I Scream, You Scream

a few days ago. I was I went outside, like first thing in the morning, I shut off the alarm system and I walked outside too. I don't know. I was checking the temperature or doing some with the carbage cans. I don't know. But I go outside and there's a cicada that right outside and I stepped through the door. In this the case, it's just takes off and it just scares the crap out of me, and I go, I'm just like scream full volume, okay, all right, Yeah,

I don't even think that. When I'm scared, I so much that you know, like if if someone comes around the corner, I might jump a bit. As you all can tell, we're going to talk about screams today. The sign is of screaming all about because like in both of these cases, Okay, I screamed when there was cicada? Like, what was I doing? Was I scaring the cicado away? Was I warning people that hey, there's cicada's around and

they might be startling? Were you, um, you know, trying to intimidate some paperwork or or you know, or some some house cleaning, Like what was what was that about? Why do we do these things that we do? And uh, fortunately we live in a world of science and u and these questions are being addressed. Yeah, and and and we were thinking about this um sort of like from

nuts to soup. Like when you take this first breath in the world, the first thing that you do is you scream, right, And that's really the great place to add to start off, because you, as a human gets older, you end up you know, you know, you get languid, you get reason, you get culture, you get all these various things that just just mark up the waters of of why we do the things we do. But you start off with the baby and it's the first thing

it's doing. It passes through the vaginal canal, get some nice bacteria on it, and then just screaming its head off, all right, because it's transitioning from a respiratory system that had fluid to air. Right, that's the first thing that you do is you scream like mad. But then, as you say, it gets a little bit more complex. We scream because we're frightened, we're frustrated, we're angry, we're aroused, or we're in pain or we you know, it's it's

a purely cathartic thing. People screamed because they're aroused apparently. Okay, yes, that's what the literature says. Um. But back to babies before, before we get into infant screaming anymore, let's actually listen to a little clip because I mean, you might be listening to a baby scream right now, and it's so great because you're already immersed in the subject matter. But if not, we just need to remind everyone because there's

nothing else like it. Oh, so that the sound of a baby crying, it's the if you're not at all connected to a situation, you're like in an airplane or something, then it's just really annoying. But if you're all connected to the situation, whether you're it's your friends baby, your baby, your babysitting or whatever, then it just like you. You're just like, I must help this creature it is it wants something really bad or it does not want something really bad. What can I do to try and make

things better? Because it's just the the infant. Infant screens in a way that like that humans rarely do, Like they're just putting everything into it, like it's like a

full body exercise in disapproval or one. And it is interesting because, uh, the babies screams cries have been analyzed over and over again, and what they find is that there are particular screams or screams for for food, for for boredom, for wanting to be held um And in fact, lactating women who hear the screams of infant that are particular to a scream for I'm hungry will begin loctating whether or not it's your baby. Um. Now, as a mom,

were you able to determine like what once scream niche? Yeah, eventually I could. I mean obviously the I don't know how long it took, but the first you know, a couple of weeks out of the gate. I had no idea what my daughter wanted. I was plus, I was

just like tired, Um, what do you want? Um? But what what has been discovered lately, which I think is really interesting, is that thetises, although we know they can recognize music and voices and within the womb, that they can actually mimic speech patterns and they do this through their screams. Dr Kathleen Bremckey of the University of horser Wurzburg, Germany and colleagues studied the patterns of baby cries in the first five days of life that recorded the screams.

How exciting is this going through their data right? Uh? That that's got to be headache inducing. They recorded the screams of thirty Germans and thirty French babies, and they found that the screams of the five day old French babies had a distinct gallic twang and the Germans babies had a teutonic quality to their yells. The teutonic screams of the infant German and I just I keep thinking of like Arnold Schwarzenegger somehow sometimes exactly yeah, I can't

even replicate it. But I think that that's a good attempt. There. No, wait, actually, let's let let's let me find a clip of that real quick. See there you go, all right, Okay, not bad. That was either Arnold or a German infant. I'll let you decide. Um. And then in addition to the screaming babies, it turns out that children in their screams are also

telling a story. Um. Children who were given One's Ease with built in microphones were recorded during their tantrums, and so researchers had hours and hours of data which bore out this pattern during a tantrum. And it turns out that kids make this whimpering, sad noise the entire time that they're going through a tantrum, but then they have these spikes of screaming and yelling. It used to be that, oh, it's just anger at the beginning of sadness at the end.

That's what what psychologists thought, um, But it turns out that these two motions are really intermingled the whole time. And this is an interesting thing. During these peaks of anger, these this yelling, when you want to reach out to the child and say, what's wrong, how can I help you? That additional sort of stimuli or stimulus would actually incite the child to scream even more so they're they're too

angry to deal with at that point. Yeah, Which I think is telling the story of of what is at the at the bottom of at least one type of scream, the frustration, scream sadness and anger, is that maybe it has tied into this idea that we're over stimulated in life and you reach this breaking point where you just have to scream. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think everyone's felt that way at one point or another, even if you you're not like completely aware of it, Like what

you really need is a really good scream. I have certainly, Like, have you ever been faced with a choice or a situation that is so frustrating for so frustrating or so anger filled and you're just sitting there and you're trying to communicate with another person about it, Yeah, and it seems like you have to make a choice at that moment and you just want to go and you're trying not to write because as we get older, we try

to to keep this under wraps. All Right, we're gonna move on from infant screens now, and we're gonna discuss more grown up screens. So for this I'm gonna actual let's throw out another couple of sound pites here. Uh. This first one, uh is a scream queen's scream scream queens for anyone who's not familiar with the term. Uh, where, of course, uh in our women in horror movies whose primary acting role is to scream and react and terror to um monsters or mass men coming after them to

kill them. Uh, it's a and there's a there's a whole lot of of of of cultural psychological matter to discuss there. But but at the heart of it, you have women whose like whole thing was like, all right, we can get you on screen and we just need to scream your head off and and and not. And it's not only just making the sound, but the face and just it's like a there's a purity to it though, because in many cases, you, I mean, you'll find movies where like the woman is screaming no, no, or or

they'll be screaming about something. But in many cases it is just a primal scream of just just full on terror. So think of Janet Lee and in the Psycho exactly yeah, or um Jamie Lee Curtis was started off her career as a scream queen. Yeah yeah, and and a number of other little films after that. But but this is one of my favorites. This is Marylyn Burns as Sally Hertessy in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre of the original. So in the in that clip, they're they're also doing some

stuff with the sound effects. They're they're throwing in some mechanical kind of chainsaw noise and really messing with you on a on a sonic level as well. But but she's also just doing a fabulous scream and if you've ever seen the movie, she has the facials to to match it. It's just you get this really authentic sense.

So here's somebody that is just screaming at the there at the edge of sanity with terror, and they should be, because I mean, she's sitting that table when she's about to get well what seems like she's about to get killed right there, and there's awful visual things going on.

And the method aspect of that scene, as I as I understand it, is that that was also a really long, really hot shoot and so at the end of it, everybody was just worn out, so there's a certain amount of her screaming and that scene that is probably just her just being completely done with this, uh this horror movie shoot for the day. Well, and I like the clips that you've sent me because it's got sweetish subtitles, which is very odd to look out when you're hearing

these The Texas heavy accents are girl, We're gonna kill you. Yeah, but there are no there are no subtitles for the scream because that's the universal and that's what we're really discussing next is you know, we discussed like the in the past, like the discussed face that people make, that that's universal, that that speaks to anyone, no matter if you know, you could be in New York City or just outstanding in the middle of nowhere in Mongolia, and

if someone makes a disgust face, you're going to think, oh, my goodness, do I smell weird? Am? I is there's something in my face? You understand what they're emoting. And likewise, the scream is pretty universal. If someone is screaming about something, you were going to look around, like, WHOA, what's happening? Is this person crazy? Are they being assaulted? Should I help? Should I pretend should I be awful and pretend that

I'm not noticing them screaming? But either way, it's something that you you have to deal with on on some level. So yes, to your point, absolutely, it's very universal, um, no matter where you are. But it does seem to point that that that fear and screaming is particular. Yes, there there, Yes it's universal, but it turns out that not everybody has all of the muscles in the faces nineteen muscles. There's a lot going on your face when

you scream. It's it's like we're talking about with with any good scream queen, It's not just an exercise and audio. It's also a facial event right in their nineteen muscles in your face there these major muscles that are controlling and contorting these muscles. Two thirds of the population actually have these muscles. So it and what this is driving at is that some people are much better at expressing things like fear, but particularly with the rstorious muscle, because

that is what controls um. This look of extreme fear on your face. Wow, So you hear about people having a really expressive face, but you often tend to think of that in terms of just behavior in mindset and not so much as actual anatomy. But but it sounds like there could conceivably be a little girl out there is like when I grew up, I'm gonna be a screen queen, and that she does not have all the

muscles to really pull it off. I mean, maybe she could go she could go gatica on it and just like really try extra hard, but she's still gonna have to go up against the screen queens that have just naturally occurring extra muscles. And who knows what if people started evolving to uh, I mean that it's an evolutionary

advantage to be a better screen queen. Well, actually, there is an evolutionary advantage because when you are making those expressions, it's actually um, it's pumping more blood to your brain, particularly if it's something like fear and screaming. What's happening is that your field of vision actually widens. You smell your Yeah, you're taking in more data. You're so much

more alert. Blood is flowing to your face, your your mouth is opening, your nose is taking in more smells, are more acutely taking them in, which is the opposite of disgust. Because think about disgust. Disgust is like something smells weird. Let's cut this off because it might kill me if I breathe it in. Look, you feel the vision narrows a little bit because you're you're honing in on side. My eyes definitely mind blind me exactly, and and your nose is sort of shutting off the smell.

So yeah, definitely when you're you're actually having this fear face and you're screaming though you're it's like, I need to see what's happening. I need to smell what's happening, and I need to be pumped and ready because I'm about to have to duke it out with with Jason Vorhees or something. Yeah, so it's not just this alarm to to a fellow man, like hey, there's something wrong. It is an expression to your body to say, let's get things, let's go in here, let's let's start to

really assess this situation. Become as alert as possible. And you get a taste of this if you just like a if you've ever like just screamed for the sake of it, but also like in yoga class, will do this lion face thing, you know, uh, you know, where you you you scrunch up your face face and you like stick out your tongue, your tongue, roll your eyes back in your head and it's like this scary, ridiculous face. Yeah,

and it does. It pumps you up, It works um in the same way that you know they talk about, you know, smiling can actually make you feel happy or just the physical act of smiling, because our expressions are not just they're not just a result of the way we feel. It's well, you know, it's the mind body connection and all these things are are connected to one another. So if you you turn one, you're going to turn

the other, you know. And it was Darwin who actually sussed this out long ago because he thought, what is the evolutionary manage of smiling or frowning or fear? And I don't know if you remember these studies that he helped to conduct, but they actually manipulated people's muscles and their faces, which looked very painful, and then they did some studies to see whether or not it was corresponding

with how they felt. So people used muscles that were being manipulated by machines to to rise in a smiling formation. Became happier, even though it probably hurt that they had the little metal prongs sticking in them. We'll see they should that should be a treatment method. You know. They strapped this happiness device on you, and yeah, and invaders them the car. The Nickelodeon cartoon really twisted, awesome cartoon

they would have. This thing was like this big screw with a smiley face on it and like screws in at the side of your skull and just makes you happy all the time. Similar principle. I'm thinking that with all this happiness out there in the in the marketplace, that this could be some thing. Yeah, yeah, this this might fly on QBC. Alright, Um, should we listen to one more iconic scream before we go to break? Yes? Uh, this is a little something called the Wilhelm scream. You

if you watch movies, you have heard this before. It's a stock sound effect that was first used in nineteen one for the film Distant Drums, and it has since been used in hundreds of films like Star Wars, Indiana Jones. Mainstream stuff, you know, very professional blockbuster stuff. Also, lots of people like film Bucks just like to throw it into their own like little indie pictures as well, or just you know, um, amateur pictures. Let's have a listen.

So that reminds me of Vertigo. Yeah yeah, the movie Vertigo, which I haven't seen in a very long time. Made me a shorter version of it. Huh yeah. It's just a very guttural you know. It's just the falling screen and it's a mail scream, and so I'm glad that we got to feature two mail screams on here. I don't know what the baby is. The baby might be male or female, who knows, but um, but everyone screams

at one point another. Let's take a quick break and when we come back, we'll discuss a little more why we scream and what we're where it's coming from and primary scream therapy. All right, we're back. And when we were researching this, you sent me a study called Screaming and Wailing and Dimentia Patients by Bernard gro Lukes. It's got an accident at the end. I unless that's a typo, I know, I think there's actually that, but but it was.

It was. It's a very interesting, perhaps a little specialized study, but it did have a really interesting chart that was part of his theoretical framework for why dementia patients or screaming and like, where is it coming from? And UH, at the center of this chart, he has the circle that is that represents unsatisfied needs and UH bubbles come out of this from every direction. Screaming satisfies that the screaming that satisfy satisfies the need. They're screaming that communicates

the need. Just screaming that is due to frustration and negative effects. There's screaming that's due to environmental physical psychological conditions, uh, due to the current condition, and due to habits and personality. And then all those things that rise out of unsatisfied needs can conceivably feedback into these other causes. So you end up with this kind of feedback loop of of

screaming and screaming stimuli, which I found really interesting. Yeah, and what I liked about that study is well, as it talks about dementia, and in this idea that the person's world has become so small that um that there is this level of frustration and this this level um to need to communicate and try to get your bearings,

that that results in a ton of screaming. Really and I thought well, that's not necessarily a case for everyone that the general public doesn't have dementia, but certainly everybody has been in that situation before where they felt isolated or they they've lost their way a bit, yeah, or just or just crushed in by all these forces, you know, general often imaginary forces or or social job related forces. They're just pressing you in and you until you scream. Right.

And if you were that dementia patient and you had all those different conditions, uh, then you would enter into that feedback loop. Thankfully, most of us aren't in that feedback loop, and we can get ourselves out of the screaming. Um. But I was it made me think about something called primal scream therapy. Okay, and this is where you would it's like a nineties right, Uh. Yeah. It has its

beginnings in the nineteen seventies, Dr Jane. It is probably better known as UM sort of a subplot of John Lennon's life because he underwent primal scream therapy, which and it became very popular. Actually, Steve Jobs underwent it and then he thought it was just whoey and he quit doing it. Um. But it's appealing to people for a number of reasons. One is because it's a license to scream, license to screen with abandoned on the floor in in a fetal position. Who lets you do that these days?

No one. Um, but this this idea that you can go into your past and all these painful memories and and um embody this scream, this frustration, this anger that you feel about your past, and then you can correct that with a new what they call enactment. So um it is a lot about release and catharsis saying something that's been pressed in and putting it out. Yees. So it's this neurotic tension that you're releasing through this re experiencing, and then the idea is to create a new scene

to replace the neurotic one. And it's a very creative process as well, which is probably why it appealed to John Lennon and into a number of other people. Now, is it uh a straight up therapy that has been studied and has come out with glowing reviews? No, not necessarily that the data on it is a little bit sketchy, But at the end of it there there's very interesting premises.

There are people who claim that it helps them. There are people who claim the help, but other people will say they're they've been primed, which you could also say there are other types of um therapy in which priming is used. Yeah, And I mean, I'm kind of of the mindset hey have. If you had to prime me to to sort of fix me, then let's let's do it. I was thinking about it in terms of the placebo. Yeah, I'm kind of like, I'm willing to take a placebo if it if I can fool myself into feeling better

than That's kind of what life is about, right. Yeah. Indeed, the only problem though I have with it is that apparently Harry Nelson, a good friend of John Lynn's at that time, musician beautiful Voice, ruined his voice by I think a weekend of he and John Lennon like kind of doing some primal scream therapy. I can't remember who it is. There was one. There was some actor and maybe our listeners can fill me in on this, but there was an actor who was like early in his career.

He was trying to some parts, and you know, he had a very normal voice, and then you just went out one weekend on the advice of like his agent, and just screamed him self force, uh, prior to an audition, and then he got the part. But it kind of with his voice became that permanently, permanently scarred kind of gravelly voice. But that's end up being his moneymaker. So I don't remember who it was. I don't think it's one of the more famous gravelly voice actors, but it

could be wrong. Well, here's the thing. If you don't feel like going to a primal scream therapist and you want to do this uh in private or even in public, there is something. There is a device for you. Yes, we've mentioned it before, but I thought that it was probably worth it to mention again. Fab Labs. This came out from the h this idea that there's open software that you can create anything. You could design it and feed into a computer and lo and behold here here

it is um. It is called the Green Buddy, and it came out of this idea of this fab Labs. And it looks like an infant carrier and you can scream directly into it and nobody can hear you. That's the brilliant thing about right, So you can be in the middle of a busy street and just scream into your scream, buddy, nobody knows, but you can record it. And if later you felt like just releasing your scream on everybody, you could, Yeah, put it up on soundclouds.

Here it with the world. There you go. You can. You can voice your frustration without any social repercussions. An animals do animal scream, Yeah, they do, of course, and when we can hear their little barbarica yachts all over the place. Um. But there is one ultrasonic primate in existence that we know of, so we can't hear it screams, right, who screams? We cannot hear it's the five inch high

primate called the tartars. I believe it's indigenous to the Philippines. Yes. Yes, Actually the eyes are itself like make up most of the body. Because it's just so small. Um, it has the ability to produce high pitched screams unheard by human ears. And before researchers stuck thirty five of these guys in front of a ultrasound detector and um, they realize that they are actually emitting these ultra sonic secret yells. Before that,

they assumed that they were just yawning. Um. But it's really cool because This allows their predators like snakes and birds, just to go along their business without realizing that these these little primates are giving each other heads up warning calls. Um, presumably like giving them the birds uh coordinates. I don't know, but so far, again, this is the only primate that we know that has this ability. It's kind of like

a superpower. Yeah. And of course it should come as no surprise to anybody that animal screams of distress have an effect on us. If you if you have a pet, you know this. Uh, cats in particular sounds really good at you know, they're they're they're rather mimicking human distress. They're no, they're manipulating you with the sounds of babies crying. Yes, you're right. Those recalizations are maddening simes. So they're just yeah, they're maddening. It's just like, oh, you just made the

worst noise in the world. I'll feed you. It's because you're hungry. Yeah, um and uh. And they found that the various other distress calls from animals, when used in film soundtracks, they're able to manipulate responses out of us

on a very primal level. So, which is why you'll you know, people throw in like weird tiger noises into into scenes and uh, and there's a I mean, there's a whole Like anytime someone's doing sound design for like a monster or something, you know, they're inevitably taking all sorts of natural sounds and then warping them and and weaving them together into a new manipulated noise. Yeah, it's

very dissentering. Uh. Yeah, And apparently as a result, snakes, lines, hippo's, birds, you name it are being used for film soundtracks, So keep an ear out. Yeah cool, Well, well that's screaming for you. The next time you're you just have to belt out a scream, or you're watching a horror movie with a lot of dreaming in it, or you're dealing with a child who is just screaming um his or

her head off. Take some of this knowledge with you, and maybe you'll be able to to understand a little more what's what's happening in them and what's happening in you as a listener. Alright, let's call over the robot. We have two bits of listener mail here today. The first one is from Ken in Saint Catherine's, Ontario, Canada. Ken writes In it, says, Hi, Julian Robert, I enjoyed your podcast on camouflage. My wife and I have come to the realization that are two boys are color blind.

We were recently told that my wife's uncle, who would have been the same gene, who would have had the same gene for color blindness of my boys, have put his disability to good use. Apparently when he was serving in World War Two, they used him to spot camouflaged equipment. The story is that people with color blindness can see through camouflage better than people with regular vision. I am not sure if this is true or not, but I think it is an interesting story. Keep up the great work, Kim.

That would make sense, right because for the general public, it's designed to see particular colors. Yeah, you're not going to be manipulated by color if you are blind to color, and therefore you can conceivably see through some of the illusions. Um the camouflage perpetrates. So that's interesting. Uh. Then we also heard from Amy. Amy writes, then and this was a very interesting one. Um. Uh, the subject being plane crash survival. We recently did the podcast on surviving a

plane crash. She says, Hey, y'all, I just started listening to your podcast, Love It, and I was especially driven to the topic of surviving plane crashes. When I was seventeen, I survived the crash of the United Airlines d C eight December of seventy eight in Portland, Oregon. Two things that occurred to me right off the bat are one the plane crashes that get the most publicity are the most spectacular, and the ones with many survivors aren't still

till lating. Which is true. I mean something, you know it's a small crash or more of a runway related incident. The media is not gonna more common, right, She says, this exploits an tensifies the fear of flying so many people have already had. Although I have a better reason than most fear flying, some phobias aren't going to go away with simple rationalization. I know that driving is insanely more dangerous than flying, but I haven't flown since nine and at this stage I think it would take an

act of God to give me on a plane. I never scoff at anyone who's afraid to fly, and I usually don't mention my experience to them either, just my musings any Wow. Okay, so I mean that's yeah, from someone who's actually been in it. Yeah, So that was that was awesome. That just some you know, some really fascinating, honest commentary on the reality of surviving a plane crash and also just what how does how does that affect your your perception and your and your your fear of

going forward? So yeah, yeah, and we did. We talked really about how it is in irrational fear, but when the rubber hits the road and you know you've been in it, it's it's a much different, um idea. Yeah. Well cool. If you want to interact with us, If you want to talk to USHO, wanna ask us questions or share something, do reach out to us. You can find us on the Facebook, where we are stuff to Blow your Mind, and if you venture onto Twitter, our

handle is blow the Mind. Um. So, let let us know if you have any particular thoughts on screaming, your own experience with screaming, your experience with screaming toddlers, uh screaming, and movies of whatever, let us know. We'd love to hear from you how to solve screaming in space? Right? Oh yeah, because no one can hear you there. What are we going to do about that? All right? You can also drop us a line at blow the Mind at discovery dot com for more on this and thousands

of other topics. Is It How Stuff Works dot com