0:44:17.080 way that may produce hedonic states feelings of comfort and 0:44:17.160 --> 0:44:21.360 pleasure because of its similarity to the facial and mouth 0:44:21.440 --> 0:44:25.360 movements of what he calls oral gratification, and so he 0:44:25.400 --> 0:44:28.239 expands that to all kinds of things like eating and smoking, 0:44:28.719 --> 0:44:32.680 but he specifically ties it into the facial and mouth 0:44:33.200 --> 0:44:36.319 muscle movements of a feeding infant. So this is one 0:44:36.360 --> 0:44:38.799 of those things that, well, it's hard to disprove that, 0:44:39.000 --> 0:44:41.920 but I'm not convinced there's much evidence to establish that 0:44:42.040 --> 0:44:45.080 exact causal chain that like doing the same thing with 0:44:45.120 --> 0:44:47.200 your face muscles that you did when you were a 0:44:47.239 --> 0:44:50.319 baby in your mother's arms produces comfort and for the 0:44:50.360 --> 0:44:55.600 same reason. I don't know how you would show that, yeah, Yeah, 0:44:55.640 --> 0:44:58.920 And also I'd be skeptical that there's a general principle 0:44:59.000 --> 0:45:02.880 that doing something with the you know, the skeletal muscle 0:45:02.920 --> 0:45:05.360 in your body that is similar to what that muscle 0:45:05.400 --> 0:45:09.520 does in some other unrelated activity that is pleasurable in 0:45:09.520 --> 0:45:12.480 some way gives you pleasure in the secondary activity just 0:45:12.480 --> 0:45:15.080 because you're using the same muscles. I don't know. I mean, 0:45:15.120 --> 0:45:18.560 you could think of ways that you would use the 0:45:18.560 --> 0:45:21.239 same muscles you might use in some pleasurable activity, but 0:45:21.280 --> 0:45:24.719 it doesn't bring pleasure. Does just like pretending to chew 0:45:25.120 --> 0:45:27.080 bring you the same kind of pleasure you get from 0:45:27.080 --> 0:45:28.440 eating and so forth? 0:45:29.000 --> 0:45:33.160 Uh, yeah, generally not. Uh yeah, yeah, you can't. You 0:45:33.200 --> 0:45:36.840 can't just say, pretend to be eating your favorite dish. 0:45:37.200 --> 0:45:39.680 And I mean maybe if you're hungry enough, you can 0:45:39.840 --> 0:45:41.560 you can lean into it a little bit. I don't know, 0:45:42.080 --> 0:45:44.680 but yeah, for the most part, I don't really put 0:45:44.680 --> 0:45:46.200 a lot of stock in this notion. 0:45:46.480 --> 0:45:48.239 Yeah, so I got doubts about that. But then you 0:45:48.280 --> 0:45:50.360 make some other points that I think are I don't know, 0:45:50.719 --> 0:45:54.480 more worth considering. This next one is still sort of 0:45:54.480 --> 0:45:57.360 along Freudian lines, but I think it's it's I don't know, 0:45:57.560 --> 0:45:59.279 it feels different to me. So see what you think 0:45:59.280 --> 0:45:59.960 about this, he says. 0:46:00.440 --> 0:46:00.800 Quote. 0:46:00.880 --> 0:46:03.840 In addition to the mouth and face, whistling involves the 0:46:03.960 --> 0:46:09.400 respiratory structures. These structures chest, abdomen, lungs, wind pipes, and 0:46:09.520 --> 0:46:13.160 throat move of their own accord, regulated by neuronal and 0:46:13.239 --> 0:46:18.200 chemical processes beyond voluntary control. But the whistler in effect 0:46:18.320 --> 0:46:22.840 willfully imposes his own rhythm, amplitude, and organization pattern on 0:46:23.000 --> 0:46:27.759 these automatic movements. Psychological studies show that if the individual 0:46:27.880 --> 0:46:31.760 is rewarded by attention or praise when he first gains 0:46:31.800 --> 0:46:36.120 control over such automatic processes, he may continue to expect 0:46:36.120 --> 0:46:40.399 satisfaction from this display of skill. As will be shown later, 0:46:40.440 --> 0:46:44.239 whistling arouses the attention of listeners so that the whistler's 0:46:44.320 --> 0:46:49.239 bodily mastery is almost universally rewarded in some way. And 0:46:49.520 --> 0:46:51.640 I don't know, at a gut level, this seemed a 0:46:51.680 --> 0:46:53.880 little more plausible to me that there could be like 0:46:53.960 --> 0:46:59.440 a learned association of positive reinforcement upon gaining conscious control 0:46:59.600 --> 0:47:04.160 over previously automatic or autonomic processes. And I think one 0:47:04.160 --> 0:47:06.200 of the main ideas this ties into here is like 0:47:06.239 --> 0:47:08.719 toilet training, that you know, there could be some kind 0:47:08.760 --> 0:47:12.959 of bleed over with pleasure upon a general pleasure upon 0:47:13.000 --> 0:47:17.400 taking conscious control of things like breath, and that would 0:47:17.400 --> 0:47:19.120 sort of check out with other things. I mean, there 0:47:19.120 --> 0:47:22.560 are a lot of things people do to seemingly bring 0:47:22.600 --> 0:47:27.000 themselves pleasure and comfort just by taking conscious control of breath, 0:47:27.040 --> 0:47:28.400 which is normally automatic. 0:47:28.800 --> 0:47:31.719 Yeah, this does remind me of certain potty training techniques 0:47:31.800 --> 0:47:35.200 for kids where they'll be for instance, if you're trying 0:47:35.239 --> 0:47:39.040 to teach the very young child to have some degree 0:47:39.040 --> 0:47:43.359 of control over when they defecate, that there's a there's 0:47:43.400 --> 0:47:45.720 a like a technique where you're getting them to hum 0:47:45.800 --> 0:47:48.760 while they do it. So it's yeah, I can see 0:47:48.880 --> 0:47:50.360 where you can have a lot of connection between the 0:47:50.400 --> 0:47:50.839 two here. 0:47:51.000 --> 0:47:52.839 Oh and in the next section I want to talk 0:47:52.880 --> 0:47:57.280 about he actually ties directly into that. So Ostwald writes, quote, 0:47:57.719 --> 0:48:00.440 some of the emotions that accompany the act of whistling 0:48:00.440 --> 0:48:04.399 would appear to result from wishful thoughts and magical fantasies 0:48:04.440 --> 0:48:07.960 in the mind of the whistler. Whistling, because it involves 0:48:07.960 --> 0:48:11.839 the production of wordless sounds, may bring back memories of 0:48:11.840 --> 0:48:14.600 that very early period during which the child could not 0:48:14.760 --> 0:48:18.480 distinguish between those sounds which came from the outside world 0:48:18.600 --> 0:48:21.759 and those sounds which came from his own body. During 0:48:21.840 --> 0:48:25.239 this phase of personality development, one is unsure of the 0:48:25.320 --> 0:48:29.680 significance of sounds. One cannot tell whether a certain noise, 0:48:29.880 --> 0:48:33.920 say one's footsteps, has personal meaning referable only to his 0:48:34.000 --> 0:48:37.560 own body, or has a public meaning with some reference 0:48:37.600 --> 0:48:41.040 to the world of other people. In this confused state, 0:48:41.160 --> 0:48:43.520 the individual may come to believe that the sounds he 0:48:43.560 --> 0:48:48.759 produces have some causal relationship to what he experiences. Whistling, 0:48:48.960 --> 0:48:52.640 like other noises he makes, may thus be associated with 0:48:52.800 --> 0:48:58.080 fantasies of omnipotence, which, unless corrected by reality can lead 0:48:58.120 --> 0:49:02.000 to delusions of grandeur. This was really interesting to me 0:49:02.040 --> 0:49:04.319 because think about how many things we've already looked at 0:49:04.360 --> 0:49:07.000 where there's some belief that, like whistling gives you power 0:49:07.080 --> 0:49:09.600 to like change the external world somehow. 0:49:09.840 --> 0:49:12.680 Yeah yeah, ties directly into the wind magic we've been 0:49:12.719 --> 0:49:16.640 discussing in getting and even connects back to the Taoist 0:49:16.880 --> 0:49:18.279 transcendental whistling as. 0:49:18.200 --> 0:49:22.760 Well totally, or even the Terence McKinney thing. Yeah yes, yeah, yeah, 0:49:22.760 --> 0:49:26.440 but okay, So coming back to this, Ostwald writes, quote 0:49:26.560 --> 0:49:31.279 Occasionally parents or other adults inadvertently encourage magical behavior in 0:49:31.320 --> 0:49:35.160 their children and thus reinforce fanciful thoughts about whistling and 0:49:35.200 --> 0:49:39.120 other sounds. For example, nurses have been known to employ 0:49:39.200 --> 0:49:43.640 whistles to quote make the child urinate and kindly. Grandparents 0:49:43.760 --> 0:49:47.960 not infrequently whistle away the aches and bruises of a youngster. 0:49:48.880 --> 0:49:51.600 Yeah yeah, I can see the again whistling as the 0:49:52.000 --> 0:49:53.840 as a sound of wind, but also the sound of 0:49:53.880 --> 0:49:56.920 water moving water. We touched on that, and that's some 0:49:56.920 --> 0:49:58.680 of these ideas that you can get an ox or 0:49:58.719 --> 0:50:03.600 a horse to drink water by whistling at it, which 0:50:03.880 --> 0:50:06.319 there may not be anything to that, but using it 0:50:06.360 --> 0:50:08.920 as some sort of a potty training. Yeah, I can 0:50:08.960 --> 0:50:13.360 imagine the humming sound being for the defecation though, the 0:50:13.360 --> 0:50:16.560 whistling sound being for the you know, the creation of 0:50:16.600 --> 0:50:18.560 water with one body, that sort of thing. 0:50:18.880 --> 0:50:21.640 And that could actually have efficacy when you're whistling to 0:50:21.920 --> 0:50:24.640 a person, right because they hear that that has some 0:50:24.760 --> 0:50:28.480 associative significance for them that may actually help motivate, i 0:50:28.520 --> 0:50:30.560 don't know, going to the bathroom, or may actually make 0:50:30.600 --> 0:50:34.359 them feel subjectively less pain or something like that. But 0:50:34.400 --> 0:50:38.799 that could lead to the erroneous assumption therefore, that you 0:50:38.880 --> 0:50:43.840 can have physically implausible control over the external world with 0:50:43.880 --> 0:50:44.880 whistling somehow. 0:50:45.400 --> 0:50:46.480 Yeah, anyway. 0:50:46.680 --> 0:50:49.879 Ostwald then relates this to reports tying directly back into 0:50:49.920 --> 0:50:54.200 our previous episode about sailors who have intense superstitions about 0:50:54.239 --> 0:50:58.520 whistling and believe that it contains powerful and dangerous magic, 0:50:58.600 --> 0:51:01.720 you know, again whistling for the wind. And he also 0:51:01.800 --> 0:51:05.560 discusses magical beliefs about whistling to summon birds and Celtic 0:51:05.680 --> 0:51:10.640 tales and this involves a mediating technology. Plenty of stories 0:51:10.640 --> 0:51:14.000 about beasts and magical creatures that are commanded by a flute. 0:51:14.120 --> 0:51:17.680 You know, think of the god pan and the magical 0:51:17.760 --> 0:51:19.799 syringx and so forth, but. 0:51:20.440 --> 0:51:25.920 Also the piper, pied piper. Yes, yeah, yeah. 0:51:25.960 --> 0:51:28.200 But the interesting observation that sort of puts a bow 0:51:28.280 --> 0:51:31.120 on this whole thing is he ends up talking about 0:51:31.160 --> 0:51:35.200 whistling as a form of non verbal signaling. So here 0:51:35.239 --> 0:51:39.799 he would specifically not be talking about actual languages that 0:51:39.920 --> 0:51:42.440 use whistles, where there's a full language and the whistles 0:51:42.480 --> 0:51:46.680 actually mean words, So you know, he's not talking about 0:51:46.719 --> 0:51:51.160 whistling with precise informational content, but rather the more informal 0:51:51.239 --> 0:51:56.720 type of communication done via whistling in other contexts, He writes, quote, 0:51:56.719 --> 0:52:00.560 wordless signals usually have a vague and imprecise meaning. They 0:52:00.600 --> 0:52:05.600 do not usually communicate ideas, but serve rather to attract attention. 0:52:06.280 --> 0:52:08.760 And he described some of the same research we've already 0:52:08.800 --> 0:52:11.520 talked about, for example, that whistling is a type of 0:52:11.560 --> 0:52:15.160 noise making that travels especially well by concentrating energy in 0:52:15.200 --> 0:52:17.759 the one to four kilohertz range, which is the best 0:52:17.800 --> 0:52:20.960 window for humans to hear. It's sort of a perfect 0:52:21.040 --> 0:52:25.040 attention getter. But in the context of most cultures, cultures 0:52:25.080 --> 0:52:28.240 where whistling does not constitute a language. It doesn't contain 0:52:28.800 --> 0:52:32.399 words or precise information. Again, its meaning is vague. It's 0:52:32.480 --> 0:52:36.680 just an attention getter. And personally, I think maybe it's 0:52:36.800 --> 0:52:40.120 in this vagueness that a lot of the superstitions and 0:52:40.200 --> 0:52:44.840 ideas about the magical danger of whistling could emerge, because 0:52:44.880 --> 0:52:47.400 it's sort of a one to two punch. It's this paradox. 0:52:47.440 --> 0:52:51.439 Whistling is like the most powerful signal you can make 0:52:51.480 --> 0:52:54.880 with your body to attract attention, the most powerful sound 0:52:55.040 --> 0:52:58.000 signal you can make. Right, it's this piercing sound. It 0:52:58.120 --> 0:53:01.439 travels far, it it makes people turn their heads. It's 0:53:01.480 --> 0:53:05.280 like a beacon, and yet in most cases it doesn't 0:53:05.280 --> 0:53:09.360 form precise words or phrases, so you can't be sure 0:53:09.440 --> 0:53:12.759 what kind of attention you are attracting. It's just a 0:53:12.840 --> 0:53:16.120 general beacon. It could attract a friend, or if you're 0:53:16.120 --> 0:53:18.360 in a dangerous place, maybe you're on the sea and 0:53:18.400 --> 0:53:21.400 there are all kinds of forces at work, it could 0:53:21.440 --> 0:53:25.080 just as likely attract unwanted attention, a dangerous enemy of 0:53:25.120 --> 0:53:28.839 some kind. And because you can't form precise words with it, 0:53:28.960 --> 0:53:31.919 you also don't know what you're saying or what you're 0:53:31.960 --> 0:53:34.719 asking for. It's like the scene in the movie where 0:53:34.760 --> 0:53:38.320 you know, you like read a spell from an ancient 0:53:38.400 --> 0:53:40.360 book in another language and you don't know what the 0:53:40.400 --> 0:53:43.000 words are, so you don't know what kind of spell 0:53:43.040 --> 0:53:45.440 you're enacting or what kind of trouble you're getting into. 0:53:45.880 --> 0:53:50.520 Yeah, or thinking about the transmissions that we send into 0:53:50.520 --> 0:53:53.040 outer space, or that are sent from somewhere else in 0:53:53.080 --> 0:53:56.399 outer space by some you know, presumably intelligent or ones 0:53:56.440 --> 0:54:01.000 intelligent species, like the potential danger or of just of 0:54:01.120 --> 0:54:05.359 whistling into the cosmic darkness, and you don't know who 0:54:05.400 --> 0:54:07.480 is going to receive the signal and what they'll make 0:54:07.520 --> 0:54:08.160 of the signal. 0:54:08.640 --> 0:54:12.560 I think that's a perfect analogy. Yeah, It's like I 0:54:12.600 --> 0:54:15.200 think a lot of these fears and superstitions about the 0:54:15.239 --> 0:54:18.560 magical power of whistling would be like if somebody in 0:54:18.600 --> 0:54:21.160 the real context said, I have created the most powerful 0:54:21.280 --> 0:54:26.560 radio transmitter that will omni directionally broadcast an incredibly clear, 0:54:26.800 --> 0:54:30.360 powerful signal that any other intelligence out there could detect. 0:54:31.000 --> 0:54:32.840 We don't know what they'll make of it, but let's 0:54:32.880 --> 0:54:37.920 just start transmitting. There would obviously be some real concerns 0:54:37.920 --> 0:54:42.920 about that from some of the less sanguine of extraterrestrial theorists. 0:54:43.440 --> 0:54:46.480 Yeah, I mean imagine if we just piped circus music out, 0:54:46.760 --> 0:54:49.399 like just non stop circus music, what would they make 0:54:49.440 --> 0:54:51.919 of it? Maybe the killer clowns from out of space 0:54:51.920 --> 0:54:53.280 show up. That's the problem. 0:54:53.480 --> 0:54:54.239 God help us. 0:54:55.000 --> 0:54:57.000 All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and wrap up 0:54:57.040 --> 0:55:00.520 this four part Whistling series here, but we'd love to 0:55:00.560 --> 0:55:03.319 hear from everyone out there, because whistling is something that 0:55:03.360 --> 0:55:05.799 I think all of us have some connection to. You 0:55:05.840 --> 0:55:07.839 can whistle, or you can't whistle, or you can sort 0:55:07.880 --> 0:55:11.280 of whistle where there's some sort of cultural ideas about whistling. 0:55:11.280 --> 0:55:13.560 There's something about whistling in the way you were brought up. 0:55:14.160 --> 0:55:17.759 There's whistling in various pieces of media, So all of 0:55:17.800 --> 0:55:19.920 this is fair game. Writ in. We would love to 0:55:19.960 --> 0:55:22.600 hear from you. In the meantime, you can always find 0:55:22.600 --> 0:55:24.640 core episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind on Tuesdays 0:55:24.680 --> 0:55:27.400 and Thursdays in these Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. 0:55:27.960 --> 0:55:30.319 On Mondays we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do 0:55:30.360 --> 0:55:33.359 a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and on 0:55:33.400 --> 0:55:35.520 Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to 0:55:35.520 --> 0:55:37.759 set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a 0:55:37.800 --> 0:55:38.520 strange film. 0:55:38.800 --> 0:55:42.080 Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth 0:55:42.160 --> 0:55:45.160 Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch 0:55:45.160 --> 0:55:47.560 with us with feedback on this episode or any other, 0:55:47.920 --> 0:55:50.000 to suggest a topic for the future, or just to 0:55:50.000 --> 0:55:52.840 say hello, you can email us at contact Stuff to 0:55:52.880 --> 0:56:02.000 Blow your Mind dot com. 0:56:02.080 --> 0:56:05.040 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 0:56:05.120 --> 0:56:08.960 more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:56:09.040 --> 0:56:24.280 or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. 0:56:29.480 --> 0:56:29.520 H