Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. We're going on
Speaker 2: into the vault. This episode originally aired August sixteenth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, and it's Part four of our series on whistling.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the Whistling, Part four, The Final Conflict, Let's Do It.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part four
Speaker 2: of our series about whistling. This episode's going to be
Speaker 2: a little weird today because we literally already recorded this
Speaker 2: episode and then lost the whole thing to a technical glitch. Rob,
Speaker 2: I'm understand that as I was talking when we were
Speaker 2: recording this episode the first time, it was just constantly
Speaker 2: making the sounds of hell in your ears and can
Speaker 2: you describe the terror and the anguish?
Speaker 1: It was kind of like your dialogue was an Afix
Speaker 1: twin remix the entire time, and so at first it
Speaker 1: was I was like, Okay, I can I can put
Speaker 1: up with this. This is fine. We've already gone so
Speaker 1: far into the episode, we should just you know, finish
Speaker 1: it out. By the end of it, it was kind
Speaker 1: of headache and doucing. But I was like, well, at
Speaker 1: least we got the episode. This is just audio distortion
Speaker 1: that I'm hearing. It's not going to transfer over to
Speaker 1: the recorded finished product. Sadly it did, and so here
Speaker 1: we are.
Speaker 2: It's the worst.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We were like, well, at least it won't be on
Speaker 2: the actual audio, and then it was, and so here
Speaker 2: we are. Okay, so this is this is take two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could have been much worse, So no big deal. Hey,
Speaker 1: looking on the bright side, we got a rehearsal in there.
Speaker 1: How often do we have a rehearsal for a by
Speaker 1: guest episodes? So I think it's going to be stronger
Speaker 1: because of that.
Speaker 2: Do you think?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: I was like, is it gonna make the episode better
Speaker 2: or worse? I really don't know. We'll see.
Speaker 1: We'll see out better better for sure.
Speaker 2: All Right, So we're picking up in this series about whistling.
Speaker 2: Let's see, what did we talk about in the previous episodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're picking up where we left off from
Speaker 1: the last Whistling episode, which was Whistling, Part three regarding
Speaker 1: superstitions and beliefs concerning whistling. We were talking about whistling
Speaker 1: as an ill omen at sea, as a potential mark
Speaker 1: of witchcraft, and women as bad theater luck in England
Speaker 1: and much more. So we're going to continue this journey
Speaker 1: through folklore and mythology concerning whistling, and we're going to
Speaker 1: be referencing some of what we covered in another previous
Speaker 1: episode about Chinese transcendental whistling, in which a specialized Taoist
Speaker 1: form of whistling was almost like meditation, but was also
Speaker 1: said to give one both insight and perhaps even power
Speaker 1: over the energy of things in the world. So once
Speaker 1: more I'm going to be referencing that excellent whistling and
Speaker 1: Antiquity paper by AV Van Stakellenberg, but also some other sources. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Ed Edwards, in the two thousand and nine
Speaker 1: paper The Principles of Whistling, a ten dynasty text called
Speaker 1: the shau Chi says that whistling simply calls out to
Speaker 1: all spirits, good or bad, and sta Kellenberg summarizes this
Speaker 1: as kind of a supernatural neutrality concerning whistling. So whistling
Speaker 1: isn't something that is used by bad people or necessarily
Speaker 1: use by good people. It's just it's this thing that
Speaker 1: signals out into the world around us, into the unknown,
Speaker 1: and you know, you could potentially attract the attention of
Speaker 1: things you don't want to attract the attention of. But
Speaker 1: it also could be basically harmless. It kind of depends
Speaker 1: on the circumstances.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The raps Un whistling, which was a text we
Speaker 2: cited in a previous episode. It talks about whistling having
Speaker 2: a kind of withdrawing or distancing power on the whistler.
Speaker 2: It says, you know, like the whistling gentleman sort of
Speaker 2: distances himself from the things of the world and lets
Speaker 2: out a long drawn whistle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a thread we're going to definitely come
Speaker 1: back to. But first I wanted to add another note
Speaker 1: on whistling in Chinese history. So first of all, you know,
Speaker 1: anytime we're talking about Chinese history, Chinese culture covers a
Speaker 1: great deal of territory, both in terms of distance and
Speaker 1: in terms of years, So you know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: say with any certainty like this is the traditional Chinese
Speaker 1: view of it versus another thing. But mainly, I don't
Speaker 1: want to imply here that that whistling was just something
Speaker 1: that Dallas sorcerers engaged in. I was looking at a
Speaker 1: paper by Julungsu from two thousand and six titled Whistling
Speaker 1: and its Magico Religious Tradition, A comparative Perspective, and at
Speaker 1: this points out that there are Han Dynasty accounts of
Speaker 1: women whistling for both sorrow and this seems in some
Speaker 1: cases to tap into this idea of sighing as well. Again,
Speaker 1: look thinking back to previous episodes where we've discussed whistling
Speaker 1: and it's similarity to other non linguistic sounds that we make,
Speaker 1: other breath based sounds that can be used to communicate
Speaker 1: something or to get somebody's attention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we were talking about cases where sometimes it's
Speaker 2: maybe difficult to precisely translate a word because a word
Speaker 2: could be interpreted as meaning like whistling, or could mean
Speaker 2: hissing or some other kind of controlled expulsion of breath.
Speaker 2: There's sort of some blurriness in the breath based lexicon.
Speaker 1: Now, according to Sue here, it's not just for sorrow.
Speaker 1: There are also accounts of women whistling out of happiness
Speaker 1: or joy. It does seem like it is linked to
Speaker 1: traditions of wailing in some cases, and sort of wailing
Speaker 1: one might might might engage in, say at a grave,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, but also not just women. In
Speaker 1: other sources as well, even the Yellow Emperor is said
Speaker 1: to whistle, but the terminology here might actually mean hiss,
Speaker 1: or it might mean a sigh. And in the Classic
Speaker 1: of Mountains and Seas, the Queen Mother uses a whistle
Speaker 1: as a kind of battle cry to disply her ferocity.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a wide spectrum of possible uses
Speaker 1: for the whistle even within Chinese tradition here now. Sue
Speaker 1: also points out that while yes, in English customs and
Speaker 1: Western customs there are a lot of these superstitions against
Speaker 1: women whistling particularly, and we don't really see this in
Speaker 1: Chinese traditions, though it is sometimes seen as ominous in
Speaker 1: general whistling due to the connection between whistling and various
Speaker 1: death rituals and you know, and attracting the spirits, but
Speaker 1: it is more in inherently magical and not gendered. Sue
Speaker 1: also shares some other examples from Western traditions to you know,
Speaker 1: for a comparative experience here, but they point out here
Speaker 1: quote the Germans believe that a woman's whistling will make
Speaker 1: the angels weep and the devil's rejoice.
Speaker 2: This is This would be a fantastic basis for a
Speaker 2: German metal band, all female metal band that just employs
Speaker 2: whistling instead of singing.
Speaker 1: Oh, now, that's a question to what extent has whistling
Speaker 1: been used in metal? The metal scene has come to
Speaker 1: encompass a lot of different sounds and ideas, but I
Speaker 1: don't know if they've gotten around a whistling have they?
Speaker 2: Well, what's the metal version of the rule thirty four idea?
Speaker 2: It's kind of like, if you can imagine it, there
Speaker 2: is a metal a metal band of it, right.
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on what you classifies metal too,
Speaker 1: Like are the Scorpions metal? I don't know, probably not,
Speaker 1: probably not now. Sue also shares that among various Chinese minorities,
Speaker 1: whistling while you work, as in Snow White and the
Speaker 1: song the Dwarfs Sing, whistling while you work, at least
Speaker 1: in the field was thought to summon demons to damaged crops,
Speaker 1: or it could summon demons to damage crops, so it
Speaker 1: was discouraged. This Sioue Stresses does not seem to be
Speaker 1: linked to say dallast ideas regarding whistling, but is instead
Speaker 1: rooted in particular folk traditions. Now here's another really interesting
Speaker 1: one that Sue brings up. Sue shares an example from Mythraism.
Speaker 1: So Mythraism for sci fi fans out there, some of
Speaker 1: you might be familiar with this religion because you may
Speaker 1: have watched the really excellently weird HBO mac sci fi
Speaker 1: series Raised by Wolves, in which one of the two
Speaker 1: factions that's going out into space and colonizing other worlds
Speaker 1: are are devoted Mithraists. And you might well think, oh,
Speaker 1: this is some sort of cool religion they made up
Speaker 1: for the show, but it is not. It is this
Speaker 1: is a reference to the Roman street cult of mithras
Speaker 1: and in there recorded rituals, and Joe, You're going to
Speaker 1: get into this a little bit and talk about what
Speaker 1: we mean when we when we bring out the idea
Speaker 1: of recorded rituals of Mithraism. But supposedly there is a
Speaker 1: system of whistling and tongue clicking that was used to
Speaker 1: attract what Sue refers to as theeomorphic star deities.
Speaker 2: Oh, theeomorphic meaning animal formed, so like beast beast forms
Speaker 2: of star gods.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now I haven't seen the show Raised by Wolves, but
Speaker 2: I think i'm to understand you were saying that the
Speaker 2: title there is a reference to like the myth about
Speaker 2: the founding of Rome, the Romulus and Rima story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. That seems to be the direct reference
Speaker 1: made there, and there are other references as well, and
Speaker 1: just a lot of just sheer weirdness on top of it.
Speaker 1: So if nothing else, it's a show that's going to
Speaker 1: give you lots of strange imagery. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: Ridley Scott's continuation of the android centered alien sequels or
Speaker 1: prequels that he was working on.
Speaker 2: Hmm, okay, so well anyway, I love the idea that
Speaker 2: the show would incorporate actual things about Mithraism because I've
Speaker 2: long thought we should do a series or at least
Speaker 2: an episode on Mithraism because I find it really interesting
Speaker 2: because it is a religion that clearly commanded an enormous
Speaker 2: following and had huge cultural significance in the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: Like you can find the ruins of their underground temples
Speaker 2: called Mithrium, and they're all throughout Roman settlements, and yet
Speaker 2: we know way less about this religion than one might assume.
Speaker 2: And one of the big reasons for that is that,
Speaker 2: as far as I understood, and I guess the text
Speaker 2: that you just referred to maybe a counterexample to this,
Speaker 2: but modern scholars generally thought, we have basically no access
Speaker 2: to any primary literary sources about the religion. So if
Speaker 2: it had religious texts, we don't have any of them,
Speaker 2: and so what we know about it we've had to
Speaker 2: try to piece together through detective work based on imagery
Speaker 2: and simple inscriptions and archaeological clues and comments and references
Speaker 2: made by external writers trying to say, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: this is what's going on with Mithraism. So for a
Speaker 2: kind of hopefully interesting analogy, imagine trying to understand what
Speaker 2: Christianity was if it like mostly died out and disappeared
Speaker 2: in the fourth century or so, and we did not
Speaker 2: have any of the writings of the New Testament or
Speaker 2: any other writings by Church fathers or any other early Christians,
Speaker 2: and we were trying to reconstruct what Christianity was based
Speaker 2: entirely on like imagery and artifacts and what other external
Speaker 2: writers said about it. So it's a really fascinating problem,
Speaker 2: and one of the most common images in Roman mythraism
Speaker 2: is apparently important scene from their mythology of the god
Speaker 2: Mithras slaughtering some kind of divine bull. But there's another
Speaker 2: interesting complication here too, which is that there is a
Speaker 2: pre Roman Persian cult of Mithras or Mitra, which is
Speaker 2: a Zoroastrian or pre Zoroastrian god of the Persian people
Speaker 2: who's kind of a solar deity of justice who I
Speaker 2: think was associated with contracts and the honoring of bargains.
Speaker 2: And then later you get this widespread Roman mystery cult
Speaker 2: that seems to be based on an appropriated version of
Speaker 2: that deity. And of course we know the Romans loved
Speaker 2: absorbing and reprocessing other cultures gods, like the main Roman
Speaker 2: pantheon is mostly a photocopy of the Greek. And then
Speaker 2: you've got the Persian Mithras becoming the Roman savior god
Speaker 2: of some kind, and even the way you can think
Speaker 2: about a Jewish messianic figure in Jesus and the original
Speaker 2: context of monotheistic Judaism rather quickly becomes a popular savior
Speaker 2: god to people throughout the empire who had been Polytheists
Speaker 2: up until the moment they converted to Christianity, So that
Speaker 2: whole process is really interesting. But the idea of a
Speaker 2: text of Mithraism was very interesting to me because I
Speaker 2: didn't think we had one of these. But this is
Speaker 2: referring to something called the mithras Liturgy, which I think
Speaker 2: is commonly dated to roughly the fourth century. But there's
Speaker 2: dispute about whether it actually reflects original Mithraic theology or
Speaker 2: whether it's some kind of later synthesis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the quote from it that Sue shares
Speaker 1: in the paper. Quote. But after you have said the
Speaker 1: second prayer, where silence is twice commanded, then whistle twice
Speaker 1: and click twice with the tongue, and immediately you will
Speaker 1: see stars coming down from the disk of the sun,
Speaker 1: five pointed in large numbers and filling the whole air.
Speaker 1: But say once again, silence, silence.
Speaker 2: Whistle twice, click twice, and then shut up. Here come
Speaker 2: the gods.
Speaker 1: Now, coming back to we were talking earlier about scholars
Speaker 1: in the woods. In Chinese history, there is this idea
Speaker 1: that comes up, Sue mentions, and we see this in
Speaker 1: the Han dynasty, for example, where you would have Confucian scholars,
Speaker 1: other reclusive scholars who would whistle as a means of
Speaker 1: expressing disdain for the world and or their absolute freedom.
Speaker 1: So this is an interesting concept, and it was also
Speaker 1: done by other classes as well, Sue writes quote in general, poets, hermits,
Speaker 1: and people of all types in the Six Dynasties utilized
Speaker 1: whistling to express a sense of untrammeled individual freedom, or
Speaker 1: an attitude of disobedience to authority or traditional ceremony, or
Speaker 1: to dispel suppressed feelings and indignation. Whistling was not limited
Speaker 1: to a certain class, but was practiced by men from
Speaker 1: all walks of life.
Speaker 2: This idea of whistling as a kind of like middle
Speaker 2: finger to social customs and authority. So it's like you
Speaker 2: might imagine the behavior of Diogenes the cynic, or something
Speaker 2: just completely behaving in inappropriate ways in public as an
Speaker 2: expression of contempt for norms and authority.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I whistle, I do what I want Now another
Speaker 1: paper I look to when I was looking around for
Speaker 1: various superstitions, we of course found superstitions regarding whistling at sea,
Speaker 1: but we also find them in another interesting place below
Speaker 1: the surface of the earth, in mines ooh, yeah, And
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about this, but this is apparently
Speaker 1: a big one paper I was looking as an older paper.
Speaker 1: This is California Miners Folklore. This is from a nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two edition of California Folklore Quarterly written by Waylan
Speaker 1: d Hand. And yeah, it's a really interesting read. This
Speaker 1: one's out there on the internet if anyone wants a
Speaker 1: deeper dive into it. But for example, he goes into
Speaker 1: the fear of the Tommy Knockers in the tunnels.
Speaker 2: Now, Rob, I am only familiar with Tommy Knockers from
Speaker 2: the Stephen King novel or actually I never read the novel.
Speaker 2: I think I watched the made for TV movie adaptation
Speaker 2: of it, which is quite bad, and I think Stephen
Speaker 2: King himself regards that as a terrible book. But I
Speaker 2: don't know what the original reference here is in the book.
Speaker 2: I think it's aliens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can never get very far with the book, but.
Speaker 2: Not aliens here.
Speaker 1: No, but it apparently refers to a fair variety of things,
Speaker 1: and they're very haunting and they kind of I feel
Speaker 1: like they also kind of connect to perhaps older European
Speaker 1: ideas of creatures that live in the Earth, getting into
Speaker 1: various ideas of dwarfs and so forth. The Cobald, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Cobald. This is what Hand writes in the paper.
Speaker 1: These daizens of the deep dark chambers of the Earth
Speaker 1: are conceived in different forms as disembodied spirits of dead
Speaker 1: miners hovering in a working as patrons, or as little
Speaker 1: men elf like be whiskered and wizened. They are usually
Speaker 1: thought of as benign, occasionally even assisting in the location
Speaker 1: of ore bodies. If they are not so well disposed,
Speaker 1: their conduct tends to be mischievous rather than malignant. Many
Speaker 1: California miners, though not having themselves seen these creatures in person,
Speaker 1: recall having seen small effigies of them made of clay
Speaker 1: and set upon portal, sets to a tunnel or on
Speaker 1: the lagging or elsewhere where their patronage is desired. So
Speaker 1: I love that image of not only the idea that
Speaker 1: there are these beings living elsewhere in the tunnels, but
Speaker 1: there's this kind of we talked about a little, you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking about when people set to sea, when
Speaker 1: they return, when they're when seamen are out there on
Speaker 1: the waters, there the newer religions that they have taken
Speaker 1: to might be set aside for the older ways, the
Speaker 1: older gods. And here we have this example of California
Speaker 1: miners potentially having little altars to kind of dwarven elven
Speaker 1: beings in the mines.
Speaker 2: That's too good.
Speaker 1: So Hand discusses some other ideas as well, you know,
Speaker 1: the ghosts of dead miners working in the tunnels, also
Speaker 1: phantom white mules, headless mules, and strange lights. Apparently he
Speaker 1: said that there weren't really that many creature myths concerning
Speaker 1: the minds, though occasionally you would have like a cat
Speaker 1: come down into the mines and would just scare the
Speaker 1: Bejesus out of everybody, because it would either way, I'm imagining,
Speaker 1: you know, the cat would get down there, it would
Speaker 1: be lurking about, its eyes gleaming and the light and
Speaker 1: just give everyone the proper spooks. But there were also
Speaker 1: these superstitions about the about bad luck concerning well, first
Speaker 1: of all, bringing women anywhere near the cave, but also
Speaker 1: there was a widespread superstition against anyone whistling down there,
Speaker 1: and it seems to be sort of twofold. On one hand,
Speaker 1: there was a real fear of vibrations in the caves
Speaker 1: and So there's this idea that you shouldn't whistle because
Speaker 1: you don't know what that's going to do. You're going
Speaker 1: to set up vibrations that could potentially cause a cave in.
Speaker 1: But it also seems linked to this older, wider idea
Speaker 1: that if you're whistling, you could draw in spirits and
Speaker 1: hand shares. A fun little rhyme here quote whistle by
Speaker 1: night you'll bring the sprite. Whistle by day you'll drive
Speaker 1: them away.
Speaker 2: And this is not a sprite you want to bring.
Speaker 1: Right, right, or certainly you don't want them. You don't
Speaker 1: want anything going on down there in the mind. You
Speaker 1: don't want you don't want any spirits bonking about. You
Speaker 1: don't want any vibrations going wild. You want everything to
Speaker 1: just be as safe and quiet as possible.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, so this is not like a friendly tinker bell.
Speaker 2: This would be a sprite that's going to maybe pollute
Speaker 2: your ore or make a rock fall on your head
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess coming back to the idea of
Speaker 1: the Tommy Knockers, it kind of comes back to the
Speaker 1: sort of neutrality of spirits, right. It's the idea that well, there,
Speaker 1: there are, or may be spirits around. They might do
Speaker 1: some bad things, they might do some good things. We
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't call them. We shouldn't call in extra spirits,
Speaker 1: and we should try and be on the good side
Speaker 1: of any spirits that are present.
Speaker 2: Now, I think all of the examples we've talked about
Speaker 2: so far are superstitions. That the way that whistling relates
Speaker 2: to monsters or spirits or dangerous entities is that it's
Speaker 2: something humans could do that might in some cases attract them.
Speaker 2: So you know, be careful about whistling because you might
Speaker 2: get a monster on your tail. But I was thinking
Speaker 2: about are there stories of monsters that themselves whistle or
Speaker 2: do some thing like whistling?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was curious about this. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I turned to Carol Rose, who has two Extraordinary volumes,
Speaker 1: one about monsters and giants and so forth, and the
Speaker 1: others more about fairies and sprites. And there's some overlap
Speaker 1: between the two books, but there are also things in
Speaker 1: each book that are not covered by the other, and
Speaker 1: so there were at least a couple of examples that
Speaker 1: stood out. One of them is an interesting monster of
Speaker 1: the people of the Xingu River in Brazil, and this
Speaker 1: creature is called midhata karaya, and these are said to
Speaker 1: have been giants that were as tall as the trees,
Speaker 1: with fruit growing out of their armpits, which the giants
Speaker 1: then consume to sustain themselves. So it sounds like they
Speaker 1: weren't themselves dangerous. They weren't like eating humans. But they're big,
Speaker 1: tall giants. So if they're coming your way, you want
Speaker 1: to know to get out of their way. And the
Speaker 1: way you knew this is because the male giants had
Speaker 1: a hole in the top of their head and it
Speaker 1: emitted a high pitched whistle when they moved.
Speaker 2: This is a good monster. Okay, so we got armpit autophagi.
Speaker 2: They eat the fruit of their own armpits and their
Speaker 2: heads whistle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now another monster that Rose shares Here is a
Speaker 1: Russian creature that I think we might well describe as
Speaker 1: a sort of a harpie, or at least a harpy
Speaker 1: in them the way that modern people will think of
Speaker 1: the harpy a kind of bird human hybrid, though in
Speaker 1: this case I think they tend to be more male
Speaker 1: than female. And its name is soleve Rachtmash, and in
Speaker 1: Russian folklore it's said to give a piercing whistle, and
Speaker 1: this whistle will kill anyone who hears it, and then
Speaker 1: the monster will come and rob.
Speaker 2: Your corpse, rob your corpse. So it's looking for money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's not here to eat you either. It's
Speaker 1: interested in one thing, and it's whatever money you got on.
Speaker 2: You checking your armpits for fruit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But and it's kind of an interesting thing because
Speaker 1: the next monster I wanted to mention also is not
Speaker 1: going to kill you. This one just wants to scare
Speaker 1: you real bad. This is a yokai. I was looking
Speaker 1: around in yokai traditions because I'm thinking, well, that's just
Speaker 1: such a rich font of creatures and beings that it
Speaker 1: makes sense that there'd be something out there that whistled.
Speaker 1: And the one that I found, some descriptions of it
Speaker 1: that I found translated, of course mentioned whistling as something
Speaker 1: it does. Others don't mention it, so I can't be
Speaker 1: one hundred persent certain if this is something that is
Speaker 1: actually part of it or a lot of these yokaia too.
Speaker 1: They and when you get into modern ghost stories as well,
Speaker 1: like there's there's there's still kind of rich in alive,
Speaker 1: so something's could add it and also somethings could added
Speaker 1: in translation, but this one is called Oa Guru Batari
Speaker 1: and its name apparently means nothing but blackened teeth, which
Speaker 1: already sounds pretty pretty amazing. So this is the way
Speaker 1: this okais encountered. She appears as a beautiful woman in
Speaker 1: a traditional wedding kimono, and I guess you might see
Speaker 1: her at a distance, and in some cases as you
Speaker 1: get as you're interested and you move closer, she may
Speaker 1: whistle to get the attention of single men. Other accounts
Speaker 1: say that she may speak in the voice of a
Speaker 1: loved one. Others don't seem to mention any kind of
Speaker 1: real sound at all. But as you get closer, this
Speaker 1: is the main thing that happens. She, like a lot
Speaker 1: of these type creatures, will reveal her face. And when
Speaker 1: she reveals her face, you find not a not a
Speaker 1: beautiful humanoid face, but instead a face that is largely
Speaker 1: blank except for a great, big, gaping mouth that's filled
Speaker 1: with nothing but blackened teeth. And then she cackles, and
Speaker 1: you just scream and run away terrified, And that's it.
Speaker 1: She's not interested in hurting you. She's just here to
Speaker 1: scare the Bejesus out of you.
Speaker 2: No eyes, no nose, just the teeth. And but yeah,
Speaker 2: so she doesn't bite your head off. It's just a
Speaker 2: show you the teeth and get you upset.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just a ghost. Now. I didn't look super
Speaker 1: close at various pop culture and modern whistling entities, but
Speaker 1: I thought I would mention briefly that there is something
Speaker 1: called the whistling Fiend in Dungeons and Dragons raven Loft setting.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be just like this horrible monster, like
Speaker 1: a fiend from the pits of Hell, but it will
Speaker 1: whistle beautifully as it's approaching, so before anything goes terribly wrong,
Speaker 1: you'll hear the whistling. And then if you happen to
Speaker 1: witness what it does when it gets there, well it's
Speaker 1: whistling the whole time as well as it's doing, you know, horrible,
Speaker 1: gruesome things to people. Now I was I was interested
Speaker 1: to run across this. I don't really know much about
Speaker 1: old radio dramas, but there was also an old radio
Speaker 1: drama about crime and fate titled The Whistler, And apparently
Speaker 1: on this show, the titular whistler kind of emerges out
Speaker 1: of the night. It's very much a kind of you know,
Speaker 1: crime noir kind of a figure. You hear him whistling
Speaker 1: a catchy tune, and then he serves as the narrator
Speaker 1: and kind of host of the program. And there were
Speaker 1: apparently eight different Whistler films during the nineteen forties, and
Speaker 1: the first of them was nineteen forty four is the Whistler,
Speaker 1: and it was directed by William Castle.
Speaker 2: Uh, William Castle of the Tingler fame.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so I.
Speaker 2: Have to assume he installed special seats in the movie
Speaker 2: theaters that what would the whistle into your bud or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it sounds like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: he would do. Yeah, I mean, he is perhaps best
Speaker 1: remembered for figuring out what kind of gimmick would get
Speaker 1: people into the theater. Maybe just the gimmick here was
Speaker 1: just the existing ip. I don't know. But I don't
Speaker 1: think you really hear about the Whistler much anymore. I
Speaker 1: think there was a nineteen fifties TV series, and I
Speaker 1: don't know that anyone's really gone back to this, but
Speaker 1: I like this idea because it's essentially it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a cripkeeper, you know, it's an anthology host and Apparently
Speaker 1: the deal with the movies is you would have the
Speaker 1: same star actor in each of them, not the Whistler
Speaker 1: but somebody else, though each story is different, and so
Speaker 1: he's playing a different character. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the modern version would be. I don't know, Ryan Gosling
Speaker 1: is in every Whistler movie, but Ryan Gosling plays a
Speaker 1: different protagonist, a different character that's all wound up in
Speaker 1: some sort of tale of crime and fate.
Speaker 2: We just got a producer chime in from Seth who,
Speaker 2: by the way, is actually a devoted listener to The Whistler.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if you can be devoted
Speaker 2: to something that is not currently produced, but he's a fan.
Speaker 2: He says, it's great.
Speaker 1: You know this idea of the stranger who whistles, and
Speaker 1: it's unknown exactly what their knowledge is, what their powers
Speaker 1: may be. I guess you do see that in a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of cinema. It's often We've had
Speaker 1: some listeners right in and mentioned that Westerns are a
Speaker 1: place where we see a lot of such suspicious whistling.
Speaker 1: It brings to mind a nineteen ninety one TV movie
Speaker 1: that I don't remember was especially good, but it was creepy,
Speaker 1: and it was called Into the bad Lands, and it
Speaker 1: starred Bruce Dern as this creepy old bounty hunter in black,
Speaker 1: and if memory serves, he does various things. He cooks
Speaker 1: some eggs, he shoots some outlaws, and drags him around
Speaker 1: kind of rotting behind his cart. He smiles a big
Speaker 1: creepy grin. But I think he also whistles in that one,
Speaker 1: And there's a particular ditty that's reoccurring, So there is
Speaker 1: something to this. The stranger who whistles, what is he
Speaker 1: whistling about? He kind of ties into some of these
Speaker 1: other ideas, like he's an outsider that is not tied
Speaker 1: to the same rules as everything else. He may have
Speaker 1: some sort of communication with knowledge beyond himself, with spirits,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Another producer, Chime ins Seth, had a great example of this,
Speaker 2: and it's Earl Hannah and kill Bill, who does a
Speaker 2: very creepy whistling while she is on the way to
Speaker 2: kill the protagonist.
Speaker 1: And that's a great example too, because this is this
Speaker 1: is a female character whistling. So many of these examples,
Speaker 1: even if we're touching on traditions where where whistling is
Speaker 1: not gendered. It seems like a lot of them tend
Speaker 1: to involve male figures that are whistling. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: great example seth. All right, So that's all I have
Speaker 1: for now anyway, concerning whistling superstitions and whistling monsters. Certainly
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there who has
Speaker 1: additional things they would like to bring up, be it
Speaker 1: you know, folkloric creatures, strange traditions, and certainly any kind
Speaker 1: of you know, movie tie in characters who whistle. I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear about any of that. So yes, by
Speaker 1: all means right in.
Speaker 2: So, I guess the next thing we should look at
Speaker 2: is some of the psychology research on whistling, which I
Speaker 2: have to say, I was shocked how sparse this literature is.
Speaker 2: There is, from what I could tell, very little psychological
Speaker 2: research about when and why people whistle. One of the
Speaker 2: only major papers I could find on it wasn't really
Speaker 2: experimental in nature. It was very theoretical, and though it
Speaker 2: had a few interesting ideas in it that I do
Speaker 2: want to talk about, to the extent that it is theoretical,
Speaker 2: it seems kind of based in Freudianism, So it's gonna
Speaker 2: be a big caveat there. But before we get to that,
Speaker 2: I did want to talk about a medical case report
Speaker 2: I came across that had a title that really grabbed
Speaker 2: my attention. So this is a paper by pallac at
Speaker 2: All published in BMC Psychiatry in twenty twelve, and it's
Speaker 2: called Compulsive Carnival Song Whistling following Cardiac arrest. A case
Speaker 2: study Compulsive Carnival Song Whistling.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, So is it the pro is that
Speaker 1: the music? You think that?
Speaker 2: That's what I was assuming. Unfortunately, the case report is
Speaker 2: not attached a recording or sheet music or anything. So,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't name the tunes, so I don't know
Speaker 2: what song it is. The most they say about it
Speaker 2: is that it is a carnival song. All right, what
Speaker 2: are the options? Yeah, so you got that one is
Speaker 2: like the Binny Hill theme? Possible? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I don't want to get too far
Speaker 1: into this because this is like, this is a realm
Speaker 1: I know virtually nothing about. But apparently there's a there's
Speaker 1: a fair amount of what we might think of his
Speaker 1: circus music that you know, we're talking about circus band stuff.
Speaker 1: We're talking about waltzes and fox trots, so there there's
Speaker 1: there's probably a lot there, but them is the thing
Speaker 1: that that mostly comes to the surface for folks like me.
Speaker 2: Okay, So in this case, report the medical history the patient.
Speaker 2: In this case it's anonymous of course, so we don't
Speaker 2: know their name. But it was a man who was
Speaker 2: found unconscious in his car in February nineteen ninety two
Speaker 2: at the age of forty eight, having so a heart attack.
Speaker 2: He was in cardiac arrest for some period of time,
Speaker 2: but he was reanimated successfully in the emergency room at
Speaker 2: a nearby hospital, so he survived the heart attack he had.
Speaker 2: His heart had stopped, there was reduced a supply of
Speaker 2: oxygen to the brain, but they resuscitated him and he
Speaker 2: was all right. But during rehabilitation he presented with some symptoms,
Speaker 2: including neurological impairment, and so several of the things they
Speaker 2: report are disorientation, apathy, what they call bradyphrenia meaning slowness
Speaker 2: of thought, short term memory problems and things like that.
Speaker 2: And imaging, particularly EEG showed decreased functioning in the brain,
Speaker 2: especially in the bezo temporal areas, and he continued to
Speaker 2: exhibit some neurological symptoms in the following years. And here's
Speaker 2: where we get to the music. I'll read straight from
Speaker 2: the case report quote. We were approached in May two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight by the patient's wife, who got to
Speaker 2: know our center of expertise through the internet. She was
Speaker 2: close to desperation from listening to the whistling of the
Speaker 2: same carnival song for nearly sixteen years. It would go
Speaker 2: on for five to eight hours every day and got
Speaker 2: worse when the patient was tired. Oh wow, so it's
Speaker 2: a mix. Like obviously it's you know, I was snagged
Speaker 2: by the idea of repetitive whistling of a carnival song,
Speaker 2: but when you actually hear the details, it is I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's a very unfortunate situation to imagine that,
Speaker 2: like the whistling of the same song goes on for
Speaker 2: five to eight hours a day for sixteen years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Now, the authors here talk about treatments that were tried,
Speaker 2: including a drug called clomipramine, which is a tricyclic antidepressant
Speaker 2: that is sometimes used to treat obsessive compulsive disorder, which
Speaker 2: obviously share some features with what's being described here. That
Speaker 2: among other conditions. But basically this drug regimen did manage
Speaker 2: to decrease the whistling by about half, but it also
Speaker 2: came with some very difficult side effects in this man's case,
Speaker 2: and the repetitive whistling of a carnival song non stop
Speaker 2: for five to eight hours a day could be considered
Speaker 2: an example of what psychiatrists would call compulsivity, which the
Speaker 2: authors describe as quote, the repetitive, irresistible urge to perform
Speaker 2: a behavior, the experience of loss of voluntary control over
Speaker 2: this intense urge, and the tendency to perform repetitive acts
Speaker 2: in a habitual or stereotyped manner. So they talk about
Speaker 2: how the man would whistle the song on a loop
Speaker 2: all day pretty much, and that at certain points they
Speaker 2: could make him stop doing it, though he reported after
Speaker 2: he stopped that he experienced anxiety. And in their discussion,
Speaker 2: the authors explain how the man in this report showed
Speaker 2: symptoms that could be consistent with three different interpretations of
Speaker 2: his condition. So, first of all, they talk about the
Speaker 2: idea of a frontal syndrome characterized by impulsivity and disinhibition.
Speaker 2: I think frontal syndrome there because it's the frontal lobe
Speaker 2: that is very important for inhibiting behavior that's your sort
Speaker 2: of like self control mechanism. And then second a compulsivity
Speaker 2: condition known as punding, which is characterized by quote purposeless
Speaker 2: and repetitive behavior such as collecting or arranging things often
Speaker 2: related to the patient's personal hobbies or occupation, and attributed
Speaker 2: to alterations of the brain's reward and motor systems in
Speaker 2: both the ventral and dorsal stra atom. And then the
Speaker 2: final interpretation would be a sort of acquired form of
Speaker 2: obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. And there are other examples
Speaker 2: of people acquiring OCD after a brain injury later in life.
Speaker 2: The OCD is usually acquired gradually earlier on in life.
Speaker 2: And they say all of these explanations match the observations
Speaker 2: in some ways but not in others. But one thing
Speaker 2: they got into that I thought was interesting here was
Speaker 2: talking about the different characteristics of impulsivity versus compulsivity in
Speaker 2: the brain. So they write, quote, one may conclude that
Speaker 2: the whistling with its repetitions is primarily compulsive rather than
Speaker 2: impulsive or disinhibitive, as the patient had a constant urge
Speaker 2: to whistle and felt anxiety when asked to stop rather
Speaker 2: than acting without foresight. The fact that anxiety was felt
Speaker 2: is in line with compulsivity rather than impulsivity, assuming that
Speaker 2: compulsive behaviors are performed to prevent perceived negative consequences from happening.
Speaker 2: So this is a useful distinction for thinking about because
Speaker 2: when we you know, outside of the medical context, when
Speaker 2: we think about these words impulsive or compulsive, they both
Speaker 2: I think usually refer to situations where a person seems
Speaker 2: to lack executive control. They lack the ability to control
Speaker 2: their own behavior or prevent themselves from doing something, but
Speaker 2: in very different ways. So in impulsivity, you feel an
Speaker 2: urge to do something, but some process taking place in
Speaker 2: your frontal lobe tells you that's not appropriate and stops
Speaker 2: you from doing it. But the urge itself might be
Speaker 2: something normal that like we would all think of doing
Speaker 2: for a second. It might cross our mind to do it,
Speaker 2: but then we would turn away from actually doing it
Speaker 2: because of some inhibition mechanism in the brain. Examples of
Speaker 2: this include all kinds of stuff, spitting on the floor
Speaker 2: or making a rude or inappropriate comment and conversation, or
Speaker 2: jumping out of a moving car. They can vary wildly
Speaker 2: from you know, minor things to extreme things. They would
Speaker 2: all be things though, that even a person with typical
Speaker 2: neuroanatomy might think for a second about doing, but then
Speaker 2: they would be able to stop themselves.
Speaker 1: All right. I think we can all think of examples
Speaker 1: of this from our own life, where yeah, you're just
Speaker 1: in a situation and you may think of like something
Speaker 1: just ridiculous or absurd or antisocial that you theoretically could do,
Speaker 1: and then you sort of but you recoil from it
Speaker 1: and you realize, oh, well, of course I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do that. And it can be a little shocking
Speaker 1: to think that you even thought about doing that. Why
Speaker 1: did I think that, hey, I could take my wallet
Speaker 1: out and throw it off of this building or off
Speaker 1: of this bridge that I'm on. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We did a whole episode one time called The
Speaker 2: imp of the Perverse that was about this idea that
Speaker 2: like that there is some kind of It was about
Speaker 2: the first half before the inhibition comes in. It's like,
Speaker 2: what is that urge to do things that are obviously
Speaker 2: not in your best interests but you suddenly just feel like, ooh,
Speaker 2: I should do that. But then you're able to put
Speaker 2: the you know, put the lid on it and say no,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't do that. People with a frontal syndrome often
Speaker 2: have impulsivity problems because they whatever the normal disinhibition mechanism
Speaker 2: in the brain is, that has been damaged in some
Speaker 2: way by their injury. Right, So contrasts that that impulsivity
Speaker 2: with compulsivity, where a person also lacks the ability to
Speaker 2: stop themselves from performing an action, but it's an action
Speaker 2: that they feel they must do repetitively in order to
Speaker 2: prevent some kind of bad consequence from happening. So remember
Speaker 2: it was said that the man here would whistle constantly,
Speaker 2: but he felt the immediate onset of anxiety if he
Speaker 2: stopped whistling the carnival song. So that makes it sound
Speaker 2: more like it's compulsivity here, that it's something that he
Speaker 2: felt he had to do repetitively or else negative consequences
Speaker 2: would emerge. And the case history here mentions that the
Speaker 2: man once worked as head of a carnival association, and
Speaker 2: the authors don't say this, so we don't know this,
Speaker 2: but it seems like a reasonable guess that the carnival
Speaker 2: tune he was whistling was one he was familiar with
Speaker 2: from his own past to working as the head of
Speaker 2: a carnival association, maybe even one he associated with a
Speaker 2: time when he was more in control.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating because it also this ties into sort of
Speaker 1: the power of music, right. We all use music, I think,
Speaker 1: at times to augment our current mental state, to draw
Speaker 1: in mental feelings of power or assertiveness, but also sadness,
Speaker 1: whatever the case might be, whatever we feel like we
Speaker 1: need to connect with that is not our current state exactly.
Speaker 2: But it also ties into something that came up in
Speaker 2: previous episodes. So here again we have a case of
Speaker 2: a man who suffers neurological damage after a period where
Speaker 2: his brain isn't getting enough oxygen. He never had any
Speaker 2: symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder or anything before this, but
Speaker 2: after this event he acquired this tendency to engage in
Speaker 2: compulsive whistling. And I thought it was interesting that the whistling,
Speaker 2: if it is best interpreted as a way of staving
Speaker 2: off anxiety, which the authors here suggested, is it made
Speaker 2: me think of our discussion about whistling past the graveyard
Speaker 2: or whistling in the dark, other cases where it's commonly
Speaker 2: observed that people whistle in order to push out a
Speaker 2: fear or thoughts of danger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, more whistling past the graveyard for sure.
Speaker 2: Now, again, as I mentioned earlier, it seemed like the
Speaker 2: psychological research on whistling was far less developed than I
Speaker 2: would have expected. Maybe there are some great studies out
Speaker 2: there that I just wasn't able to find, So if
Speaker 2: you know of them, please send them into the show
Speaker 2: account contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: But the other major one I found, and this was
Speaker 2: cited in some other papers, is a paper from nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine published in the journal Language and Speech called
Speaker 2: When People Whistle, and it's by the UC San Francisco
Speaker 2: professor of psychiatry, Peter F. Austwald. As I said earlier,
Speaker 2: I do want to mention this one because it has
Speaker 2: some interesting ideas in it, but also it is an
Speaker 2: older paper. It clearly is not constricted by empirical method.
Speaker 2: This is not like reporting on original experiments. It's more
Speaker 2: kind of theorizing about what whistling might mean and why
Speaker 2: people whistle, based on models that seem at least influenced
Speaker 2: by Freudianism. A lot of it's about fixations that are
Speaker 2: sort of emerge from childhood development. But anyway, okay, so
Speaker 2: who is this guy who wrote this? Ostwald? He seems
Speaker 2: like a kind of interesting guy. So he lived from
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty eight to nineteen ninety six, and his life
Speaker 2: is sort of divided between an interest in psychiatry on
Speaker 2: one hand, and music and music history on the other.
Speaker 2: So he wrote biographies of musicians and composers like Schumann
Speaker 2: and Glenn Gould. But also, to quote from his New
Speaker 2: York Times obituary quote, in nineteen eighty six, he founded
Speaker 2: the Health Program for Performing Artists, a voluntary group of
Speaker 2: specialists engaged in research, education, and clinical care of the
Speaker 2: particular mental and medical problems afflicting musicians, dancers, and other
Speaker 2: performing artists, both professionals and students. And I thought that
Speaker 2: was very interesting because now that I think about it,
Speaker 2: it clearly makes sense that you could have medical center
Speaker 2: focused on the mental and physical health needs of performing
Speaker 2: artists in particular, because I'd imagine there would be patterns
Speaker 2: in their needs. But it never occurred to me that
Speaker 2: such a thing would exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it makes sense, right, because we have
Speaker 1: sports medicine athletes do extreme things with their bodies. It
Speaker 1: puts special types of wear and tear on them, and
Speaker 1: you could I think you can very fairly say the
Speaker 1: same thing for performers, especially when you're thinking about something
Speaker 1: like dance or vocal performance.
Speaker 2: Totally, but okay, what does ast Falds say in this
Speaker 2: language psychology paper? Mainly this article is focused on questions
Speaker 2: of why humans whistle, what purpose it serves, what whistling
Speaker 2: tends to mean, and how it differs from other forms
Speaker 2: of noise production. I'm not gonna get into everything he
Speaker 2: theorizes about in this paper, but I did want to
Speaker 2: focus on one part where he's sort of taking a
Speaker 2: look at the phenomenology of whistling. What does it feel
Speaker 2: like to whistle?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Is it pleasurable to people? And if it is, which
Speaker 2: it often seems to be, why is it pleasurable? So
Speaker 2: to check one of the very Freudian boxes, he argues that,
Speaker 2: first of all, the act of whistling involves manipulation of
Speaker 2: the muscles in the face and the mouth in a
Speaker 2: way that may produce hedonic states feelings of comfort and
Speaker 2: pleasure because of its similarity to the facial and mouth
Speaker 2: movements of what he calls oral gratification, and so he
Speaker 2: expands that to all kinds of things like eating and smoking,
Speaker 2: but he specifically ties it into the facial and mouth
Speaker 2: muscle movements of a feeding infant. So this is one
Speaker 2: of those things that, well, it's hard to disprove that,
Speaker 2: but I'm not convinced there's much evidence to establish that
Speaker 2: exact causal chain that like doing the same thing with
Speaker 2: your face muscles that you did when you were a
Speaker 2: baby in your mother's arms produces comfort and for the
Speaker 2: same reason. I don't know how you would show that, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And also I'd be skeptical that there's a general principle
Speaker 2: that doing something with the you know, the skeletal muscle
Speaker 2: in your body that is similar to what that muscle
Speaker 2: does in some other unrelated activity that is pleasurable in
Speaker 2: some way gives you pleasure in the secondary activity just
Speaker 2: because you're using the same muscles. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: you could think of ways that you would use the
Speaker 2: same muscles you might use in some pleasurable activity, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't bring pleasure. Does just like pretending to chew
Speaker 2: bring you the same kind of pleasure you get from
Speaker 2: eating and so forth?
Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, generally not. Uh yeah, yeah, you can't. You
Speaker 1: can't just say, pretend to be eating your favorite dish.
Speaker 1: And I mean maybe if you're hungry enough, you can
Speaker 1: you can lean into it a little bit. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but yeah, for the most part, I don't really put
Speaker 1: a lot of stock in this notion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got doubts about that. But then you
Speaker 2: make some other points that I think are I don't know,
Speaker 2: more worth considering. This next one is still sort of
Speaker 2: along Freudian lines, but I think it's it's I don't know,
Speaker 2: it feels different to me. So see what you think
Speaker 2: about this, he says.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: In addition to the mouth and face, whistling involves the
Speaker 2: respiratory structures. These structures chest, abdomen, lungs, wind pipes, and
Speaker 2: throat move of their own accord, regulated by neuronal and
Speaker 2: chemical processes beyond voluntary control. But the whistler in effect
Speaker 2: willfully imposes his own rhythm, amplitude, and organization pattern on
Speaker 2: these automatic movements. Psychological studies show that if the individual
Speaker 2: is rewarded by attention or praise when he first gains
Speaker 2: control over such automatic processes, he may continue to expect
Speaker 2: satisfaction from this display of skill. As will be shown later,
Speaker 2: whistling arouses the attention of listeners so that the whistler's
Speaker 2: bodily mastery is almost universally rewarded in some way. And
Speaker 2: I don't know, at a gut level, this seemed a
Speaker 2: little more plausible to me that there could be like
Speaker 2: a learned association of positive reinforcement upon gaining conscious control
Speaker 2: over previously automatic or autonomic processes. And I think one
Speaker 2: of the main ideas this ties into here is like
Speaker 2: toilet training, that you know, there could be some kind
Speaker 2: of bleed over with pleasure upon a general pleasure upon
Speaker 2: taking conscious control of things like breath, and that would
Speaker 2: sort of check out with other things. I mean, there
Speaker 2: are a lot of things people do to seemingly bring
Speaker 2: themselves pleasure and comfort just by taking conscious control of breath,
Speaker 2: which is normally automatic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this does remind me of certain potty training techniques
Speaker 1: for kids where they'll be for instance, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to teach the very young child to have some degree
Speaker 1: of control over when they defecate, that there's a there's
Speaker 1: a like a technique where you're getting them to hum
Speaker 1: while they do it. So it's yeah, I can see
Speaker 1: where you can have a lot of connection between the
Speaker 1: two here.
Speaker 2: Oh and in the next section I want to talk
Speaker 2: about he actually ties directly into that. So Ostwald writes, quote,
Speaker 2: some of the emotions that accompany the act of whistling
Speaker 2: would appear to result from wishful thoughts and magical fantasies
Speaker 2: in the mind of the whistler. Whistling, because it involves
Speaker 2: the production of wordless sounds, may bring back memories of
Speaker 2: that very early period during which the child could not
Speaker 2: distinguish between those sounds which came from the outside world
Speaker 2: and those sounds which came from his own body. During
Speaker 2: this phase of personality development, one is unsure of the
Speaker 2: significance of sounds. One cannot tell whether a certain noise,
Speaker 2: say one's footsteps, has personal meaning referable only to his
Speaker 2: own body, or has a public meaning with some reference
Speaker 2: to the world of other people. In this confused state,
Speaker 2: the individual may come to believe that the sounds he
Speaker 2: produces have some causal relationship to what he experiences. Whistling,
Speaker 2: like other noises he makes, may thus be associated with
Speaker 2: fantasies of omnipotence, which, unless corrected by reality can lead
Speaker 2: to delusions of grandeur. This was really interesting to me
Speaker 2: because think about how many things we've already looked at
Speaker 2: where there's some belief that, like whistling gives you power
Speaker 2: to like change the external world somehow.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, ties directly into the wind magic we've been
Speaker 1: discussing in getting and even connects back to the Taoist
Speaker 1: transcendental whistling as.
Speaker 2: Well totally, or even the Terence McKinney thing. Yeah yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but okay, So coming back to this, Ostwald writes, quote
Speaker 2: Occasionally parents or other adults inadvertently encourage magical behavior in
Speaker 2: their children and thus reinforce fanciful thoughts about whistling and
Speaker 2: other sounds. For example, nurses have been known to employ
Speaker 2: whistles to quote make the child urinate and kindly. Grandparents
Speaker 2: not infrequently whistle away the aches and bruises of a youngster.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I can see the again whistling as the
Speaker 1: as a sound of wind, but also the sound of
Speaker 1: water moving water. We touched on that, and that's some
Speaker 1: of these ideas that you can get an ox or
Speaker 1: a horse to drink water by whistling at it, which
Speaker 1: there may not be anything to that, but using it
Speaker 1: as some sort of a potty training. Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: imagine the humming sound being for the defecation though, the
Speaker 1: whistling sound being for the you know, the creation of
Speaker 1: water with one body, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And that could actually have efficacy when you're whistling to
Speaker 2: a person, right because they hear that that has some
Speaker 2: associative significance for them that may actually help motivate, i
Speaker 2: don't know, going to the bathroom, or may actually make
Speaker 2: them feel subjectively less pain or something like that. But
Speaker 2: that could lead to the erroneous assumption therefore, that you
Speaker 2: can have physically implausible control over the external world with
Speaker 2: whistling somehow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway.
Speaker 2: Ostwald then relates this to reports tying directly back into
Speaker 2: our previous episode about sailors who have intense superstitions about
Speaker 2: whistling and believe that it contains powerful and dangerous magic,
Speaker 2: you know, again whistling for the wind. And he also
Speaker 2: discusses magical beliefs about whistling to summon birds and Celtic
Speaker 2: tales and this involves a mediating technology. Plenty of stories
Speaker 2: about beasts and magical creatures that are commanded by a flute.
Speaker 2: You know, think of the god pan and the magical
Speaker 2: syringx and so forth, but.
Speaker 1: Also the piper, pied piper. Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But the interesting observation that sort of puts a bow
Speaker 2: on this whole thing is he ends up talking about
Speaker 2: whistling as a form of non verbal signaling. So here
Speaker 2: he would specifically not be talking about actual languages that
Speaker 2: use whistles, where there's a full language and the whistles
Speaker 2: actually mean words, So you know, he's not talking about
Speaker 2: whistling with precise informational content, but rather the more informal
Speaker 2: type of communication done via whistling in other contexts, He writes, quote,
Speaker 2: wordless signals usually have a vague and imprecise meaning. They
Speaker 2: do not usually communicate ideas, but serve rather to attract attention.
Speaker 2: And he described some of the same research we've already
Speaker 2: talked about, for example, that whistling is a type of
Speaker 2: noise making that travels especially well by concentrating energy in
Speaker 2: the one to four kilohertz range, which is the best
Speaker 2: window for humans to hear. It's sort of a perfect
Speaker 2: attention getter. But in the context of most cultures, cultures
Speaker 2: where whistling does not constitute a language. It doesn't contain
Speaker 2: words or precise information. Again, its meaning is vague. It's
Speaker 2: just an attention getter. And personally, I think maybe it's
Speaker 2: in this vagueness that a lot of the superstitions and
Speaker 2: ideas about the magical danger of whistling could emerge, because
Speaker 2: it's sort of a one to two punch. It's this paradox.
Speaker 2: Whistling is like the most powerful signal you can make
Speaker 2: with your body to attract attention, the most powerful sound
Speaker 2: signal you can make. Right, it's this piercing sound. It
Speaker 2: travels far, it it makes people turn their heads. It's
Speaker 2: like a beacon, and yet in most cases it doesn't
Speaker 2: form precise words or phrases, so you can't be sure
Speaker 2: what kind of attention you are attracting. It's just a
Speaker 2: general beacon. It could attract a friend, or if you're
Speaker 2: in a dangerous place, maybe you're on the sea and
Speaker 2: there are all kinds of forces at work, it could
Speaker 2: just as likely attract unwanted attention, a dangerous enemy of
Speaker 2: some kind. And because you can't form precise words with it,
Speaker 2: you also don't know what you're saying or what you're
Speaker 2: asking for. It's like the scene in the movie where
Speaker 2: you know, you like read a spell from an ancient
Speaker 2: book in another language and you don't know what the
Speaker 2: words are, so you don't know what kind of spell
Speaker 2: you're enacting or what kind of trouble you're getting into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or thinking about the transmissions that we send into
Speaker 1: outer space, or that are sent from somewhere else in
Speaker 1: outer space by some you know, presumably intelligent or ones
Speaker 1: intelligent species, like the potential danger or of just of
Speaker 1: whistling into the cosmic darkness, and you don't know who
Speaker 1: is going to receive the signal and what they'll make
Speaker 1: of the signal.
Speaker 2: I think that's a perfect analogy. Yeah, It's like I
Speaker 2: think a lot of these fears and superstitions about the
Speaker 2: magical power of whistling would be like if somebody in
Speaker 2: the real context said, I have created the most powerful
Speaker 2: radio transmitter that will omni directionally broadcast an incredibly clear,
Speaker 2: powerful signal that any other intelligence out there could detect.
Speaker 2: We don't know what they'll make of it, but let's
Speaker 2: just start transmitting. There would obviously be some real concerns
Speaker 2: about that from some of the less sanguine of extraterrestrial theorists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean imagine if we just piped circus music out,
Speaker 1: like just non stop circus music, what would they make
Speaker 1: of it? Maybe the killer clowns from out of space
Speaker 1: show up. That's the problem.
Speaker 2: God help us.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and wrap up
Speaker 1: this four part Whistling series here, but we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there, because whistling is something that
Speaker 1: I think all of us have some connection to. You
Speaker 1: can whistle, or you can't whistle, or you can sort
Speaker 1: of whistle where there's some sort of cultural ideas about whistling.
Speaker 1: There's something about whistling in the way you were brought up.
Speaker 1: There's whistling in various pieces of media, So all of
Speaker 1: this is fair game. Writ in. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. In the meantime, you can always find
Speaker 1: core episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays in these Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 1: On Mondays we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do
Speaker 1: a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and on
Speaker 1: Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 1: strange film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 2: say hello, you can email us at contact Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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