August 2, 2012 • 29 mins
From screaming infants to cinematic scream queens, there's no denying the universal language of yelling. But why do we do it? What are we communicating? In this episode, Julie and Robert explain how a little screaming can do you a world of good.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is scream Queen.
Julie Douglas. Are you Are you really a scream queen?
I'm not much of a screamer. I have to say,
(00:24):
when when was the last time you scream? Um? I
think it was out of frustration. And I know I
was alone, because I'm not like, hey, let's let's emote publicly.
That's not my thing. Yeah, the last it was just
a few days ago. I was I went outside, like
first thing in the morning, I shut off the alarm
(00:46):
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,
(01:07):
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
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:11):
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
(02:32):
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
(02:52):
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
(03:20):
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
(03:41):
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
(04:04):
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,
(04:24):
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
(04:45):
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.
(05:07):
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
(05:29):
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.
(05:53):
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
(06:16):
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
(06:38):
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
(06:59):
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
(07:21):
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
(07:43):
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
(08:07):
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
(08:28):
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
(08:48):
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
(09:10):
one of my favorites. This is Marylyn Burns as Sally
Hertessy in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre of the original. So
(09:33):
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
(09:54):
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,
(10:17):
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,
(10:40):
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,
(11:02):
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
(11:24):
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
(11:46):
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
(12:09):
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
(12:32):
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
(12:54):
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
(13:17):
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
(13:39):
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.
(14:02):
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
(14:22):
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
(14:42):
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
(15:03):
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.
(15:24):
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
(15:45):
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,
(16:08):
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
(16:29):
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
(16:51):
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
(17:15):
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
(17:37):
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
(17:58):
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
(18:19):
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
(18:42):
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,
(19:05):
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.
(19:25):
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
(19:48):
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
(20:09):
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
(20:31):
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,
(20:52):
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
(21:15):
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,
(21:36):
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.
(21:59):
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
(22:20):
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,
(22:41):
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.
(23:03):
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.
(23:26):
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
(23:47):
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
(24:10):
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,
(24:30):
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
(24:51):
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
(25:13):
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
(25:34):
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
(25:56):
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.
(26:17):
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
(26:37):
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.
(26:58):
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
(27:21):
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
(27:43):
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
(28:06):
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
(28:29):
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
(28:51):
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
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or share something, do reach out to us. You can
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Blow your Mind, and if you venture onto Twitter, our
handle is blow the Mind. Um. So, let let us
(29:14):
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
(29:34):
at discovery dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is It How Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb. My name is scream Queen.
Julie Douglas. Are you Are you really a scream queen?
I'm not much of a screamer. I have to say,
(00:24):
when when was the last time you scream? Um? I
think it was out of frustration. And I know I
was alone, because I'm not like, hey, let's let's emote publicly.
That's not my thing. Yeah, the last it was just
a few days ago. I was I went outside, like
first thing in the morning, I shut off the alarm
(00:46):
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,
(01:07):
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
(01:28):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:11):
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
(02:32):
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
(02:52):
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
(03:20):
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
(03:41):
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
(04:04):
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,
(04:24):
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
(04:45):
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.
(05:07):
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
(05:29):
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.
(05:53):
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
(06:16):
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
(06:38):
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
(06:59):
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
(07:21):
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
(07:43):
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
(08:07):
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
(08:28):
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
(08:48):
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
(09:10):
one of my favorites. This is Marylyn Burns as Sally
Hertessy in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre of the original. So
(09:33):
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
(09:54):
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,
(10:17):
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,
(10:40):
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,
(11:02):
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
(11:24):
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
(11:46):
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
(12:09):
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
(12:32):
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
(12:54):
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
(13:17):
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
(13:39):
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.
(14:02):
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
(14:22):
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
(14:42):
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
(15:03):
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.
(15:24):
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
(15:45):
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,
(16:08):
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
(16:29):
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
(16:51):
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
(17:15):
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
(17:37):
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
(17:58):
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
(18:19):
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
(18:42):
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,
(19:05):
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.
(19:25):
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
(19:48):
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
(20:09):
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
(20:31):
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,
(20:52):
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
(21:15):
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,
(21:36):
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.
(21:59):
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
(22:20):
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,
(22:41):
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.
(23:03):
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.
(23:26):
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
(23:47):
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
(24:10):
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,
(24:30):
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
(24:51):
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
(25:13):
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
(25:34):
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
(25:56):
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.
(26:17):
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
(26:37):
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.
(26:58):
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
(27:21):
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
(27:43):
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
(28:06):
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
(28:29):
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
(28:51):
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
(29:14):
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
(29:34):
at discovery dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is It How Stuff Works dot com
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