The Whistling, Part 1

will make it weird. We will be weird in episode one, so strap in. Yeah. So. One of the first things that I wanted to talk about, and I think this is something we'll have to revisit in multiple parts of this series is the idea of whistled languages. Much to my surprise after reading about this subject, there are multiple examples from around the globe of whistled languages, or at least whistled alternate versions of an existing spoken language and two. So to kick us off, I wanted to talk about

one particular example of a whistled language. I was reading about this in a classic linguistics paper from nineteen forty eight by George M. Cowen called Maso Teco Whistle Speech. This was published in the journal Language in nineteen forty eight. Uh. It's by this scholar named George M. Cowan who lived nineteen sixteen through seventeen. He was an expert on linguistics.

He was associated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and apparently this paper is one of his most important contributions to the field. So it's an article documenting this fascinating type of communication practiced by the Mazo tech people living in Wahaca, Mexico. So what we're talking about here is an alternate form of the maze Teco language that is

based entirely on whistles. Cowen writes that as of the nineteen forty Mexican Census, there were approximately sixty thou people in the Mazatec tribe, and almost fifty six thousand of them were mono lingual speakers of of the ma Azotecan languages. The Mazotecan languages are part of what Cowen here calls the Popa Loca Mezteco language family, so part of a

broader association of languages found in this area. So Cowen spent several winters in the nineteen forties living among speakers of the Mezoteken languages to document uh these languages and eventually the whistle speech. And I want to begin by reading an anecdote that he just observed during his time there. Quote. Eusebio Martinez was observed one day standing in front of his hut whistling to a man a considerable distance away.

The man was passing on the trail below, going to market to sell a load of corn leaves, which he was carrying. The man answered Eusebio's whist with a whistle. The interchange was repeated several times with different whistles. Finally, the man turned around, retraced his steps a short way, and came up the footpath to U. CBO's hut. Without saying a word, he dumped his load on the ground. U. Sabio looked the load over, went into his hut, returned with some money, and paid the man his price. The

man turned and left. Not a word had been spoken. They had talked, bargained over the price, and come to an agreement satisfactory to both parties, using only whistles as a medium of communication. And this is not an isolated incident. Uh. The author here writes that the Mazotec people frequently hold entire conversations and express an extremely broad and versatile set of ideas, all using whistles. As he puts it, quote, the Maso Teco is frequently conversed by whistling to one another.

The whistles are not merely signals with limited semantic value, arrived at by common agreement, but are parallel to spoken

conversations as a means of communication. And so to to try to uh elucidate that a little bit, what this means is that the whistle speech is not a code like you may have heard, you may have seen in movies, I don't know, like like soldiers crawling around and they sort of like whistle codes at each other, And you get the idea that maybe they've agreed on a handful of whistled signals in advance, like you know that one whistle means a stop, another one means go forward, And

but there's probably a very limited array of those whistles, and you had to work on agreeing to them beforehand, right right. Also in contrast to how the sort of every day and in our world you will encounter. You know, a handful of uses of whistles that have sort of agreed upon meaning sort of a whistle that is an attention grabber, and a whistle that might be a little more scandalous, and then a whistle that is it seems to say say whoa, uh, like that's a big truck

h something of that nature. But but it's not really, it's nothing at all like a robust language of whistles. It's just a few basic whistle signals that seem to be commonly used. Yeah, that's right, I would say, Like in the standard American English speaking context, there are a few sort of significant whistles. You you basically know what they mean when you hear them, but there's only a handful of them, and you certainly can't make sentences out of them. Exactly the opposite is true of the Mazo

Teco whistle speech. Uh. This is a a full equivalent to the standard spoken Meso Teco language. The whistles can be recorded and translated by anybody familiar with the whistle speech, producing the same specific translations with a couple of uh, certain kinds of ambiguities. I'll get into that later. So it's not a kind of loose suggestive code. It's not

something that's to be agreed on ahead of time. It's just an equivalent of a spoken language with all the freedom of degrees of expression and lexical richness found in the spoken language. And I thought this was just amazing. So I guess I want to explore a few more things that the Cowen documents that he observed about the whistle speech during his time in Wahaka in the nineteen forties. So he says also that um the mesa teco people

use the whistle signals when communicating with animals. For example, there's a sort of slow up gliding whistle to keep burrows moving when on the trail, or whistles to call out to dogs. But these whistles don't have a translatable language equivalent. So there is whistling that is language. But then there's also a whole set of like whistle sounds that are useful day to day but are not words. Yeah, they just they want to be translated. They'd be like hey, yeah,

or keep walking, keep going another thing. Not everybody whistles, and not everybody who whistles whistles the same amount. Cowen writes that while everyone seems to have listening fluency with the whistled speech, generally only men whistle, and especially men between the ages of boyhood and middle age. So he says old men rarely whistle conversationally. It seems to fade out over the lifespan, and women and girls understand what is whistled by the men and boys, but usually do

not whistle themselves. So he talks about observing a bunch of interactions where like a boy would whistle something to a girl his age, and the girl would reply with spoken language, so she understands the whistles, but she doesn't use them herself. He even talks about one specific example of like a boy teasing a girl and he didn't realize what was happening because he he just observed the

boy whistling. He didn't realize it was speech, and suddenly the girl lashed out and hit the boy with the broom because of what he'd been saying to her, except he hadn't been using the spoken language. Interesting, Okay, so the former we have perhaps a physical reason for the limit, but possibly cultural, and then the second one seems to

be definitely cultural. Yeah, I don't know if there's a if there's like a biological limitation on on older men whistling either, I mean, it seems like this is probably all cultural convention. Yeah. I think with older men, based on what I've been reading, it would be it would

be kind of a case to case situation. You certainly have older gentlemen who are profound whistlers, but there are there's certainly cases even in younger people where if there changes to one's mouth uh, due to injury, due to just changes in dental health, then that could impact one's ability to whistle. Well. So a big question here would be why. I mean, this is an interesting and beautiful thing about this language that it has the you know,

the spoken language and then it's whistled twin. But like, what would cause a whistled version of a language to develop like this? And I think one good way to get some insight into that is to look at what are the common occasions for people to use the whistled version of their language instead of the spoken version. And one of the big answers here is pretty clear. The author here says that the most frequent use of the whistle speech was observed when the speakers were at a

distance from each other, he writes quote. Men scattered widely over a mountain side, each working in his own plot of ground, will often talk to one another with whistles. Travelers on the trails will keep in touch with one another by whistling, though separated by considerable distance. When wishing to call or get the attention of someone, even though he be within easy speaking distance, the masa tecos will

often whistle his name. The village shoemaker often calls passers by into his shop with a whistle to chat with him while he works. A man may come to a friend's hut on a visit. While approaching, or when he has actually arrived at the door of the hut, he will frequently whistle rather than call his friend's name. If the friend is home, he may respond from within with a whistle, then come out to greet his visitor, or he may remain inside and whistle to his visitor to

come in. Fascinating Okay, so communicating at a distance seems to be a big one, or also initiating communication at the start of an encounter, which I think it's interesting that even when we're not at a distance, we often use language that we employ at a distance. Like to get somebody in a spoken language. To get somebody's attention from far away, what do you do? You yell hey at them? But also what do you do when you walk up and and see somebody you know, your two

feet away from them? You say, oh hey? And there might be some sort of a wave or something in there as well, And I could I can imagine, I don't know if it so sure, I can imagine where if whistling could maybe take the place of some of the otherwise necessary waving or gesticulating that would be required to get somebody's attention and say, hey here, I am, there you are, let's converse right, So okay, So you've got communicating at a distance, you've got initiating communication at

the start of a of a meeting, and then along the same lines. Uh. He writes here that the whistle is sometimes used as a warning, such as when someone unknown is seen approaching on the trail, you kind of whistle to let all of your friends nearby know that

something's up, you know, to get their attention. Though again he says the most common occasion is talking at a distance, and he writes that in these cases, men working in the field seem to be able to communicate easily with people a full quarter of a mile away, like on the opposite mountain side using the whistle speech. But also and I found I found this next part really interesting.

Count says that sometimes, especially boys will hold a whistle conversation if they're trying to talk while older people are also nearby carrying on a spoken conversation or even singing together. And he calls these sort of simultaneous whistled conversations subdued whistles and says that they're that they're quite audible, and yet they are able to happen simultaneous lee without seeming too much interfere with the spoken conversation of the adults.

And I don't know that one seems really interesting to me. I mean, it reminds me of of being a kid and wanting to talk to other kids while they're I don't know, while you're in class or something, when you're not supposed to be doing that. Uh, And and there there's just an obvious sort of clash between two sets of spoken words going on at the same time. And this gets the ire of the adults, not only because you're not paying attention, but because you're distracting others. Yet

somehow I could imagine that. Yeah, maybe having like a different form of the language. If you're speaking your language based on whistles instead of with the normal of phonetic syllables, that could allow a kind of simultaneity without so much conflict. Yeah, a way to speak while the adults are speaking without interfering with what they're doing. Now, the example of of using the whistles to communicate saying, in the case of

a path, uh, you're in the woods, someone's coming. That reminds me that I And I'm making an assumption here, But if one were to say, hey, Carl, there's somebody coming and call out, well, not only are communicating to Carl, but you're communing communicating something about yourself. I wonder if whistling language in specific scenarios like this allow you to communicate without tipping your hand at all regarding like who you are, like what your age is, what your gender is,

et cetera. Oh huh, that I didn't think about that. That's interesting. Um. Well, another thing I would say along those same lines is, again I haven't done experiments to confirm this, but I would just say, as a baseline, I might assume that whistling can more easily blend in with nature than than spoken language. That like you hear spoken language, you instantly know a person is nearby you hear a little whistle. I don't know that could be a bird or something like that if you're not tuned

into it as a linguistic signal. And I think that's where and that's certainly where my assumption come comes into play, is that I'm not sure what it would be like for someone who who has lived in the world of this kind of whistling. If you're used to it, then maybe you just you have heightened susceptibility to recognizing it and and telling the difference between it in the natural world.

And likewise, perhaps if you're used to it, you can definitely tell the difference between a man's whistling a boy's whistle than well. So to round out the things that the Cowen talks about in this article, he says, um uh, that there are no lexical limitations on the whistle speech. Sort of already got to this, but basically anything you can express in spoken language you can express in the whistles.

Um However, there are some ambiguities caused by the whistle speech, and this is because of the basic phonetic features of it.

So the massive Taken languages are tonal languages. This would mean they're similar to like Mandarin, where you can have a syllable and you can have maybe four different versions of that syllable, and in English they would all be the same syllable to us, Like maybe the classic example in Mandarin is four different ways of saying ma, but pronounced in each case with a different tone, So you would you know, and if you're trying to write them out phonetically in English, they would all be m A.

But one might be a kind of gliding up tone and one is a falling tone and so forth. Yeah, well, them as a taken languages are like this too. They have tones in the speech, and the tones are what eventually becomes the whistle speech. The whistle speech is based on the tonal features of the spoken language. But if you have, say, two different phrases that in the spoken language have the exact same sequences of tones, these can of course cause ambiguity in the whistle speech, and that

has to be resolved. You might have to say, what do you mean? Uh. Colin writes that one of the most common sources of ambiguity and whistled speech is just proper names, because there are a lot of proper names that have the same sequence of tones. But despite this limitation that you know, you you don't have spoken syllables, you're just turning the language entirely into sequences of tones. Uh. You can communicate a lot, and most of the time

people understand each other just fine. Another thing I thought was interesting is that he says there don't appear to be any limitations on whistled speech mingling with spoken language. Like it's not like you go into one mode and then you're supposed to stay there and back and forth, and like he says that a conversation might start at a distance as whistles as whistles, and then switch to normal speech when the parties get closer to each other, or you might just go back and forth. You might

be speaking and then suddenly whistling, and then and so forth. Interesting. This, um, this, this is not not a perfect comparison, but I and I can't help but think of the astro mac droids and star Wars. You know, how they speak with the kind of whistling UM language uh and and generally when they're talking to somebody like Luke Skywalker or whoever, Luke understands the astro Mec language and then speaks back in English and UH or whatever we're calling English UM in

the Star Wars universe. And at times when I'm watching this, I'm always I'll stop and I'll think. And of course i'm you know, caught up in the flow of it, so it ultimately doesn't matter. But if I'm over analyzing it, I'm I'm thinking about the fact that they're they're speaking in two different languages to each other and there doesn't seem to be any problem. But an example like this from the real world makes me think, well, no, this

is entirely believable. You have both parties know the language, but the astro Mec of course can only speak one of those languages, and Luke Skywalker can also only speak one of those languages, but both can understand. Yeah, that's interesting. I have often thought about that too, about the how exactly the R two D two communication goes on um a boat. But I just wanted to say also that like um, this isn't something of the past that the Massa teco whistle speech is still in use today, certainly

by people in Wahaka and maybe elsewhere as well. If you want to hear what it sounds like, I would highly recommend looking up videos. There are videos you can find online of native speakers demonstrating the Messa teco whistle speech and it's it's it's totally worth looking up. Absolutely yeah, it's it's. It's quite beautiful. But as I alluded to earlier, this is not the only case in the world. This

is just one example I picked. There are other examples and I might get into them in in part two of this series of whistled languages popping up, especially it seems in in mountainous and forested regions around the world. And there's a paper I want to talk about in the next part of the series about what are some of the common features that may cause whistled versions of

languages to arise. It's very interesting to think about, like what are the pressures and environmental characteristics that tend to give rise to certain characteristics of language. Absolutely now in discussing whistling here uh. When we first started looking into this topic, I was thinking, well, what is whistling and I at first I was thinking, well, this has to be one of those questions that shouldn't be too complicated, right, in part because for many of us, a whistle is

literally as close as our own breath. We can produce a whistle without giving it too much thought, and we can generally pick out the sound of whistling rather easily. Maybe not, you know, as as quickly as we were discussing in our previous example compared to other things. But here it for a second, and you'll say, yeah, yeah, somebody's whistling, and then maybe you can pick out the tune. But yeah, we know it when we hear it, and

we know it when we produce it. So I honestly expected to kind of springboard past the basic what is a whistle question here and so get more into some of the meteor stuff. But then I read this definition of whistling from the paper The Physiology of Oral Whistling by A. Zola at All, published in the Journal of

Applied Physiology. Quote. Experimental models support the hypothesis that the sound in human whistling is generated by a helm Holtz resonator, suggesting that the oral cavity acts as a resonant chamber bounded by two orifices, posteriorly by raising the tongue to the hard palate and anteriorly by pursed lips. So I don't know about you, but when I heard that that instantly it made me realize, Okay, it's a little more

complicated than I had perhaps realized at first. And uh, I I don't think I had actually heard of a helm Holtz resonator before, and when I heard that, I instantly thought of like the Holtzman effect in Dune. But this has nothing to do with personal shields and suspensers. Well, yeah, I think that's interesting too, that it's like not a fully settled question how exactly the physics of of whistling work. But I do think it's clear and you can sort

of test this in your own body. Uh. That part of what's happening with whistling is you are relocating the primary resonating chamber that's producing the vibrations the sound when you whistle, as opposed to when you produce regular speech. Because if you just feel it in your body while you're talking, you can kind of feel least I can that the vibrations sort of seemed to be coming from the throat. It's also sort of happening in the mouth

a little bit um. But then when you whistle, at least what I feel is I feel the vibration beginning in my mouth. Yeah. I would certainly advise everyone as you're whistling, and you may be whistling right now, to sort of test this out, like, really focus in on how it feels, Focus on how you feel the air flowing through your mouth. You'll find these lateral air passages between cheek and molars. Uh. And it's it's really quite quite fascinating because again, it's easy to just take this

for granted, it's not something for most of us. Is certainly after after a point, you don't really have to think about it. You don't have to have to look up and read instructions for how to do it. You just your mouth assumes the form necessary to create the whistle, and you whistle as a total sidetrack. I'm sorry, but I I found the title of that paper, The Physiology of Oral Whistling, very funny because it immediately made me think,

are there other types of whistle? Is there ocular whistling? Well? There, I mean, I guess there may be some sort of nasal variety. I mean, I'm instantly reminded of the various nasal flutes that exist in different cultures. So, uh, the airflow from the mouth is not the only way that we have to produce a sound. So um. But yeah, when you say whistling, you tend to think oral whistling. Now, I want to come back to the Helmholtz resonator here.

So this is named for important German physicist and physician Herman von Helmholtz, who lived eighteen twenty one through If you if you're studying anything about sound and sound generation,

you'll generally find out find something about von Helmholtz. For instance, after we had started this particular topic, I was in Asheville, North Carolina, and I went to the mog Museum there, the synthesizer Museum, and Helmholtz his name comes up in some of the materials there because it's just it's hard to avoid him when you get into the science of sound.

So the helm Holtz resonator is a kind of spherical chamber with an aperture at the top or at one end called the nipple, and tapering there for insertion into the ear, and then has another larger aperture on the other end of this sphere. So each Helmholtz resonator has a known fixed volume size and therefore is made to pick up on a particular tone there there there's no mechanical parts in this. It's essentially it's kind of like

a very finely engineered seashell. Pick one up. You place the nipple in your ear, and you can pick out a particular frequency, and you generally will have a selection of these to analyze complex sounds. Joe, for your benefit, I included a photo here of various helm Holtz resonators, and if you do a Google search out there of helm Halt resonators, you'll see selections like this. They're often made out of some sort of metal. You know. I think of myself as an adventurous secret of of experiences.

But somehow I don't want to put the big ones of these in my ear. That just I would fear I would fear oral injury. Well, the nipples the same size on all of them. Okay, nipple that is inserted into your ear. I guess I'm just I guess what I mean is I'm afraid it looks like it would suddenly produce an incredibly loud sound. But I guess the size of the resonator cavity is not actually about the volume, but about the pitch. So these resonators, they have various

applications in engineering, architecture, and music. But when it comes to studying and describing the mechanisms of human whistling, something that the aforementioned authors say isn't done enough, and again it is not made fully understood. The Helmholtz resonator is apparently a good model of what seems to be going on inside of our head, inside of our you know, our head and face when we whistle. And Joe I included an illustration from that paper that I thought was

was very useful. This kind of takes uh the airflow, those lateral air passages were described, describing the as well as the central resonance chamber, and illustrates those inside of this This drawing of of of of a human female who is supposedly whistling, and it makes whistling look like some sort of strange organ inside the mouth. Yeah, it looks like, well, you've got your regular liver down below, and then you've got your whistling liver, and that's up

somewhere underneath the nose. Right now, going back to that paper by A. Zola at All, I want to read this quick quote that sums a lot of this up quote. The results of this study indicate that the acoustic mechanism in human pursed lip whistling follows a Helmholtz resonator model.

The oral cavity acts as the resonant chamber, and the anterior posterior movements of the tongue play a major role in changing the volume and thus the whistle frequency produced for their studies, performed with high resolution measurements may help elucidate the contribution of changes to other parameters of the Helmholtz equation. Okay, so this is sort of in line with what I was at least guessing based on the

feelings inside my head. When I whistle, it feels like the vibrations are coming from the mouth when I whistle. And here they're saying that, yes, when you whistle, the oral cavity is what's acting as the resonant chamber. It's sort of acting as a Helmholtz resonator, right, And it is stressing though that, Yeah, there's a lot going on here. And even though it may feel pretty natural for most of us to whistle, we don't have to again put

a lot of thought into it. Uh though though if you may be overthinking it now and finding yourself having to to think more about doing it, but uh, you still have to have the proper preusit prerequisites in place. Uh. Some people lack the ability to whistle for a few different reasons. It's also something that does have to be initially learned and can get really good with practice. So uh, it's like it's one of those scenarios like when you hear somebody do it really well. Uh, it has an

almost otherworldly beauty to it. Uh. Some of those uh examples earlier in the whistling speech definitely have this quality to them. But also I think of whistling used in music sometimes I think of the whistling of say, Leon Redbone whistle during some of his performance so amazing whistler. My whistle is nothing like that, um And and a

large part of that just may simply be practiced. I I have not applied the hours of whistling that Leon Redbone applied during his lifetime to achieve that that level of art. Thank so off, Mike, we were talking about our favorite examples of music that features whistling. One example that immediately comes to my mind is there's a there's a great Bolivian folk song called Orando ce Foe and the band, the experimental rock band Sun City Girls do

a cover of that song. I think their cover is called the Shining Path, and there's a part usually before the lyrics come in that I think on earlier recordings of this song is done on a flute, but they whistle this part, and the whistling is just intense. It sounds very much the comparison a lot of people seem to make. I think Seth said the same thing when we played it for him earlier, is that it feels like Ennio Morricone feels like a kind of a very dramatic,

dangerous Western scene. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's something about the the West cinematically that that makes me think of whistling, And a big part of it is, you know, probably uh Morricone scores, but also the score by Carter Burwell for um A Raising Arizona, the Colin Brothers film, So good, fabulous score that includes a lot of like yodeling and banjo, but also whistling, really powerful, like pure whistling that sounds

like it's from just it's from straight from heaven. But the other one Seth reminded, uh, reminded me of was the Peter Bjorn and John song that was popular. I think that was like really big my last year in college. It was like two thousand eight or so. Yeah, yeah, that's a great example. Another one that I think Seth and I both thought of at the same time was Otis Redding sitting on the dock of the bay. That

is a wonderful whistling part in it. Well, you know, I was trying to think, based on all these examples we just brought up, whether there are sort of common connotations to whistling in music. But I guess not really because in some of these examples we've talked about, the whistling feels very very happy and languid. It's a relaxed kind of sound. I think of sitting on the dock of the bay, whereas in uh, in the first example I mentioned, it's it's a fiery, intense, you know, uh,

danger rising from from the canyon kind of sound. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glancing at a list right now, and oh this is a big one. Winds of Change by the Scorpions. That's some that's some powerful whistling in there. Feel it, Feel it in your bones. Golden Years by David Bowie. That's another good one. Games Without Frontiers by Peter Gabriel. Oh I know that one. Yeah, Yeah, that's a great one. War Without Tears. Yeah. Yeah. They're a bunch of them.

And I'm not going to go through this whole list, but I'd love to hear from folks out there if you have particularly favored examples of songs with whistling in them, or or favorite whistling performers. Oh like, here's another great one. Always Look on the bright Side of Life from Monty Python's The Life of Brian. Great stuff. There's walk Like in Egyptian by the Bengals. I did not remember the

whistling in that. Yeah, don't worry, be happy. Bobby McFerrin. Oh, I don't know if I remember the I remember this song, but I don't remember whistling Me and Julio down by the schoolyard Paul Simon. Oh yeah, uh uh, I shouldn't do that too much. Love is a Battlefield Pat Benatar, great song. Uh, I don't remember the whistling, you know, coming back to the idea of whistled language is part of me, thinks, Oh, man, I it would be difficult for me living in a culture like that because I

feel like I don't whistle very well. But then again, I guess it's a it's a skill that you develop with practice, like other language skills, and that unless you have some kind of like anatomical reason that's interfering with your ability to whistle. And imagine it's largely a function of how much you do it, how much you you practice it, and how much you learned at an early age. But but yes, I am one of those who I

don't whistle great. Uh Yeah, my whistling is it's okay for my own purposes, but it is not a performance level whistle. So I will catch myself occasionally whistling a particular tune. But I'm also just as just as inclined to maybe sing a little bit from a particular song, or to hum a little bit, uh did to use those more or less in tandem. But pure whistling. Yeah, I've never really applied myself to it, uh, because because I felt like my whistling, yeah, it's good enough for me,

not so much for anybody else I'm around. I did get into a habit a while back of when I would be singing a song and I would start getting up to the high notes that I couldn't sing, I would just switch to whistling them. Yeah, as we were researching this, I was, of course, like a lot of you out there listening to the episode, I was a little I was hyper conscious of my own whistling, so I was I was trying it out, and I and I decided, well, what if I tried to whistle better,

or you know, what have I? What have I sort of really concentrate on it and try and see what happens when I change the shape of my mouth a little bit. And I was feeling that. I found that I was able to make a stronger whistle, but it was also I felt it straining, uh, like muscles in my face and in my head that I maybe don't strain that much when I do my default whistle. And then I was able to go back to my default

whistle and it felt more natural. So I kind of took that as an indicators like, Okay, this is this is kind of a gateway to better whistling. If I wanted to actually pursue this probably, but I'm not going to do that. Oh well, uh, this makes me think of how Actually, to some degree, the same thing is true about spoken language. Like I find at least if I think too hard about what my body is doing while I'm producing words with my mouth, suddenly they become

a lot harder to produce. Like if I'm thinking about my lungs and my larynx and my mouth. Uh, the syllables become kind of strange. You get that. Actually, I would say it's a feeling kind of similar to semantic satiation, where when you say a word too many times in a row, you start like the words starts to feel strange and it loses its association with the with the

with the meaning that it signifies. Uh. In a way, it's kind of like if you're riding a bicycle and you suddenly start thinking really hard about how you were riding the bicycle, how this is being retained, and maybe don't do that, Maybe just just just ride the bicycle, think about something else, because everything is in motion, it's it's working. Just don't don't second guess it. But as we were saying, though, it's by second guessing it that

we are able to potentially improve it as well. Um, we can certainly fall into a habit of whistling a certain way. Uh, and then there are conceivably ways to improve upon that whistle. But uh, you've got to want to do that or have some reason to do that. And certainly communication would be a big one. If you're engaging in some sort of whistling communication with people, then

there's going to be sort of a whistling standard. I imagine you're gonna you're gonna hear other people use it, and there is going to be a positive social pressure to improving your whistle to match the whistles of those around your right. Well, maybe we need to call part one of Whistling series here, but we've got so much more interesting stuff to talk about in subsequent parts. We're going to talk about religious uses of whistling. We're going

to talk about whistling superstition, whistling psychology, whistling technology. That there are a lot of monsters in this closet. All right, we'll join us for that when we come back, and certainly go ahead and send in your messages regarding your own experience with whistling. We would love to hear from you as a reminder. Stuff to Blow your minds Core episodes published Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow

your Mind podcast feed on Wednesday's. We do a short form artifact or monster fact on Monday to listen to mail. On Fridays, we do Weird How Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. If you want to converse with other Stuff to Blow your Mind listeners, while there are a couple of places you can go on Facebook, you can go to the discussion module and you can also go

to the Discord. If you're a Discord user, go to the discord email us and we'll send you the link you need. Did you goin that? But there are a lot of cool discussions going on there and they're doing a book club there. I need to mention that again some of the listeners have decided to read um Burder Echo is the name of the Rose. So if you're interested in that email, let's get the link. We'll send you to the right place and you can join up with them. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio

producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. B b bl BL biops, Fast as the Town by