Oh hey, it's your sister's high school friend who is eating frozen custard in the background of a hometown date on The Bachelor. Not really. Ali warret back with an episode You're gonna hate Maybe I dare you to listen. It is packed with bananas information about the human mind and psyche, and about fear and power and social contagions and delightful squeals. But it is absolutely not soothing whatsoever.
Don't fall asleep to this. Don't play this with your grandpa recovering from surgery on the couch next to you. Don't turn to me if you're having anxiety about your kolonoscopy prep. Not the episode, not the episode for that at all. This one is going to tear at the fabric of your sanity. And this ologist offers so much
cocktail party trivia. Hoo boy. So he did his undergrad and animal behavior and got a master's in psychology and a PhD in zoology, a post doc with primates at Rockefeller University, and is now a professor in the Department of peche Collogy at Emory, where he has been since nineteen eighty four. And if you have seen an article about the study of human screams. It is likely that
this person has been quoted, So here we go. But first, thank you to all the patrons who submitted wonderful questions for this You can join the patreon at patreon dot com slash ologies for a buck a month and submit questions. Also thanks for spreading the word about the show, telling friends, and leaving reviews, which helps so much. This one this
week holy shit, so worth it. I'm going to put the review at the end of the episode as the secret I want to read the whole thing anyway, Onto screamology. So the word scream it's said to come from a Scandinavian term meaning to terrify or cry aloud, so vocalization via forced air, and the term screamology was coined in the press years ago about this guy, so I reached out.
Luckily we had some help in booking him. We talked before the holidays, on a day when Emory was having some giant fundraising drive on campus, but luckily his office appeared to be soundproofed, so we warmed up our voices and chatted about movie screams, which animals scream, the difference between yelling versus screaming, happy screaming, scream queens, screamed kings, the decibels and distance of screams, screaming in your nightmares,
boy bands, dictators, death metal, and more. With plenty of examples in here that we try to keep quiet, but they're in there, so get ready with primatologists, research psychologists, and one of the world very few professional dedicated screamologists, doctor Harold Gazulas. Once again, that name.
Is Harold Kazoulis. It's a Greek name, three syllables, so pretty simple for a Greek name, and he him.
Kind of like someone who's been a victim of a kazoo theft and is now kazouls Hi Ali, Hi, you sound great.
Well, let's hope. I was almost at heart attack coming down here. Atlanta traffic is notorious and Friday afternoon is the worst, and it just turned out to be one of those worst case scenarios. Oh no, And I was rushing to get down here and managed. And then I discovered that the campus is a very noisy place today because Emory my University, is kicking off their big capital campaign and so there's music playing everywhere.
Now.
Fortunately, my office seems to be tucked away just sufficiently well, so it's not really noticeable. I don't know if you can hear anything in the background.
No, I can't at all.
Okay, good, good?
Now is does your office have to be well insulated in case there are screams or is it just lost?
Well, well, my lab is more isolated, and yet the story goes that people walk by and will hear some of the screams that we're listening to and talking about within the lab with my students and wondering what's going on, and so they have to hear. Oh, that's just doctor Gozulis's scream research. Don't worry about it, don't panic, don't run for the hills.
How long have people been calling you a screamologist?
Only quite recently within the context of ologies, I would first be a biologist. That's where my degree is in and it's actually in zoology my PhD. And I'm working in a psychology department and have been for thirty seven years. If that can actually be the true, Wow, you're it, Emory. Yes, And my training is in ethology, which is the study of animal behavior, and the animals I work with mostly are non human primates, so technically I'm a primatologist. As well.
Oh, you're so many ologies underweos.
I have a lot of ologies. But I was talking to a reporter I don't know a year and a half ago. He said, wow, is it okay if I refer to you as a screamologist, And at the time I thought, hmm, that's a little a little off, but go ahead if you'd like. If it's if it's something that would enhance your piece, please screamology would be fine.
Ah well, it's lucky for me because after that came out, I had a lot of people screencapping it and saying, there's a screamologist. You have to find him, Please ask him everything, Please find him right out. So yeah, I've had my sights on you for a while.
Oh well, that's cool. And I must say that my daughter in law is one of your biggest fans. When I mentioned the possibility of this interview, she was so excited, So it's really cute.
So yes, thank you for vouching for a Sam. We absolutely owe you on. And I know that you would expect this episode in October everyone, but right now it's January and it's cold, and the snow is dirty and slushy. My roof is leaking. Is it a good time to bellow your throat raw? What would you say time of year? As a culture people scream the most. Do you think it's in the summer when people are getting squirted with water guns? Is it during haunted house season? Is it
when they get their bills after the holidays? When do we scream the most either?
That is very interesting. I don't think I've ever had that question, But I would say people in general, you probably hear more screams outside in the summer, and they come mostly from children because they're at swimming pools and playgrounds and just a lot of social interaction. As any parent and most adults can appreciate and know children just scream all the time they get them together. So I would say summer, I think probably that's what I would think.
Yeah, that was my hypothesis. I'm glad that it holds a little bit of water. But what is a scream and who does it? What animals can we classify as screaming? What's the difference between a call and a behavior and a scream?
Right, Screams are a particular category of vocalization in the repertoire of many different species, and we can come back to that in a bit. But you know, there isn't a precise and absolutely formal and totally accepted definition of a scream, but there are key features of screams, so they in terms of the length of a particular utterance, it would be from half a second to about a second and a quarter, maybe stretching it to two seconds,
but anything beyond that begins to sound unnatural. Screams are high pitched and there are often harmonics around the fundamental frequency, but screams also break into chaotic noise as well, so they're not pure tones. Although some people tend to produce screams that are more tonal and frequency modulated, and others have more noisy, harsh sounding screams. So does some individual variation as well. There's an acoustic parameter that's referred to
as roughness. It's rapid variation and modulation of amplitude fluctuation in a particular range is characteristic of screams, and there's one group of researchers, Luke Arnall has claimed that in fact it is definitive that is what inherently categorizes a scream, but subsequent research has shown that other kinds of human vocalizations also have this characteristic of roughness, and so it can't be exclusive to screams.
You know what, Let's go through a few quick vocal basics here, shall we. So frequency of the sound waves determines their pitch, and that is measured in something called hurts. But the amplitude is the height of the sound wave, and that determines the volume, and amplitude is measured in decibels, which you've probably heard of. So the roughness, what does
the roughness mean? That is the rate of change in volume, And the more the volume fluctuates in a scream, even though it seems imperceptible to you, it'll land is more shrill and it'll probably freak you out more. Infants crying exhibit roughness, as does a human whistling, just in case we've ever heard either of those and just wanted to put on earmuffs and then just descend into a sewer hole in the middle of the city street when you hear it.
That's normal. So coming back to your question, we all I recognized screams. One of the projects that we did was to play screams and other kinds of vocalizations, including yells and moans and laughter and even sounds like sneezes, And it sounds like a simple, silly little project. But what we were looking to see is whether participants agree as to what constitutes a scream. And with humans, of course,
we scream in a variety of different contexts. I'm literally screaming right now, and that we can come back to later, perhaps because that distinguishes us from other species. I know that was part of your question what other species scream? So we were interested to see whether people agree as to what constitutes a scream. So that's independent of formal scientific definitions. Do we know a scream when we hear it? And the answer is very clearly yes. Species that scream
very considerably. In some species of frogs scream. You pick up the frog and it produces a vocalization that is clearly scream like wow. Rabbit scream are very popular and you can probably find it. There are videos of rabbits screaming. Somebody picks the rabbit out of the hutch, out of the cage, and it just belts out a scream that is so human like, and I think it gets a
lot of hits. It gets a lot of clicks because people just find it so funny that a rabbit sounds so human like, and goats as well.
Yes, I was gonna say, I've seen videos of goats screaming and it seems like someone's dubbing over.
An I know. Yeah, yes, it is very deep. That's the perfect imitation of a goat scream, by the way, But yes, indeed that that is. They're all human like and sound like. And what that says is that as a vocalization type, screams are evolutionarily conserved, so they don't vary all that much. But people find it surprising that animal screams sound as much like human screams as they do.
Do they though, Well, yes, according to the Google search that I started with what animal sounds like? That then auto filled a woman screaming, So apparently a lot of people here are red fox and then call the cops. Barn owlshh, sound like your ancestor coming back from the grave to haunt you for taking such bad care of your skin. Even caterpillars apparently will yell their heads off, as evidenced in this YouTube clip uploaded by Matt C whomse fingers I'm assuming are the ones in frame gently
squeezing the butt of a neon green moth larvae. But that air, I learned is likely coming out of spiracles, so scientifically not a scream. A scream itself is when air is passed through the vocal cords with greater than usual force. My friend Workipedia says this can be performed by any creature possessing lungs, including humans, so larva and spiracles. I'm sorry, you're just doing some kind of respiratory fart
at anyone who squeezes your butt. I don't blame you, but yes, according to doctor harr Casulis, screams require a lot of vocal force and cause the vocal folds to vibrate in a chaotic, inconsistent way. So that is some of the what, But onto the why.
And of course, if we want to dive into some of the sort of evolutionary questions, the original screams and species like frogs and rabbits probably served as a way to elude capture by a predator. Predator has you in its grasp, and it's the last ditch effort in essence to escape. A loud sudden vocalization could sometimes at least occasionally startle the predator and give the prey, the victim,
some small chance of escape. And there's also suggestions in the literature that screams could attract other predators and thus thwart the efforts of the first predator that's got the prey. So by screaming, it attracts attention. That's another characteristic of screams. They definitely attract attention from by listeners. So that's how screams probably started as one way to defend against predators and predation.
Okay, but frogs don't gather at the pond, giggle screeching during water fights, or turn trees into money and then give that money to other frogs who have created a haunted pond for them. So what's happening in primate brain like mine?
But then in the evolution of sociality in species like monkeys and apes, where complex social interactions are dictated and governed by vocalizations, screams come to serve another purpose, and that is to solicit support from your friends, your allies, your relatives, and especially in the context of dominance interactions, because, as you might know, in monkeys and apes, it's not how big, how strong, how tough you are, it's who
you know, and so you have your allies. And in the monkeys that I've studied in the past and continue to be interested in, the social relationships are primarily among females and female matrilineal groups. They're the lifelong residents of the social group. Whereas the males high tail it out of the group at sexual maturity and find their way into another group for mating and to live the rest
of their lives. But the females stay together for their entire social lives, and they help one another develop and maintain their dominance positions in the social group. And of course, if you're going to have an ally, you need a way to recruit that ally. And so screams again acoustically, similar to what you see in frogs and rabbits and goats, and so evolved in a more complex way and diversified acoustically so that the monkeys can communicate more subtle details
about the fights that they're in. Is the opponent dominant, is the opponent subordinate? Is the aggression intense or is it modest and mild? So what we think happened is that, at least within the context of fights, and what the scientific literature refers to as agonistic interactions. There has been diversification to send more subtle and nuanced messages about what
kind of fight and who the opponent is. And that's information that's pertinent to an ally, a relative, for example, the mom of the victim or the sister who might be out of sight, you know, foraging in dense vegetation or something. But adhere's the vocalization, and of course that implies that it has to recognize who the screamer is,
and it's very clear that that's the case. It's my daughter, it's my cousin, it's my aunt, and they come to the rescue and intervene in a way that is consistent and appropriate for the kind of fight that is taking place. That's information that they get through the screams.
I'm learning a lot. And is there something about the frequency or the amplitude of the sound that hits our brains differently because of instinct and genetics, or is that something that really has to be learned by primates from a age through social connections and responses.
They scream naturally, and even human babies in their first vocal efforts. Crying is of course distinct and separate from screaming, But screams can be part of the vocal output that very young babies produce.
Any new parents out there, maybe you're up nursing at four am or whatever, just think of your baby as emitting vocal output, not screaming. Maybe that'll help you not want to stuff it back into your womb for another year. I don't know. I have a very old quiet doc, so I'm not sure how it works. But when it's a happy child and it's shrieking in delight, just know that,
in doctor Cazulaz's speculation, it's doing that. So that if a large raptor swoops down and tries to pick up your small child out of a group of many small children, and your back is turned, you think, wait, that sounds like the spine tingling yell of my offspring. So thanks evolution. Also, do we learn this or is it just hardwired in our jiggly goopy complex brains.
I don't think you have to learn to scream. Yeah, The interesting question is whether or not humans have to learn to distinguish different kinds of screams that we produce in different contexts. Because, of course, unlike other species, we as everybody knows, When you point this out, they all nod and say, sure, humans will scream in fear, pain, aggression, frustration, excitement, particular forms of excitement like sex, I'll have what she's having,
And in startle situations. Lots of people, including my wife, will produce a startle scream when she sees a cockroach or some people with a mouse, or you know that kind of situation.
So the core of a screamologists job is to figure out if humans can distinguish screams in different contexts and to note what the hell is up man. I hope they collect some kind of huge catalog of screams. That would be amazing.
And one of the ways that we've done that is to collect a huge catalog of screams. So we've got literally a scream library, oh my god, that has been harvested from the Internet and YouTube, because, of course, as we know, everybody posts their entire life history on the internet these days, and so you can see there are many examples of naturally occurring, real screams that we can
use in the research. And then of course there's the opportunity to take screams from TV shows or movies and those acted renditions of screams.
And how has your research changed over thirty seven years as people have more access to recording devices and platforms to share them.
Oh gosh, yes, it makes a huge, huge difference to how the research is done and as possible back when we started and with my wife and I that began studying screams when we were postdocs at the Rockefeller University in New York.
Wait, is this screamologist married to another screamologist? I'm screaming so, Doctor Sally Gazulis spent time as a behavioral biologist working with non human primates and also worked with some human primates, namely Harold.
And we were working with a very prominent primarily he was a bird researcher, Professor Peter Marler was his name, very well known animal behaviorist, and he kind of dabbled in primate vocalizations as well. Again, his prime research was in bird song and bird song acquisition, but he always wanted to have some graduate students and postdocs working on primate vocalizations, and the pair of researchers who had preceded us in his lab had studied alarm calls in a
species of African monkey called the Vervet monkey. And that work revealed that this species of monkey had evolved different kinds of alarm calls acoustically, different alarm calls that they gave in response to different kinds of predators, and the primary predators were leopards, marshall eagles, and pythons. Now, those predators hunt and attack in different ways, they have different strategies, and thus the response to the presence of one of
those different kinds of predators will be different. So you can't make do if you're a vervet monkey with one kind of alarm call. They had to come up with a system that had different vocalizations in essence associated with those predators.
So you waltzed into this episode casual, maybe leaned against a wall and thought, this is just going to be about horror films. But now you know that monkeys can straight up talk well if you ask me, But is it talking? Is it language? So Harold an Ape uses language to make speech about the history of the perception of communication.
Dating back to Darwin. In eighteen seventy two, he published Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals, and expression of the Emotions is the key part of that title, because that is what everybody believed animals communicate about their emotions, and that remained true, and that's what was the conventional wisdom about animal communication, that while we humans can with language talk about the external world and anything we can imagine,
animals were restricted to communicating about their emotions aggression, fear, sex. But that Vervet monkey work that came out in the late nineteen seventies in early nineteen eighties revealed that there were some animals that could use vocalizations to index, to refer to particular occurrences in the external world, namely the presence of different kinds of predators.
Wait, so what is screaming and what is a warning? Is screaming emotional? But alarm calls are informational alarm calls.
People sometimes confuse alarm calls because screams can be alarming, But in the animal behavior literature, when they talk about an alarm call, it's a specific kind of vocalization that refers to the presence of a predator. Whereas a scream. You can scream when a predator has you in its jaws, but that's not alerting others about the presence of that predator. That's again a different kind of evolutionary adaptation to avoid being the dinner or the lunch of that predator.
So, as a post doc working with monkey screams for science, Harold was listening for vocalizations that might convey information about external events. So were they screaming for help? And so by playing tapes of their alarm calls they can learn who showed up for whom And hopefully that did not cause a lot of monkey riffs from just sowing distrust like a monkey who cried leopard.
Anyway, we've pursued it in different ways with different species of monkeys. Looked at the difference between males and females, because, as I mentioned earlier, the males end up leaving the group that they're born into and they enter a group and they don't have allies. Maybe they might have a brother or a cousin who also migrated to that same group, But it's the females that have these persistent, long lasting social relationships, and they tend to scream, whereas males drop
screaming from their repertoires as they reach sexual maturity. Really, yes, in these monkeys, and is.
That a learned social behavior? Then do not scream so as to differentiate yourself from the females.
Well, it does, indeed seem to be learned. But it's learned because when a male screams, he gets attention, unwanted attention from the dominant males you're talking to me, and sometimes even high ranking females. And so what we think, and what has been suggested in the literature is that because they get attacked when they scream, because they draw attention when they scream, they just stop screaming.
So males stifling their emotions.
I think so.
In other species as well. Dudes out there, let it out you're human, scream it into a jar, release it on a mountaintop like Yosemite, Sam, and those people who sell their farts on Etsy. What about in humans? Is there a biologic sex difference or a learned gender difference in terms of who screams when?
Well, just in terms of your experience, what would you think? What would you say?
I would say, we think people who identify as women would scream more than those who do not.
That's a very well stated hypothesis. Yes, and I agree, And I think if you look on YouTube again in particular contexts, there's some interesting contexts such as opening a present and of course, everybody again records Christmas and birthdays, and then it's up on and you can see when somebody opens a present and it turns out to be unexpected and just terribly exciting. Often there's a lot of screaming. But who does that screaming? It's young girls, it's women.
I've never seen a boy or a male an adult males scream in that kind of context. So there are at the very least contexts in which there are gender differences in terms of the production of screams. Think about the movies. I mean, we've been watching James Bond since the nineteen sixties, right, and all the different actors. Have you ever heard James Bond scream?
No, of course not, but I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think it's so probably cultural too, and.
I agree absolutely.
One notable exception, though, is Daniel Craig and Casino Royale being tortured. Okay, so to set this up, he's getting whipped in the nards with a ship rope and being told that he won't be recognized as a man when this guy's done with him. But since emasculation is apparently illegal in the Bond universe, his screams turn into kind of a sexualized joy. Yes, yes, and then victory. Sorry spoiler.
No, it's not that men cannot scream. They certainly can. And again those aggressive screams. Just to go back to the movies. Have you ever seen the movie Braveheart with Melison, Yes, of course, yes, yeah. The you know, the fights between the Scots and the English, they're prefaced with these loud, aggressive screams on the part of the Scots. It screams are used as a way to intimidate opponents as well.
It's not that males don't scream, but they don't scream in the kinds of contexts that women tend to scream in. And another interesting difference is rock concerts. And I've thought about this a lot. It's not anything that could be easily tested in a formal scientific way. But again, we've all seen footage of the early shows Ed Sullivan and and the Beatles, and.
So for ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles.
And who is it that's doing the screaming. Well, it's the young female fans. And that's true before the Beatles, you know, when it was Elvis Presley. It's true when it was before Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and after the Beatles one direction and Justin Bieber, and you know, it goes on and on. And even with a concert with somebody like Katy Perry. You know, megastar attractive, but you don't get that kind of screaming reaction that you do with the boy bands. And so it's an interesting question.
Why is it that there's some tends to be this difference in certain kinds of contexts. I've kind of playfully suggested, and I hope no one finds it offensive.
Hey, this dude is a literal screamologist and he's got an idea.
But it seems to me that the screaming and that context is almost competitive. It. Again, it's not conscious. I don't believe it's conscious, but I think there's emotional contagion and the sort of arousal level tends to be expressed not yelling, but in screaming. And it might be in a sort of evolutionary sense, a way to say, look at me again. Screams always attract attention, and by screaming, perhaps these megastars are what is prompting the screaming. Just
a little less fun example of that. There are historical descriptions of the Nazi rallies with Hitler in attendance and young women screaming, you know. And again, so it's not just culture and the presentation of rock stars and so forth. In the tradition of screaming. I wonder if when Caesar went down the streets of Rome whether there was screaming as well. But again it was the women who screamed
at Hitler for Hitler. I don't you know, it's a really interesting phenomenon, something that would be challenging to test or to explore in a more formal scientific way, But just as an observation, I think it's really quite quite strikingly interesting.
Yeah, you know, it's funny. My mom and her sister saw the Beatles in the sixties and somehow their picture got on the front page of the chronicle, just in a picture of screaming girls and my mom. My mom and her sister still assert that they each made eye contact with a different Beatle that night. And I think it's interesting the thing, if I scream loud enough, maybe they'll look my direction.
Indeed, well, you know, I think it's an interesting hypothesis. There was a student, of course, my student I two channel will be here. You're here at Emory, and that most of them know that I'm also interested in screams and human screams. And one of the students came up to me after class one day and said, I've got a story for you, doctor Cazula's, and I think you
might find it interesting, she said. A year or so ago, my parents asked me no. They told me that I would have to go to a Justin Bieber concert with my younger sister, and she said, I hate Justin Bieber. I'm not a fan. I did not want to go. I knew I would be embarrassed, but as a good older sister, she went to the concert. But here's the funny part, she said, despite my best efforts, I found
myself screaming. Oh no, yeah, it was hilarious. But it again suggests that there's something infectious, emotional contagion, if you will. And so many on a questions, especially in that arena.
What about the catharsis of a scream? Why does screaming sometimes feel so good or relieve pain or feel like an outlet?
It does?
You know?
Years ago and I think it was in the sixties and it's now discredited and no longer talked about, but there was something called the primal scream. I don't know if you've heard yeah, yeah, And the idea was you could feel better if you just let it all hang out through screaming. Now again not just yelling, but screaming in particular.
And so screaming is remember, a nonverbal vocal expression, and to shout generally means saying something at the top of your volume, and yelling is supposed to mean unarticulated wailing, no words, just sound. But I feel like we use yelling to mean shouting. Like let's say that you broke curfew right and your mom yelled at you, but it was actual yelling, just like gibberish shrieking. You would probably
get home earlier next time. Although Harold makes the point that sometimes when we know what we're getting into, the spike of an alarm can feel good. So we toss money towards roller coaster terror and pay to get chased around Knotsberry Farm by actors carrying chain sauce.
And why is it that we do that? Why do we like to be scared? Again? Does we can speculate? I think that screaming has been so important in the evolutionary past that in essence, practicing is something that is advantageous, and our brains treat it as rewarding. So you could look on YouTube and search for scream contests.
They say, everyone's good at something.
For these people at screaming.
We like to pit themselves against each other to win.
A screaming contaste, and they involve people, often a pair of people. Young girls tend to do this more often again, but they'll scream, and they scream in a competitive way. One screams, the other screams, who screams louder, who screams longer. Little kids will do that. It's something that is done socially, and I think what it does is expose the people that you're close to, your friends, your relatives to the
particular renditions of a scream that an individual produces. In terms of a vocalization for permitting individual recognition, screams are not ideal, and that's because the air is forcefully projected through the larynx and through the vocal folds in a way that produces chaotic vibrations. Chaotic in the sense that they're not as predictable as normal speeches. So very quickly. We can get familiar with someone's voice and recognize it
when we pick up the phone. But the theoretical literature would suggest that for screams that's not the case, because there's that lack of predictability quote I like from Jurassic part nature finds a way. So from the origin of screams again, to deal with the imminent death due to a predator, you have to, in essence expose your friends and relatives to the kind of scream that you produce.
That's maybe why kids scream as much as they do, you know, in essence they're driving their parents' nuts and the neighbor's nuts. But through that effort, again evolutionarily, it's nothing conscious needless to say, but that that exposure to screams allows for more ready identification. Oh that's my kid, you know. And so maybe that's one of the reasons that we tend to scream and enjoy screaming and actually seek out experiences that prompt us to scream.
Okay, but what if you're on the other side of the chainsaw and you've been paid to scream? Does a scream have to be an utterance that is kind of unintentional? Like it just has to come out of you or does it still count as a scream if you are consciously going ah, is that a scream or not?
Sure? And of course actors, good actors do that all the time, and they convey an emotion through a scream and presumably and they not experiencing that precise emotion. I'm not an expert in acting techniques, but I understand that sometimes they will try to generate, you know, or create the internal state, the emotional state that would allow for the production of a scream or other kinds of emotional expression. But some people are really good at producing, let's say,
convincing screams. And that's one of the studies that we did. We presented participants with real screams and active screams and asked them to judge which were acted and which were real. They were terrible, They couldn't do.
It, really really, Yeah, where what kind of movies did you pull from? Was this Meryl Streep or was this horror movie on the homework channel?
Arrange? Dating all the way back to one of my favorites because I'm a primatologist and interested in screams, The original King Kong nineteen thirty three with Wow fay Ray And as you probably know, they coined the term scream queen back then. And so these are people like fay Ray, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kate Capshaw, Kim Basinger, Phyllis Coates. Not probably not a name that you would recognize or many people, but she was the She played Lois Slane in the
nineteen fifties Superman TV show. Had a very distinctive scream. I'd recognize it anywhere. Hello, Hello miss Lane. Of course she was always screaming for Superman to come at her. I'm so familiar with people who scream and movies, actors and actresses and so forth. And I had a subscription to Netflix for a while where I was getting DVDs, and I'm sure the algorithm pegged me is just the
biggest horror film fan out there. But actually I was again harvesting for screams for the research related that's right.
Can I ask you questions from patrons listeners?
Oh of course, okay, good.
I told them you're coming on. I sent them a link to your research gate and they have a bunch of questions. So let's just lightning around. Let's see how many we can answer.
Okay, where we dive in.
Let's take some cash. We're going to toss it at a cause, and doctor Gazillis would like to point that money toward the American Diabetes Association, which educates the public about diabetes and helps those affected by it through funding research to manage, cure, and prevent diabetes. So that is the American Diabetes Association. So ch ching Team Pancreas. So that money toss was made possible by sponsors of the show, whom I like.
Mum, Why did they call it Scottish cheese?
It's cottage cheese, honey, And I'm not sure.
Did dogs in other countries speak different languages?
Yeah?
I think so.
When when we get there, well, we've got to fix the car first, but there's someone coming to help us.
Is it the man from Geneva?
Not Geneva, he's from Aviva. Oh there's a van now.
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Okay, let's get to your blood curdling curiosities. A bunch of you, I believe Sanchez, Jodi Pire, Teryld Thompson, Laura Smith, Page McLachlin and Alicia ray Bell asked Harold to simply play favorites. Nathan Andrew Leeflight, You're gonna like this. I read your question. Madison Stewart and a bunch of other listeners want to know who has the best movie scream?
Well, I would just, out of sentimentality go for Fayray, okay, And that is because it combines primatology and screaming. So I would say Fayray.
Fayray a classic starlet in an era full of helpless heroines. She shrieked her way into forever fame via King Kong. And if you're thinking, wow, a classic nineteen thirty three Hollywood picture show for me to watch, Well, some undertones
of the film can be pretty socially jarring nowadays, how so. Well, for more on that, you can see the work of Argentinian sociologist of culture and the arts, someone named Juan Antonio roche Carsel, who wrote whole paper about the intersection of the nineteen twenty nine financial collapse and the Great Depression and then the subsequent xenophobia that started to appear in horror films and essentially the fear of the other.
We could do a whole side episode just on this side, but I'm going to link his work at my website. But did the angenou Feyray? Did she gasp and scream in her final breaths? Nope? No, lucky lucky for her. She lived a long ninety six years and she just died peacefully in her sleep. But what scream queens took over for her?
But I'm trying to think which of the Harrison Ford movies Kate Capshaw.
Was in, Oh, Indiana Jones India is one of the Indiana Jones and it's the one with Kate Capshaw, and she just gives up just a stellar performance.
In terms of screams in different contexts. It's it's really quite amazing. And another example is Kim Basinker in the original Batman with Jack Nicholson. She produces screams in a wide range of contexts, and she's great too, So I've got a number of favorites. There's no such thing as a scream king.
Yeah, I was gonna say who screamed? What men scream? So yeah, there's gonna be some right.
Do you know that the TV show New Girl? It was on a few yeah, five six years. I'm blanking on the Nick who played Nick the.
Act oh ah, he has it starts with a J.
But yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm blanking on it. It'll come to me in a bit.
But if you watch New Girl, you've been screaming. Jake Johnson. His name is Jake Johnson. He played Nick Miller on New Girl. And my ex boyfriend Michael used to wait tables at a vietname he's placed in La and said when Jake came in, he was really nice. So I just wanted to tell people that a few other scream kings,
just to name check them. They deserve it. The film critic Rachel Roth says that their rise is really the result of female characters being more than just monster bait, so that people who identify as males could start to be the screamers. And Roth says that Bruce Campbell of the Evil Dead Movies is a total scream king, so is Evan Peters an American horror story and Daniel Kluja of Get Out is also worthy of this scream king scepter.
But yes, Jake Johnson a certified top notch man of Hollers, as deemed by this professional screamologist.
He's got an interesting scream and he uses it to great effect in that show on multiple occasions. Startle screams, I mean, he gets startled.
I think what about Homer Simpson. I think he's a scream king, thank you.
You know, I'm not a huge fan of the Simpsons. Have to admit something, and I don't think I've ever watched an entire episode of The Simpsons.
If you just look up Homer screams as a very iconic a little bit like this.
Yeah, okay, oh no, I've heard that. I've heard that, And of course there's the classic Willhelm scream.
Yes, how do you feel about that?
Well, it is something that obviously we've been aware of. I've been aware of from the start of our human scream research, and it's something that you have to take in consideration when you use screams from movies and TV. You know, I recognize it all the time.
So the Willhelm scream just a little background. It's a stock sound effect that was originally recorded in the nineteen fifties for a swamp scene and it was labeled on an old real man being eaten by alligator and the man being actor SHEB Woolley. And decades later, the sound designer for Star Wars tucked this scream into a scene of Luke Skywalker shooting a stormtrooper off a ledge, and folks are like nice, So then they kept using it. And once you know the scream, you'll hear it over
and over again in movies. It's kind of like a little sonic treasure embedded just for you. It's been in Transformers and Lord of the Rings and Toy Story. Wonder Woman nineteen eighty four also used it, so did Tron. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs popped it in there and it sounds like this.
Of course, there's super imposition of a scream for some individuals,
but they tend to be not the main stars. So the way I describe it, remember the original Star Trek and the people that always got bumped off in the first few minutes where what I referred to as the red and I think that that that's actually a term that is used by the fans of the show, that they're just the crew members that get pumped off by the alien or the you know, whatever evil is out there, and you know they're not going to be producing screams.
If they scream, it's going to be a Wilhelm scream. Like but you look at somebody like Kim Basenker over her career in the different movies, and you get screams from different movies, you know, is she who's screaming? There's just no doubt about that. So again, it is something.
It's a fascinating question. And the classic Wilhelm scream is so recognizable and inserted by Spielberg and George Lucas and other you know, it's just an in joke for them to sneak it in again in the a lot of the Harrison Ford movies, and.
It's become a meme almost.
It is.
It is absolutely and correct me. But did your research find that actors tended to scream longer or the less believables were the ones that were longer.
If they extend again in that domain close approximating three seconds, Then that tends to be deemed less believable.
Yes, that makes sense. For more on this, you can feel free to cozy up in your little reading book with Harold's twenty twenty one paper The Emotional Canvas of Human Screams, Patterns and Acoustic cues and the Perceptual Categorization of a basic call type. And that research was conducted at Emory's Bioacoustics Lab, and they used screams collected for movies and TV and ads and YouTube videos and some
commercial sound banks. And I read the details of the study and it said that, you know, for experiments like this where they're hooking volunteers up to what sounds like people dying, there is an institutional review board that has to sign off on it. But the volunteers gave informed written consent. They got class credit for completing the study. No word on what happens if they bounced after two point one two seconds, which is the average duration of
an angry scream. Those are the longest. The study also showed that happy screams clock in around one and a half seconds, fear and pain screams both about one point three seconds. In length, and the shortest type of scream quick and easy ones frustration and surprise, So gasps and grunts each at about a third of a second, just in case you have to fake it for anything. Now you know. Now the loudest of all of those also anger, which was the longest. So take some deep breaths, maybe
go lock yourself in your car, go rip out. A few more on that in a minute. But while we're here, some patrons, including very quiet first time question asker Brixton Moss, as well as Breckenheart and Boreal Becca had volume inquiries. First time question asker Tony Vessels and a ton of other listeners want to know how far can a scream travel and still be heard and essentially how loud can a human scream?
Right, that's a great question. We first noticed in studying monkeys that you could be hundreds of yards away and hear screams, and that's certainly true with the screams from children at the swimming pool next near our house. I'm just amazed. Always you can't hear the conversations, you can't, but you can hear the screams, So I would say, and of course it would depend upon the acoustic features
of the particular environment. If you're in a concrete canyon, the sound will be transmitted further than in a forest, for example, but hundreds of yards at the very least.
I would say so, given that screams are defense against predation, this brings to mind one of the most chilling opens to a book I've ever read, the book Helter Skelter, and I think it may have been the only page of the book I read, having picked it up in middle school because my future crime reporter sister, Celeste, was reading it. But it starts it was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the
homes way down the canyon. The canyons above Hollywood and Beverly Hills play tricks with sounds, a noise clearly audible a mile away, maybe indistinguishable at a few hundred feet, And that imagery always stuck with me. And as an Angelino, I could say, it is not comforting. But let's say that your life isn't in peril, and maybe you're just screaming for clout. If you're a middle aged blonde woman named Jill Drake, you could set the world record for
the loudness of a human scream. She practically blisters paint at one hundred and twenty nine decibels, somewhere between a chainsaw and a nearby gunshot. But what if you can't do it? Asked patrons Rhala, Daniel Burr's, Rachel Kendrick, Nina eves Z, Jessica Kleist, Leah Alliam Myers, m B Felix Wolf, Robin Coohan, Janelle McIntyre, and first time Questions subminners August Seafrit,
Lissa Mercier, Frank Kendricks, and Kim Hamlin. And as someone who has had strangers point kitchen knives toward her throat, not on a movie set, but just on Beverly Boulevard in LA, I can tell you that screaming loud is harder than it looks or sounds. Okay, I am a person who has been mugged. I survived, But for myself and for a lot of other listeners, including Sunny Brisbee, Maren Ellis and Bridget Lawrence, Francesca Huggins, a lot of people wanted to know. In maren Ellis's words, why can't
my screams come out loud. When I'm distressed yelling for one of my munchkins who's in danger. My scream comes out hoarse and almost muffled when I need it to be loud and alarming. And Sonny wants to know why is it sometimes when someone goes to scream, nothing comes out.
I had somebody contact me and was a a young woman in Australia, and she emailed me and said, you know, have you ever heard of this situation? I cannot scream? She said, I've never screamed in my life, and so it wasn't restricted to, you know, a particular dangerous situation or an attack or anything. She said, she was incapable of screaming. And I had never heard of this, and I don't know that it has been defined or characterized
in the psychological literature. And again she said, it's not that I don't feel emotions, and it's not that I can't express emotions in other contexts, but I can't scream. So people vary just a lot. Some people are more expressive and have more control over the vocalizations and so can consciously produce a scream, whereas other people can't. I
don't think I could scream. I think some people's thought process, especially in the context of imminent danger, might proceed rapidly enough that they assess whether or not the screaming will make the situation worse. But you know, I don't know. I'll be thinking about that some more.
Yeah, good good. Let me know if you ever need to do some research on someone who couldn't scream when she was in grave danger, because I'm one of those people. If you're like, what if a demon tries to kill me in my sleep and I can't scream, it seems like the perfect time for a demon to kill you.
But I looked into it, and the reason you can't scream in a dream is because of a fancy little feature you have called rem sleep muscle paralysis or muscle antonia, which is your brain's way of keeping you in bed and not really swinging at a T ball with the guy from Maroon five or whatever you're dreaming about. So your motor neurons are like gone fish and bitch, and they are not going to do your bidding or your pharynx screaming, even if you're doing it in a dream.
So that one's for you. Patrons Taylor, Hanavon, Alisiha, Penny, Lily Honey, Kelly Shaver, Catherine pg, Ariana Mass and Jade Pollard. However, bonus round in my I drank coffee too late, problems
I had this week. I did find myself pouring through a vintage nineteen ninety eight study out of Japan, and it was translated to screaming during sleep in patients with Parkinson's disease, and it analyzed the really high rates of sleep shouting and screaming in Parkinson's patients who, because of lesions in the mid and lower brainstem, don't have that muscle suppression during rem sleep, so they do scream in their sleep, but in the hardest part of the day,
the waking hours. Jacky, I'm fine. Why does screaming seem to be the BFF of anger and stress? Asked vulnerable but relatable patrons Sophie Trenacti, b Stephanie, and Kay who drives around alone shrieking to blow off steam and is one of us, all of us? Is there something cathartic about raising your voice in a situation where you're angry or you feel like you need to be aggressive to be listened to.
Uh, yeah, there's I don't know how cathartic it is, but it certainly is more effective. I don't think parents want to scream or should scream in front of their kids, And I don't mean just raise your voice. That's that's again there's a distinction. When we say I scream to him, stop it. You know, Well, that's language. And we can talk about screaming meaning raising the voice loud, maybe harsh sounding,
but that's still language. When we talk about screams, we're talking about that non vocal utterances that rabbits and goats and monkeys and apes and we are capable of producing.
Oh that's a good distinction to make. And just a backtrack to the catharsis of it. Scream So many of you, honestly, like fifty of you, you know who you are, I love you, wanted to know why screaming feels good. And the short answer may lie in the long answer beta endorphined neuropeptides. There you go. So that's some wonderful juice that your hypothelmis and pituitary glands squirt out in response to food and sex and apparently screaming. But let's say
that the gelato's gone. No one will become naked with you anytime soon. And your walls are very thin, so you can't scream. You can milk those endorphins by exercising for thirty minutes. So do you want to do that when you're stressed or angry? Of course not. But your brain's like, please make me so happy, though, and you're like, oh no, Screaming can be cathartic. That is what one headline said about David Arquette, who said filming Screen five
with Courtney Cox, his ex wife, was cathartic. I guess they met during Scream one. And yesterday I emailed Harold to see if he's seen Scream five yet, and he said, I have not seen Screen five. I have not been to a movie or a sit down restaurant for that matter, since the pandemic hit dreadful, he wrote. But despite the last few years being its own kind of horror show, doctor Gazulas is still doing his amazing work as an Emory professor. And someone a listener wrote and said about you,
no way. I took an animal behavior class with him and it changed my life all caps. Olivia Milloway, Oh, I know that name, Yes, thank you well, Olivia.
That's that's such a sweet and kind thing to say.
Really enjoyed your class and had a question, how can babies tell the difference between happy and angry screams or can they? Like when? Is this something that we do figure out?
I don't think babies could, I think now, And this is an interesting question. We haven't talked about this much, but why is it that humans have screams in these different contexts pain, fear, aggression, frustration, and excitement startle when other species don't. Yeah, and I think, and again, this is speculation, but I think it's fun speculation that and it's kind of ironic that language gives us the capacity
to use nonverbal communication in more elaborate ways than animals can. Cognitively, the brain and cognitive underpinnings for language, I suspect give us greater capacity to use nonverbal communication in more elaborate ways than other species. And I think supporting that contention
is laughter, an entirely different category of vocalization. So you can tick a the chimpanzee, which is a fun thing to do, by the way, or an orang and when they're young, and they will produce a laugh and It's a not a very sophisticated laugh, it's kind of and there's a playface associated with it, and the production of that vocalization is limited to that tickle and play context, whereas humans, again, we use laughter in a variety of
sometimes pretty nuanced situations. We've got genuine laughter, we've got fake laughter, we've got derisive laughter. And I think that too, is probably a reflection of our capacity for language and how our brains work to draw inferences.
That's so interesting to think that we are doing that subconsciously without even recognizing it. So is laughter the best medicine? I want to know if a screamologist can take a prescription pad and write down go yell your fucking guts out. Yuka Ioa wants to know what's up with colleges having primal scream sessions before finals. I'm wondering if emery does that. And Justin So wants to know just screaming into a pillow have the same effect? Is screaming?
Those are great questions. As I mentioned earlier, the primal scream phenomenon in psychology as something that would be recommended and prescribed fell out of favor in the nineteen sixties or early nineteen seventies, so I don't think there's been much empirical support for that contention now that despite the fact that we sometimes feel good after screaming, there is something pleasurable about screaming in particular contexts like roller coasters
and haunted houses. So to my knowledge, there is no strong scientific support for this primal scream therapy approach to mental health.
And screaming can release some endorphins, but most psychologists say it's as good a release as exercise or just laughing, the latter of which is probably the most convenient of the three. But the real work is actually just untangling what clot of trauma you have that's bottling up all
of your feelings in the first place. And Harold says that no, they don't gather on the Emery quad for any scream days, but during finals they do have therapy dogs on campus, and hearing that was the most comfort I have felt for the youth in quite some time.
The social context is something that's really important in all of this. Really, again, it wouldn't be fun to be on a roller coaster by yourself. Would you even scream?
Probably not. I probably wouldn't I would probably just experience it. But it does feel like I am definitely allowed to make very loud vocalizations on this roller coaster and no one will accuse me of crying wolf or trying to attention. Does feel like very cathartic.
Yeah, and who would go to a haunted house by themselves? Yeah? You always would go with somebody and experience the fear and the startle experiences and the screaming. Again, is a social interactive phenomenon.
You know. By the Bye is a listener who wrote in and asked, am I stronger when I scream? I also want you to know that I told people that when they submitted questions they could do so in all caps, just because it's a screaming episode. So by the Bye asked, am I stronger? Would I scream?
There are weightlifters who scream when they are making the effort to lift their weights, and competitive weight lifters, So maybe for some people. I don't know that it would be universally true, but I suspect some people do get some strength out of vocal production like that, right.
You know a lot of people wanted to know, in Kelsey Story's words, is it possible for metal vocalists to damage their anatomy by screaming improperly or is that a MYS.
No, it definitely you can damage your vocal cords. And we haven't talked about screaming and rock and roll. I mean, yes, I'm sure some of your listeners at least know the who's won't get fooled again. What would the end of that song be without Drew Daltrey's in a classic scream?
Yeah?
Yeah, So many people asked about that. Looking at You Patrons, Kelsey Story, Spencer Parks, Chelsea Rabble, Jeffrey Bradshaw, Dane Schuckman, Rachel that, Ryland, Guy, Nixia Vail, Ashley, Sarah de Rivas, Samantha Barnes, Mary Leeby, Eric Pahanka, Bruce Wayne, Jordan, Waynwright, Evan Davis, Carol Wolf From, Maria, Jurel Weva, and first time askers Heaven Klinger, Thomas Wallace, Zoe, deathcore music fan Elena and Catherine Peg, who wrote in is there a
safe way to scream for music? Looking at You black metal? They say, so, I'm so glad you're mentioning this. And my brother in law is in a death metal band and seeing them live it is really I'm like, so worried about the vocalist.
Well, there are less you can search on YouTube, and there are lessons for vocalists in these kinds of bands. How to scream without damaging your vocal chords?
Wow, how are what do you find when you listen to that kind of screaming? Like Alna? First time question asker says, deathcore music fan here, how do the vocalists do it? They go to one concert and sing my heart out, but they'll lose their voice the next two days, So explain this sorcery. But are they doing a completely performative type of vocalization or do you think that they also, like an actor, have to get into the emotion for it to have an effect on the audience.
I think they have to acquire that ability and scream in a particular way that doesn't damage their vocal cords. But again, if you go to some of those YouTube videos, they're clearly techniques that are advocated to minimize and reduce the possibility the likelihood of damage.
Of course, I researched this for too long with absolutely no intention of joining my brother in law's thrash metal band, which, by the way, Exodus, Heathen, shout out, scream out. But some guy named David on YouTube uploads via a channel called rift shop, and he seems to have you covered
for your death metal brutal guttural vocals. Or you can also just search about false chord screaming, which is where you keep your vocal cords open, but you learn to flap the skin above them to spare the wear and tear on the actual chords. False chord screams. Just don't call it cookie monster screaming. Import the death ground community not into that. Speaking of death, Lisa Muschinsky wants to know, can you die from screaming?
Can kill you? Well? I don't think so. Okay, I'm sure some people have died screaming. Lots of people have died screaming, right, but I don't think screaming would be the cause of death.
You literally scream from the cradle to the grave, perhaps depending on the way that you go out, you.
Know, I think, I think well again again, it's it's just one of these extremely important and interesting vocalizations so prominent in popular culture, you know again, the horror movies, the rock and roll and even art.
You know.
Munk's famous painting. It's just iconic, and you know it's as I understand it, it's the second most readily recognized paintings in the world, second only to the Mona Lisa. And why is that? You know, I have thought about this. If we could hear that scream, if we could hear the scream of that, it probably wouldn't be as interesting.
Oh but such a good point.
Yeah, but we but instead were left to come to our own conclusions. And that's that's the essence of good art, isn't it. I mean, does it portray internal psychological disarray, fear, angst, alienation, personal dread or is it more a general common about the state of the world. You know, who knows. But that's what makes it really interesting.
Yeah, well, I guess I always ask two questions at the end. But really quick, before that, you mentioned that there were so many questions still unanswered. And I saw on your website that you might be looking for a graduate student. Are you still I am people apply.
Sure, that'd be great, absolutely, And you know, I never have trouble recruiting participants for the research. They always have to provide a description of course of the study, and people are interested that they just they're curious, you know, they want to be able to be challenged. Can they tell one scream from another? And there's so many unanswered questions. And eventually we'd like to do some brain imaging studies, you know, exactly how does this does the brain process
these different kinds of screams. There's been some preliminary exploration in a lab in Europe, research by the name of Fruhols, who has begun to explore that set of questions. But we'd like to jump in with that as well.
So there might be some future screamologists out there. They should reach out.
Yeah, I think so, that's great, It'll be great.
And in all of this last questions, I always ask there must be something difficult about being a screamologist. Is it listening to screams all day? Or is it paperwork? Or is it recruiting people for studies?
I think it's the It just translates to being a faculty member doing research. You're faced with the kinds of challenges. There are so many interesting questions that in a different world or in a different era you might be able to pursue. But there are constraints. They're financial constraints. There are ethical constraints as to what one can do, and so again it's not unique to this kind of research, but there are always limitations to the scientific method and
how we can apply it to understand questions. So to have the curiosity and to wonder about the answers to these questions is what is rewarding and reinforcing about doing the research. But they're always the frustrations, you know. I'd like to answer this particular question, I just can't get there at this point.
Mm hmm. Yeah, So I can imagine how frustrated that must be, because there's so much exciting research to do. But what is your favorite part about being the world's most recognized screamologist.
Having to accept the term schreamology? I suppose.
I'm so glad someone someone coined you that, But yeah, is there a part of your work that just really gets you out of bed in the morning.
I love to teach students about animal behavior, and I also teach a seminar on animal communication, and I take great pleasure in that as well, revealing and discussing the literature with them and having them explore new ideas, and like Olivia, some of them just say, wow, you know, I look at the world differently as a result of understanding animal behavior and evolutionary principles and how they might
apply to us and other living creatures. And that's just enormously rewarding to invite people to think about things in ways that they perhaps haven't done so before.
I love how you are changing what we know about ourselves, things that we don't even think we can study. It's great to know that there's someone out there when it comes to human communication and screams and vocalizations, there's someone out there who was on it, and that's amazing.
I'm on the job.
You're on the job. Oh my god, thank you so so much for being on this.
It was my great pleasure, my great pleasure.
So ask smart people loud questions if you want, because it'll help you understand yourself and the world a lot better. Doctor Harold Gazoulis is out there and looking for researchers, so hit him up. Future screamologists, here's the world's just screaming opportunities are you. You can find more links to everything we talked about at Aliward dot com slash ologies slash Screamology. We are on Twitter and Instagram at ologies.
I'm at ali Ward with one l on both smologies are the shorter, condensed and kid friendly episodes that come out about every two weeks. You can find more of those to download for your children or just yourselves at aliward dot com slash smologies. Thank you Ze Rodriguez Thomas of mind jam Media for editing those and Stephen Ray Morris for the assist on that. Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting the Facebook group and Shannon and Bonnie for
helping with that. Thank you to Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling, Susan Hale for so much behind the scenes stuff. Emily White of the Wordery makes the professional transcripts. Caleb Patten bleeps them and those are available for free at aliwar dot com slash ologies extras. And Nick Thorburn made the theme song He's in a very good band called Islands.
The lead editor is Mindjem media stared Sleeper, who, as part of his job, is forced to sleep into bed with me and tell me that I'm pretty from time to time, and when I'm tired and crying and worried, everyone is going to be mad at me if this is up on a Wednesday, because I couldn't stop researching. He reminds me, it's not the end of the world. So thank you, sleeper, And if you listen to the end of the podcast, I do tell you a secret,
so you know, here's another one. The last few weeks they've been really bad with anxiety around work, and maybe that's just my bruised brain's way of trying to incapacitate me. But I don't like it. Zero stars on that. But I'm going to end us on an up note, and that is this really wonderful review of someone Left this week. I'm going to read it to you because it deserves it. They wrote. When I discovered this podcast, I was working
a dead end job that I hated. I imagined what life might one day be like if I was half as interested in my work as I was in Ali Word's take on the Natural History Museum and that particular episode where she mentions volunteering to scoot closer to meaningful work. And it squarely in my lap when I needed it and inspired me to imagine in a new future for myself. I began to volunteer for a youth empowerment organization and
finally acknowledge how much I loved working with students. Three years later, after a few new roles and lots of luck, I landed my dream job, directing a college STEM scholarship program funded by the National Science Foundation. Yes, I help baby scientists hatch, they say, and it is indeed as incredible as it sounds. I've been waiting all these years, oh Man, to post this review in hopes that this one may be read aloud so that other listeners can
hear the change is possible. Thank you for reminding us all how important it is to celebrate buffoonery, to spend each day learning, and to ask smart people not always smart questions. Signed your sc advisor, So thanks for that review. I'm glad I left it at the end. That would have been weird to start the episode crying and then go into screaming. But so everyone who leaves reviews it helps the show stay up in the charts. But it really it always helps me on the days that are
more tough. So thank you for letting you know that it's always worth it to keep going. Also, one more secret. That review actually said to ask smart people stupid questions, but I always get a tweet or two whenever I say stupid questions, even if it's an ironic reclaiming of the term, but just covering bases there. Okay, next week, plant stuff. Plants are very quiet last I checked, so that one should be more mellow. So everyone go get some rest. And thank you for all the PEP talks
and the reviews and for listening. It really matters to me a lot. All Right, we got this far. Bye, ice s creamer, you screamer, your screamer for ice cream.