Whistling!
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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. And it's become clear to me that I used the slide whistle on the wrong episode. This is stuff you should know. Oh, no. Would that have gotten annoying to you? No, I think the slide whistle worked perfect, and this isn't about slide whistles. No, it's about whistle whistles, which means your mouth with your lips pursed. That's right.

So let's just out of the gate for the three people who don't know what whistling is. Whistling is the act of making a sound by forcing air through your mouth through a narrow passage typically with your lips pursed.

And that is actually a specific kind of whistling, as we'll see, called pucker whistling. There's other kinds, but that is by far the most common form of whistling. And if you can move your tongue a little bit, you can start to get pretty good at whistling. One other thing to start, set everything up. There is no genetic basis for not being able to whistle. It's just a lack of practice. Do you whistle? Right out of the gate. Let's hit me with that info.

You bet. I don't mean can you whistle? Yes, I find myself more going like that. Like I'm not trying to do a song. I don't even know I'm doing it. I like realize I'm doing it as I'm doing it. It's just something to occupy the space around me, I guess. Okay. What about you, Chuck? Do you whistle, Chuck? Are you a whistler?

Yeah, I whistle. Sometimes I wonder if I annoy people by whistling. Well, you've never annoyed me by whistling. I can tell you that. But back when, you know, in the early days of HowStuffWorks.com, when we worked in a big office with, you know, 50 people, I used to wonder about stuff like that. Like, well, yeah, you know, am I whistling around the office? Is that annoying to people? Kind of like remember the guy who walked around in his sock feet?

Why did that bother me so much? Because he walked around an office with sock feet, including the bathroom. Yes, including the bathroom. That's why, Josh. Like, add a urinal in socks. It was, I mean, I know that that's just objectively wrong, but I don't, the rest of it, I never understood why it bothered me so much. But yeah. You just, you don't do that. You don't do that. That's why. But you're also not supposed to whistle around the office too, FYI.

Yeah. And I think I literally kind of was like, probably shouldn't do that around here because that was the first office job I ever had. I mean, like I know for a fact I've noticed you whistling before, but I can tell you it's never bothered me ever.

I appreciate it. I'm a pretty good whistler, so I like to whistle songs and things. You are a pretty good whistler. I appreciate that. So we'll, you know, maybe I'll trot a little bit out here and there. Jerry whistles too. You just can't hear it. Oh, she's whistling right now. Way to go, Jerry. You're a champ. So you mentioned the pucker whistle. That's the most common, you know, whistle that most people walk around doing. That's this.

That. That's right. Okay, I'm going to try to demonstrate them all. So you go through them, I'll demonstrate them, okay? That sounds great. Okay. My good friend Eddie, whom you've met before, he does what's called the palatal whistling. That's like the shriek.

That's right. Except it makes a whistle sound. Right. And that is when you put the tongue on the roof of your mouth. I can't do it. Eddie does it really well, so it's always kind of fun. And I'm a big—it's just a nostalgia blast for me whenever Eddie breaks out the palatal whistle. Can he spit like that, too? You know how, like, you can do, like, a little thing of spit, like, really fast from your mouth by—

By touching your palate with your tongue? Oh, oh. Gleeking? Yes. Can you do that? I can gleek, but I don't know if Eddie can. Well, then I'll bet you could palate whistle. I can't. All right. What's next? The old finger whistle. It's like this. Yeah. Except, again, caveat, except it makes a whistle sound. Okay. I've never been able to do this. There are different methods, number of fingers where you place them and stuff like that.

Um, the old taxi whistle, that's a, that's a finger whistle. Usually. Um, I've always been jealous of people who could really bust out aloud, uh, finger whistle. I could never do it. Are you jealous? Of finger whistlers? I mean, that's very low on the scale, but sure. A little bit. Okay. All right. I mean, they're putting their fingers in their mouths. Yeah. They're walking around New York city. Yep.

It's really loud, though. But if you could just palate whistle, you can usually whistle as loud as a finger whistle in my experience. No, palate whistles aren't very loud. It's like this. Oh, no, no, no. I think you're thinking of two different things. Are you thinking of a palate whistle as like a taxi call without fingers?

Yeah, it's the kind where like your lips kind of press back in your face a little bit and your teeth get exposed and your tongue goes up to the roof of your mouth. I think we have a different version of palate whistle then.

Maybe I can get Eddie to record his palate whistle. I know what you're talking about then. I've seen video of that. Yes. It's almost like it comes from the back of the throat. Yeah. I mean, I wish I could do it. When I try to do what he does, it's just and nothing comes out at all. Palatal whistling, except it makes a sound.

And then there's throat whistling, which is a very strange looking whistle because your mouth is open. You're not, you don't have like a puckered pursed lip. Oh, that's what I'm thinking of. I don't know what palatal whistling is if it's not. You know what? At the very least, I'll get Eddie to send me an audio thing that I'll text you. Okay. Can you text him now? Sure. I'll talk. You just text for a minute.

Uh, for the throat whistling, I would want to recommend, did you watch those videos I sent you by any chance? I didn't Chuck. I'm sorry. Oh man, that's all right. You, you have to though. You owe it to yourself. Okay. Uh, because they're just go to YouTube and type in Ralph Whistler, uh,

I guess, G-I-E-S-E, on Kelly and Company 1984 and just witnessed the beauty of this guy, Ralph, doing his throat whistling to Georgia on my mind, which got about a half a million, 550,000 views. Then right afterward, in fact, you'll be prodded to watch the next video, which is Best Singer Ever Whistler Redub, which is somebody who redubbed him

With his strange facial movements, his actual, we won't even call it singing, but other mouth noises. That has gotten two and a half million views. Nice. And I watched it seven times today and laughed just as hard every single time. It's so funny. Man, I gotta watch it. It's...

Amazing. Okay, I'll definitely watch it. So, Chuck, we can't actually say when whistling started. Some people say that it actually was a proto-language, which I find just absolutely fascinating. Totally. We do know that well back into prehistory in the Neolithic age, people were using, maybe even Neanderthals too, were using bone whistles, the grimmest kind of whistle.

which would indicate that we were already familiar with whistles. We probably had figured out how to whistle by then. There's a bioacoustician named Julian Meyer who says the muscles it takes, the amount of brain power it takes to whistle is so much less than it is to speak and to use words and create a vocabulary like that, that it just makes sense that we would have evolved to whistle first, at the very least to get somebody's attention.

Right. And then once you have somebody's attention, you want to express an idea that just inherently follows. It's almost inevitable that we whistled before we learn to speak. Yeah, there have been legitimate whistling languages discovered on every continent on planet Earth. And then we once we move on to recorded history, we know for sure that Greeks and Romans and ancient Greece and Rome.

um, whistled because they whistle like to jeer, uh, from the audience. Like people still do in Europe, uh, at least Europe. I'm sure they do that in other countries, but, uh, we boo here in the United States, but in the UK and Europe, they whistle when they want to express displeasure. Yeah. There was also, so, uh, Herodotus in his histories, uh,

a community in Ethiopia that lived in caves and spoke like bats. And you know the term troglodytes? Mm-hmm. These were the original troglodytes. Yeah. And it's

It's been taken, Herodotus has to be taken with a grain of salt because he himself was relying on probably a lot of unreliable sources. He sounds like somebody who would have really bought the stuff that he read on Facebook and put a lot of stuff onto Facebook if he were alive today. But that doesn't mean that there is not like some kernel of truth. And the troglodytes who spoke like bats has been taken to mean that they had a whistle-based language. Yeah.

Yeah, they were all over the place. People just tuk-tuk whistling at his buddies. Hey, look at this Mastodon over here. Let's take this thing down. He says that all in a whistle. He's like, and also, have you heard the new Mastodon album? Yeah.

By the way, shout out to Mastodon. That was just the, for the second year running, the celebrity judge, quote unquote celebrity judge in a chicken wing contest for the Kirkwood Spring Fling. And one of the other judges was Braun, the drummer of Mastodon. Awesome. And he was a super cool dude. Oh, I'm sure.

How could you not be if you're in Mastodon? Yeah. We sat there and ate chicken wings together and very seriously reviewed them and rated them. So I'm sure you'd take that seriously. I would, too. I would be very disappointed if you just took that as like a lark. Yeah. 16 chicken wings. Lucky. Yeah. Well, I didn't eat them all. I housed like four of them and then most of the rest were just a bite or two. Okay. Do you like smoked wings? Like, you know, the Fox Brothers ilk?

Yeah. I have a love-hate with smoke on any food. It's okay, but same with mezcal. I like it in just little bits and blasts. Yeah, I'm with you. With the smoked wings, though, that's kind of what I'm on right now. I can eat a lot of those. Those, I mean...

The Fox Brothers wings are great. Well, nothing compliments and is complimented by ranch more than a smoked wing. To me, it's even better than like a regular straight ahead buffalo wing as far as the ranch combo works. I don't eat buffalo anymore at all. I'm basically a dry lemon pepper guy. Oh, all right. These days. I always associate that with sports betting and watching like sports on Sunday for some reason. Well, I do a bit of both.

Speaking of, dude, have you seen, sorry to all the people who are new to the podcast, have you seen the roast of Tom Brady?

Oh, I saw parts of it, but there's no way I could sit through that in earnest. It's so bad. Like the stand-up comedians and some of the podcasters did pretty well. Nikki Glaser won the night easily, handily. She's great. But when you finally get to Tom Brady's part, it like, like it's unwatchable. You just can't, you can't look. It's so...

It's so bad. He's like so going with the joke of how he's the greatest that it becomes kind of painfully clear that he's actually being dead serious at that point. He's not joking at all. It's really tough. I would actually recommend just watching like the first minute and a half of it and see if you can make it that far. I don't know if I could, but shout out to Nikki Glaser. One time stuff you should know, listener, at least. Yeah, that one time.

I mean, I don't know if she still is. In other words, I know what you mean. You're just joking. All right. Can we get back to whistling? Yes. That's all my fault. We can move past the history. People get get what's going on here. Well, we need to talk about when whistling was like a big deal, though, in history.

Yeah, that's what I was getting to. Okay. We're talking initially, you know, that ancient history stuff was like, hey, look over here. Hey, what should we do? Hey, we're communicating. But if you're talking about whistle while you work, musical whistling, in other words, it's kind of tougher to trace that history because there's nothing, you know, there's no fossil that would indicate anything. But...

Linda Hamilton, who is a historian and loves whistling, has definitely referenced whistlers in the 1600s. My bet is that it goes back even further because if people learn to whistle, I believe people are inherently musical than people were in my mind.

whistling for uh enjoyment and pleasure pleasure yeah well even in the canterbury tales chaucer um says the young squire spends his days singing and whistling so i mean yeah that's that's yes i i agree i think the first time somebody realized they could whistle it immediately kicked off the human um i guess uh pastime of whistling for pleasure yeah absolutely and

So, yeah, they were like, hey, over here. Hey, I like that a lot. I'm just going to keep saying hey over here a bunch of times. That was the first time it happened. The first song written by a whistle was called hey over here. So there were actual songs. There were professional whistlers, late 19th century. Vaudeville, it makes sense. Like Vaudeville, of course, they had so many acts doing so many different things. Of course there were whistlers. But it caught on. And in the first...

Pretty much half of the 20th century, there were a lot of whistling acts, whistling performers. They have names like Ronnie Rinalde, Muzzy Marcelino, just perfect names like that. And they were big enough that I think in 1949, Ronnie Rinalde sold out Radio City Music Hall for 10 weeks.

And he was a whistler. Every night for 10 weeks? Yes. Yeah, not just like once and then 10 weeks later. I mean like every night for 10 weeks, yes. That's a 6,000 cap venue. He was a whistler. Oh, man. And that just shows how big it was. It was usually people, I mean, if you had a whistling act, you were doing one or you were doing usually both of two things, which is whistling songs and things and then mimicking songbirds. Right.

Yeah, and that's still a thing. I watched Pucker Up, the documentary on whistling. Did you see it? I did. It's great. It is. In the way that it starts out, too, I was like, this is indistinguishable from an episode of documentary now.

Like the first half hour, you could not tell it apart. Yeah, except there was no Fred Armisen or Phil Hader. Yeah, but I was just waiting for him to pop up. It was like that dead on. But it's a really, really sweet, charming documentary. And all the people involved are pretty great. But one of the first people, I think the first whistler they introduced you to, a guy named Joe Sedano.

He is doing bird impressions out in the woods and the birds are responding to him. It's really neat to see. You're like, wow, this guy's communing with the birds right now out in the woods. Yeah, he's talking. Better watch what you say though, buddy. Yeah, for sure. So it was going along pretty well. Whistling very, very big in vaudeville, like you said, and a popular act just period.

Um, so much so that there was an academy in 1909, uh, the Agnes Woodward, California school of artistic whistling opened up and she had some pretty high profile clients, including, um, John Wayne, I guess, wanted to learn how to whistle really well. Pat Boone, Bing Crosby. If you're in a Western, you better know how to whistle. That's my guess why John Wayne needed to learn. At least whistle for your horse at the very least. Sure. Yeah. Your horse loves to hear you whistle. That's a funny joke though. In a Western, um,

It's like the cowboy who can't whistle probably feels pretty bad about himself. Probably. That reminds me of the singing horse in Top Secret. Oh, yeah.

That was just on an episode of Scott Hasn't Seen, so that's fresh in my mind. Oh, okay, good. So you remember the singing horse thing? I remember that, and it just made me remember how funny that movie is. It is. It really is. So I think you were kind of getting to this point where all of a sudden, almost overnight, every whistling act just went away.

The world said, we're done with whistling. Stop whistling. And very interestingly, whistling is like not just a musical act, but just kind of as a pastime, something that people just generally did, went away at the same time too. And I saw that it was chalked up by some people to the advent of the transistor radio.

And then eventually the Walkman and then iPod, I think it was somebody on PuckerUp kind of made this case. And it really makes sense because one of the reasons people would whistle before is because you're just keeping yourself occupied. You're keeping yourself entertained. You're creating music for yourself to enjoy. And that need for that went away when we were able to carry around things that could do that for us, starting with the transistor radio. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. It also had a bad reputation even in certain instances. In the 1800s in the UK, there were stores that banned whistling because it was used as a sort of language basically between pickpockets and thieves to warn each other. It is still sort of...

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

That would kill. Absolutely. And it's just become sort of a trope as a shorthand. Again, just another sort of weird use for whistling. So it's just like roller skating. You remember how like roller skating was huge in the late 70s and all of a sudden just overnight it went away. But like black culture was like, nope, we're still roller skating and roller skating continued to be a thing.

That kind of happened with whistling. The world was like, we're done with whistling. But a subset of people were like, no, we're going to keep whistling and kept the dream alive of whistling over the years. And I say we take a break and we come back and talk about a few contemporary whistlers. Let's do it. Let's do it.

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Okay, Chuck. So we're talking about people who whistle today, sometimes for a living. There was an artist in the 90s named Marge Carlson who whistled a lot of saccharine Christian songs and was known as America's sweetheart of bird songs. She was quite a good whistler, but she had albums. Like she released albums where rather than singing, it was all instrumental. And one of the instruments was her whistling. Yeah. And that's still a thing. Yeah.

Uh, I'm sure you looked at these videos, Josh, but there is, uh, and big thanks to Anna, by the way, who put this together for us. Very cool, robust article. Uh, but she found Molly Lewis, who is a contemporary professional whistler. Um, just a wonderful whistler, um, releasing that she has an EP called the forgotten edge. She performs live in concert. Uh, there's a very fun YouTube with Molly on, um,

One of those Sunday morning shows. I can't remember which one. It was CBS Sunday morning. It was good. Good little segment. Yeah. Very good little segment, like you said. And she's just, Molly just seems terrific. Very enthusiastic about whistling. Yeah, she's a whistler. But at the same time, she's like bewildered that she's actually making a career out of whistling. Like she's able to do that. Yeah. She's kind of laughing about it, not like in a put down way. Just kind of like, I'm good at this weird thing and it's just kind of crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

She's got some contemporaries, too. A lot of, I think actually Molly competed, too. A lot of the people who you would have heard of as whistlers, at least now, if you really dig into whistling, you'll end up hearing about them, like Chris Ullman, Hirt Schultz.

who's just an amazing person, apparently. They competed in like the international whistling finals. And as you kind of start to dig into the world of whistling, some names kind of bubble up to the top. And that's because they're essentially competitive whistlers. There's whistling competitions that are held over the years and

some people who are just the best of the best at whistling will compete. So in addition to Molly Lewis, you'll run across a guy named Chris Ullman, who's a champion whistler, a guy named Hirt Chatreau, who's another champion whistler. And they're just amazing. And if you listen to them, especially if you just go watch Pucker Up, the documentary, I think it's even on YouTube for free. You'll start to realize that people

People have their own style, their own techniques. It's not just like there's one way to whistle. People have figured out a bunch of different ways to whistle and different combinations of those ways to whistle. And they're keeping it alive, like I said. That's right. I mean, Sammy Hagar may say there's only one way to rock.

But he will also say there's a lot of ways to whistle. That's right. And he said, for those about to rock, we salute you. And we salute Sammy because he just got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Oh, really? Congrats. Yeah. Way to go, Sammy. Yeah. So if you are a great whistler and you, you know, maybe compete in these competitions and you're like, well, I'm not popular enough to get my album out there like Molly Lewis. You probably could find a home at Cirque du Soleil.

Because they have had quite a few whistlers over the years perform with them. As Cirque is a bit of a modern-day vaudeville, and they have all kinds of fun things like that. We go every year here in Atlanta. It's a nice, fun tradition for the fam.

You can also whistle on songs and soundtracks. Molly Lewis whistled on that Barbie soundtrack that's so great. Of course, who can forget the good, the bad, and the ugly? Sergio Leone's famous, famous spaghetti western in which Alessandro Alessandroni did that very sort of iconic whistle for that movie. Oh, it's iconic for sure. I mean, it signifies any time somebody is...

You're suddenly like potentially in danger because a extraordinarily capable killer has showed up. Is that I don't know if I described that correctly. No, it's like if the S was about to go down. Yeah, I guess so. And as a refresher, of course, Clint Eastwood was a good Lee Van Cleef was a bad and Eli Wallach was the ugly. I know. Do you want to bust that one out for us?

Like that? Yeah, that was great. I got another one too. There's actually a name, you know, that whistling part where L driver is going to kill the bride at the very beginning of Kill Bill volume one. Yeah. That song is called Twisted Nerve.

And it's like the creepiest song you've ever heard in your life. And it's from a 1968 British thriller called Twisted Nerve. You know the song I'm talking about? I mean, I'd probably recognize it. It's been a while since I've seen that, though. It's just Creepsville. And for some reason, I think it's because it's whistled in part is why it's creepy. It's a creepy song. All right. I'll have to check that out. You want to take a stab at it or no? Sure. You know the song?

No, but I feel like applauding. I think we should overdub the actual song where I start. Just impress everybody. That would be pretty great. Of course, we have to name the fact that sometimes people will whistle as a character. Let's say if you're Woodstock and Peanuts, Jason Sarnas did the Woodstock whistles. Mm-hmm.

And there's a guy named Percy Edwards who is an animal impressionist, and he voices whistles for a lot of animated characters. He also was the voice or I guess the character of Fizgig in The Dark Crystal, essentially one of the pets. You just whistled. And what did I just whistle? What did I do? I indicated something, didn't I? You expressed emotion, in this case admiration or being impressed.

That's right. And what we're talking about is why people whistle. And we've kind of poked around here and there, you know, first about the fact that there were languages and stuff like that. If you lived in a mountainous region, a very good way to communicate over a longer distance like that and maybe give a direction is to have some whistles that you agree on rather than try and

get someone to understand you saying, you know, there is wood over here. You might have a whistle that can indicate that a little more clearly over a great echoey distance. There's also, yes, and that's the whole point. Echoey distances are basically the basis of what are known as whistled languages. And they're a whistled version of your local language. So like if you were saying there's wood over there, you'd be like,

Right? And it actually works. Like, your whistle can travel way farther. I saw something like 550 meters on, like, a nice spring day compared to 40 meters for just speech and 120 meters for shouting. 550 meters is what your whistle will carry. And there's, like, neurologists and linguists are just fascinated by this. Like, how could you kind of imitate that?

a sentence in whistle and the receiver hears the sentence essentially in the same way as if you spoke it. Like it goes to show like there's a lot that you can strip out of speech and still get the point across. That's what whistle language is to you. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, there's only a handful of words that you might want to communicate.

You don't have to say, "Hey, we have firewood over here." You just have to be able to say, "Fire here," or, "Vegetable here," you know? And you can just combine very rudimentary expressions to one another, informative expressions. What would you call that? Information? Sure.

An informative expression. I like that, actually. I like that a lot more than dumb old information. Also, the other person says, what kind of vegetable? Right. And the initial person says, tomatoes. And the second person goes, tomatoes are fruit. And the initial person says, is it? And it just keeps going on like this. But imagine people doing that whistling. Yeah, that'd be pretty great. We have the legendary wolf whistle, which, of course, is the

And that originated, they believe, as a call like shepherds would use that to communicate that there are wolves about. And then that evolved to something that, you know, a street.

manhole repair cover person in New York City might do to any woman that walks by still. Supposedly in 2018, France banned wolf whistling with a 750 euro fine on the spot. You would be like, you need to pay this on the spot. Isn't that fascinating? Because it's a form of sexual harassment.

Yeah. Look at France. And I saw that the furthest back that a wolf whistle in that context can be traced to is that 1943 Tex Avery cartoon, Red Hot Riding Hood, where the cartoon wolf is like watching Riding Hood like perform on stage and just completely loses his mind. And he wolf whistles. That's right. You know, earlier, the old...

I mean, that can that one in itself can mean several different things. You could be impressed by something and go like that. Or you could use it sort of derisively. If someone did something really embarrassing or bad at a party. It's true. You just made my stomach turn. Wow. Yeah. Effective of a whistle in certain contexts.

And usually like an eye roll and something along with it will help indicate that expression. But it's just really fascinating how many different sort of you can express disappointment or excitement, like how many different things you can do from just a simple whistle. Wonder where your car is. Yeah. How would you do that?

Wait, I thought that was vegetable here. And one other thing we have to talk about, we mentioned communicating with animals, and we talked about this in, I think their Communicating with Animals episode, appropriately enough. The greater honey guide, which is a type of bird found in Tanzania and Mozambique, that honey foragers, human honey foragers, have learned to communicate, to whistle to the greater honey guide to get them to come out of the trees and lead them to a beehive.

Amazing. I love that. Communicating with animals, I think, is just fantastic. It's the best. Maybe we'll take a break in a sec, but we'll go over some quick superstitions involving whistling. And, you know, instead of going through all these, I think they can all almost be lumped into...

Whistling in a certain place or at a certain time can bring bad luck. It seems like Polynesia, Iceland, Hawaii, Mexico, Hong Kong, Scandinavia. There's so many countries where if you whistle, like I said, in the wrong place or at the wrong time, it can be a bad omen. It can mean there's ghosts about or there's spirits about just sort of depending on when and how it's done.

Yeah, usually it's whistling in the dark or after dark is a terrible idea in a lot of these cultures around the world. And that the bad luck that you're going to bring yourself is summoning spirits, demons, that kind of thing, who will snatch your soul essentially. But I find it fascinating that whistling in the dark or whistling after nightfall is like almost a universal superstition.

I've never heard of that. I hadn't either, but I mean, all of the different like widespread cultures that share that belief. Yeah. It suggests that it's a very, very, very old superstition. Yeah, for sure. So you want to take that break? Yeah, we'll take the break and we'll talk more about whistling and basically how you do it right after this. Okay. Whistling

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I feel so lucky to collaborate with Megan and how perfectly she put my experience into words. Listen to Chasen from my new album, Infinite Icon, on iHeartRadio or wherever you stream music. Don't forget to visit InfiniteIcon.com to pre-save my album. Sponsored by 1111 Media.

In every pair of Tecova's boots, you can expect handmade quality, first-wear comfort, and timeless Western style. Tecova's boots are always made from premium bovine and exotic leathers, and with occasional re-solving, they will last a lifetime. The best way to shop for boots is at your local Tecova's store, where you'll be greeted by the smell of fresh leather and a friendly smile.

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All right. We're back with Promise on teaching you to whistle. It is very cute when you have a kid and they try to learn to whistle and think and claim that they are whistling when they are not. At least that was my case early on when Ruby was trying to learn how to whistle. She'd be like, Daddy, I can whistle. Oh, let's hear it.

and what can you say besides hey that sounds great keep keep at it um you weren't like exactly and she was like what is that that is not even a whistle dad uh but it does take some time to learn how to whistle some people never learn um but you can teach yourself um

What you're doing basically is creating your mouth becomes an instrument and becomes a chamber basically where you are passing air from one small opening from your lungs where the air comes from. Sure. Out of your puckered lips.

And you do that with a standard pucker whistle by placing your tongue. And you might not even realize at first I was like, wait a minute, the tongue's not on the roof of your mouth. But the tongue is absolutely at the roof of your mouth. The very back of your tongue is at the very back of the roof of your mouth. Yeah. Not the front of your tongue. The front of your tongue is pressed against the bottom row of teeth. Right.

And that's what you do. You just start blowing. You form that O shape with your mouth and just practice, practice, practice. Yeah, it's really neat. It's called the Helmholtz chamber that you're forming, which is a type of resonance chamber. And because you're forcing air through a lot from smaller holes into a larger hole back into a smaller hole and your tongue's there.

By moving your tongue, you can adjust like all sorts of weird currents that you're creating in the air pressure. And that creates the vibrations that make the sound, which is why when you move your tongue around, you change notes and pitch and timber and all sorts of crazy stuff.

And that's whistling. That's pucker whistling. That's what you're doing. I love it. I love that there's like an explanation that makes total sense. It's deeply satisfying to me. It would suck if we were like, we still don't know how we whistle. I think I would lose my mind if that were the case.

Yeah. And, you know, when we're saying things like moving your tongue around and the tongue is pressed against the top of your mouth, like if you don't know how to whistle and that's frustrating you and you're just moving your tongue all over the place, it's they're they're very, very subtle movements. Like I said, I didn't even realize my tongue was against the back of the roof of my mouth. I didn't either. Until I started whistling and I was like, oh, wait a minute, I guess it is.

And then the back of my tongue very subtly moving back and forth against the back of the roof of my mouth is what creates the different tones and pitches and warbles and what have you. So it's not, it's just all just very, very slight movements. You're going to frustrate yourself if you don't know how to whistle and you're trying just...

all these crazy things with your tongue in your mouth. Yeah, Chris Ullman, that champion professional whistler, he spoke with Vox and said, I'll give you four steps to whistling. First, form an O with the shape of your mouth.

Second, press the tip of your tongue to your teeth, usually the bottom row, the inside of the bottom row of your teeth. And then he said, blow gently. This is important. You want your air to be focused and constant, not necessarily hard. The harder you blow, it's actually, it makes it more difficult to whistle. So you just want to kind of blow concertedly, but not hard. And then lastly, you just keep practicing. And the way that he put it is you practice each one of those steps, um,

In secession. So you just keep forming an O over and over until you've got the mouth position going. Yeah. I feel good because my steps were exactly like the pros. Yeah. I guess you just intuitively knew how to whistle. You just taught yourself like that. Is that what you're saying? No, no, no. I'm saying the way I described it, how to do it was exactly like Chris Ullman did. Of course you did. And he's a pro. You're a pro podcaster. So should we talk a little bit about famous whistling techniques?

I think so. I mean, at the very least, we have to talk about To Have and Have Not. Yeah. I mean, take it away then. Okay. So there's an adaptation of a Hemingway novel, To Have and Have Not, with Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. And there's a very famous line where Bacall says, you know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.

And that's probably the most famous movie line about whistling ever uttered. Everybody knows that one. You might not know what movie it's from or who said it, but you've heard that line. Don't even kid yourself. The very famous Whistle While You Work from Stowe White and the Seven Dwarfs, of course. The Andy Griffith Show. I remember very distinctly when my brother, when I first visited him in Los Angeles in the early 90s, he

drove me up and up and around and finally i came upon through the the hollywood hills and i came upon this weird lake and i was like what is this and he just started whistling andy griffith and i was like no

He's like, yep, this is it. I knew it wasn't Mayberry, but I didn't know really anything about how movies were made at the time. Sure. So it was just surprising to see that, like, the Batcave is the Hollywood Hills and the Andy Griffith Lake is right there. Yeah, same with the hills in MASH, the hills of Korea. Yeah. There's a lot of songs, too. We got to name check a few of these songs that have whistling in them. Yes. There's Walk Like an Egyptian. It's a good one.

Precisely. Okay, yeah, demonstrate them all. Otis Redding's Dock of the Bay. My whistle is very dry right now. I'm not at my top form. Scorpion's Winds of Change. I can't think of that one. I know that song. What is it? Oh, that's right. Yeah, it's good.

There's also a bunch of others. Me and Julio down by the schoolyard. Don't worry, be happy. Maybe the iconic whistling song. That one sudden part where Axl Rose starts whistling in patience. Yeah, that was on my list. That's a great whistle. La La Love You, the Pixies song. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to see them next week. You're going to see the Pixies? Yeah. Where? They're playing Chastain with Modest Mouse.

Oh, neat. So is Kim Deal back with them yet or no? Oh, no, no, no. She's she's never coming back. Oh, OK. And not only that, they kicked out Paz, their their bass player that they've had for the past eight or nine years. Wow. We said Black Francis is going on a tear, huh? Yeah. I don't want to speak out of school about why that may or may not have happened, but it seems fairly disappointing from what I've heard. Wow. Wow. We know. But I'm still going.

Uh, uh, what else was there? Oh, Mariah Carey is a famous whistler. Well, I know you're kidding around there. Uh, Mariah Carey is, um, noted for singing and what's called the, the flute register or the whistle register, which is a vocal registers, the highest one.

in the vocal register, higher than falsetto even, that very, very few people can do. And they call it the whistle register or the flute register because those pitches can generally only be made by flutes and whistles rather than a singer like Mariah.

Once you hear it described as a whistle register and you hear those notes that she's hitting, you're like, oh my God, that sounds exactly like a whistle. It's like a perfect name for it. Yeah. But she's singing it. It's absurd. Yeah. And it should be essentially impossible what she's doing. She's not the only one. Minnie Riperton is another famous one who hit the whistle register. Yeah. The famous 70s soul songstress.

Well, those are the two that come to mind. But I'm just impressed to no end by that. What about, what's her name? Aguilera. Christina Aguilera? Yeah, yeah. She's got that whistle range. I've heard it. Does she really? Sure. Oh, okay. I think she's, there's a couple of younger artists. Actually, she's not one of the younger artists anymore either, really. No, we're pretty old, Chuck. Yeah. You mentioned those competitions. Yeah.

The big granddaddy of them all was shuttered, unfortunately, in 2014. It started in 1973. The Lewisburg or Louisburg, I don't know how they say it there in North Carolina. And it was a big one. And like I said, it shut down in 2014. And I believe it's now disbanded.

Just its own event. It was part of the Lewisburg College Folk Festival, and now it's the National Whistler's Convention. So it more morphed than shut down. Yeah. I think it just became so popular. People are like, we want this to be its own event. Yeah. Somehow, for some reason, in 2014, that was the last one. And that was the competition that's featured on Pucker Up, by the way, that National Whistler's Convention. I think it was international. That's right.

And then luckily, a aficionado named Caroline Kaufman, who said, hey, we're going to keep this going, created the Masters of Musical Whistling competition in Pasadena. I think starting in 2020. This year's an off year, but the website promises it's coming back in 2025. I love it. We should finish probably on some Guinness records because my friend, if we want to take the time and do a lot of paperwork,

we could very easily hold our own Guinness World Record. And I kind of think we should do it. What? Well, in 2014, there was a Guinness record for the most people whistling at the same time at a single venue. And it was a mere 853 people at the Spring Harvest in the United Kingdom. We could bust that record at one of our live shows very easily. Oh, yeah, we totally should. That's a great idea. We got to get that in the works, Chuck. Yeah, which means...

Who's going to do all the work? Because we talked about, oh, God, how much work it is. And most people give up because there's so much work to officially get a record, you know, verified. This feels like a Jerry job. Yeah, right. What are we going to get everybody to whistle? Oh, goodness. I mean, probably the Stuff You Should Know jingle theme.

Oh, that's a good idea. I was thinking winds would change and we would invite the scorpions to sing a cappella to the whistling. That's a good idea. We could just get up there and go, what were you doing? I think it was a Christmas carol. I don't know which one though. Wow. All right. Well, as long as no one does what you do, we'll be just fine. I thought we harmonized quite nicely. Oh, okay. Well, let's talk about some world records because yes, I agree. We should break that one and we'll ask Jerry to help us with that.

We could do that everywhere, but probably D.C. That's right. Or Atlanta. We'll get in Atlanta. Yeah, we'll see. So in 2004, this is insane. Okay.

No, this isn't insane. This is still pretty impressive. Marco Ferreira in 2004 and then Luca Zocchi in 2014, they hold the record for the world's loudest whistle. They each reached 125 decibels. Again, I don't remember what episode we were in, but that's like rock concert level decibels. I think it was our plane travel. That is amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

The one that really knocked my socks off, though, is the one that Joshua Lockard broke. Oh, the highest pitch? Yes, dude. I don't even know what that means. Okay, so he has the world record for the world's highest whistle in frequency, 10,599 hertz, which is almost 11 kilohertz, right?

go look up on YouTube, 11 kilohertz tone. And I played it and I had my volume up about halfway and it was just silent. And I was like, is this a prank? Is this a joke? Like somebody goes around and puts up like videos, like they're playing a tone, but then doesn't put any sound to it. And I turned it all the way up and only then could I hear it. It was that high pitched. It was almost above

like audible range of hearing. That's how high pitched it was. That guy did that with a whistle. It was, it's amazing. I didn't hear it, but just from knowing what that tone sounds like, I can't imagine a human being doing that. I'm playing it right. Oh, wait, turn it way up, but keep your wine glasses out of the room because they will shatter. I'm hearing nothing. Right. Turn it up. No, it's up all the way.

Okay. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like it's, it's, it's amazing. Like I finally did hear it. I can confirm. It's not just a prank. Oh wait, I got it. Oh my God. Somebody whistled like that. That's crazy. Yeah. We should just tell everybody we've been playing at this whole time just to prove our point. You can't hear it cause it's so high. Occasionally ever since Ruby was a kid, I'll be in the car here and there and I'll go, uh,

Everyone knows I can sing lower than any human. And then she'll try and sing lower, and then I'll go, and I can sing higher than any human. Oh, that's pretty high. She will always, but it's not singing, of course. And then she responds back thusly and is also not singing. Do any of you have the whistle register ability? No. No? No. And I feel bad that I really lamed out on whistling because I'm a pretty good whistle. I can do some good warbles and stuff. But, of course, under the gun, I'm all dry mouth, and it's just not happening.

Were you nervous? Yeah, that too. That's lovely. No, but I'm not even getting any warble. It's like a beautiful little lark flew into the room. As soon as we hit stop, I'll be whistling like a songbird. I guarantee it. I'm locking up right now. That last whistle was great. I've got one little fact to share. Okay.

So in one of the 1984 editions of the British Medical Journal, there was a case study about a patient who suffered a stroke. And as they were recovering, their only way to communicate, they couldn't talk. They had an elated mood, I saw it described as. So imagine a really happy person who could only whistle.

That's how the guy was communicating as he came back as he was recovering from his stroke. Isn't that amazing? I love that. Couldn't talk. He whistled. He wasn't whistling in words. He would just whistle as if he were communicating. That is really sweet. I thought so, too. What else? Anything else? I got nothing else. Well, then, everybody, that means, of course, it's time for Listener Mail. Hey, guys. This is a follow-up on Trash.com.

And a book plug. This seems just like a wonderful thing. Hey, guys, wanted to write in and give an extra big hat tip to your recent New York City trash episode. What joy that episode brought me. I live in New York City, and I have what one may say is an obsession with trash here. Wow. Started during COVID as I was locked down with my partner, who then lived on Roosevelt Island, and his apartment had views of the East River, the path of the container garbage barges from 91st Street Marine Transfer Station. Wow.

I watched them, made efforts to identify them, filmed them, and eventually it led to me writing a children's book about New York City trash. Awesome. It's so cool. Seeing the multitude of the garbage was jarring and all very fascinating. The book is about Gary, a city rat, and his adventures with Marge the Garbage Barge. It is definitely not a full capture of the city's garbage, but a story of one of its many routes. I now live in Brooklyn with my partner, so I no longer have regular views of the garbage barges.

Boo. But I still visit the river to look at them.

Needless to say, I love your other previous garbage-related episodes as well. And I want to say a general thank you for your show. I've been a listener since 2016. Learned so much from you across so many topics. And lastly, I'm greatly looking forward to your live show in New York at the end of the month. That is from Jessica Chang in Brooklyn, New York. And Jessica's book is Gary Meets Marge the Barge. That's awesome. Congratulations, Jessica. That's a great book idea. Yeah. I got to get that one.

So go buy it. Go to some independent bookseller of your choice or look it up online and support Jessica. And then, yeah, just walk in and say, I'll take one copy of Jerry Meets Marge the Barge, please. That's right. And they'll go...

Mm-hmm. Another one. If you want to be like Jessica and let us know about an awesome book you wrote, we would love to hear that. You can write about your book in an email and send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey everyone, the National Sales Event is on at your Toyota dealer, making now the perfect time to get a great deal on a dependable new truck like a rugged half-ton Tundra. Combining raw capability with premium comfort and advanced tech to fuel your wildest adventures. Or check out the fully redesigned Tacoma, delivering trail-dominating power and captivating style, the new Tacoma was born to make your off-roading dreams come true. Check out more National Sales Event deals when you visit

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