May 30, 2013 • 30 mins
Ventriloquism: The Science of Dummies: It's time to rediscover ventriloquism, the surprisingly deft art of illusion that relies on a keen sense of comic timing and obsessive technique from the performer, as well as a buy-in into the illusion from the audience member. Why do we fall for it? What's going on in the brain? All shall be explained in this episode of Stuff to Blow Your mind.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff with all your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what is your relationship with ventriloquism? How do you how
think you view ventriloquisms and their dummies, their act the
(00:23):
the art form of ventriloquism is kind of a subset
of the puppetry storytelling medium. Well, I love puppetry, as
you know, so I have a soft spot in my
heart for ventriloquists and the dummies and the puppets. Um.
I think it is a wonderful art form. However, I
do recognize that a lot of people think it's creepy,
(00:44):
uh for good reason, because you have this inanimate object
that you're bringing to life. Yeah, but then, of course
that's that's kind of all of puppetry. And granted you
have individuals who claim to be creeped out by all puppets,
which I find tends to be more of a like
a frailty of the imagination because you're you're cutting out
an entire storytelling medium that is that is, you know,
almost as old as humanity. I've we've been telling stories,
(01:08):
uh for so long, and a lot of the time
we've been using inanimate objects to tell them it's true. Um.
And actually this is really interesting. In ancient times, ventriloquists
were actually thought to be able to speak to the
dead and predict the future, and then the voices seemed
to come from their stomachs, and that was the thought
to be the voice of the dead. And this continues
(01:30):
today with the work of Jeff Dunham. That's right, that's right.
By the nineteenth century, ventriloquism became a form of entertainment
and then people started to use dummies, but before that
they were just throwing their voices. And in fact, in
some parts of the world, such among the tribes of
the Zulu, Inuit and Maori, ventriloquism is still used for
(01:51):
religious in ritual purposes. So there you go, just in
case you thought that ventriloquism was just a throwback to
you know, of this early twentieth century art form, the
creepy wooden doll head. No, it's been around for a
long time now, that the creepy wooden doll head, and
then the vaudevillian act of ventrol equism is probably what
still resonates with most people, and probably not so much
(02:14):
the actual acts. I think most people when you when
people think of ventriloquism, they're not even necessarily remembering any
kind of actual ventriloquistack that they've seen. And I've seen
some some good ones here and there. I don't actually
actively seek it out, but occasionally, yeah, and but occasionally,
in the course of of just going about your day life,
you're going to run into a ventriloqual stack. And and
(02:37):
some artists make go at being lively with it and
creative and doing something interesting. But over the years, of
course they they've also factored into a number of horror
films and uh and and creepy interpretations. A few that
come to mind. There was a nineteen sixty four film
called Devil Doll, which is probably most known today as
as having been used in an episode of Mystery Science
(02:58):
Theater three thousand. But it is even even with the
silhouetted figures at the bottom, with the with the mike
and the bots riffing on it and making fun of it,
it's like a legitimately creepy film. It's one of these
where it's where there's magic and there's a there's this
tug of war between ventrilo was Dummy and uh and
and puppet Master about who's in charge of who. And
(03:20):
it's one of those films where the film quality is
so poor, the acting is so weird that it almost
feels like some sort of a documentary. You almost get
this this feel feeling like you're peeking through a keyhole
and at something that's actually happened. And I find it
to be a really unsettling film, despite it being kind
of boring and and and despite always having seen it
(03:40):
with people making fun of it. You know why I
think that is because I think that even though there's
all sorts of misdirection and illusion used in ventriloquism, there
is a truth to it, meaning that there's a relationship
between this puppet and the master, which means to say
that that is a splintering of the ventriloquists personality. Yes,
(04:05):
it's just another version of them. Yeah. So a lot
of these these horror tales basically come down to this
idea that there is some deeper connection between between puppet
and puppet Master. You see that in the Dummy episode
from UM the Twilight Zone. You see it in Magic,
which started Anthony Hopkins to the Ventriloquist. Uh, you see
it in the Batman Villain the Ventriloquist, where it's the
(04:27):
ventriloquist dummy that's like a little mobster kind of character. Um.
Then there was an episode of Tales from the Crypt
that I strongly remember as well, called The Ventriloquists Dummy,
in which this character is played by Bobcat Goldway, who
is this up and coming ventrol aquist who wants to
get some tips from this older master played by Don Rickles.
And the big reveal here is that Don Rickles character
(04:50):
it's not really a ventriloquist dummy. It's like a parasitic
twin that's monsters little creature on the end of his
his hand. What which that just wears a mask? What
is the name of this film? This is the Ventriloquist Dummy.
And it was an episode of Tales from the Crypt
that has everything I love in it. And I think
I have mentioned before shamefully that I really really do
(05:12):
like Don Rickles. His his humor. Oh well, he's an
insult comic really yeah, yeah, And he's acting in this
he's he's actually really good in this, and Bobcat's fun
as well. It's it's one of those, uh, those episodes
of Tales from the Crypt that is at once like
Tales from the Crypt at its best and worst, depending
on exactly what you're expecting from that show. So anyway,
and then of course today we have Jeff done him,
(05:33):
which which I find kind of frightening and horrifying as well.
Um yeah, I mean he's incredibly popular, and the thing
is is that he's not incredibly popular because ventriloquism is
incredibly popular. He just uses it as a medium and
has been successful at it. But I really wanted to
bring up Nina Conti. She is a ventriloquist. She has
a documentary called Her Master's Voice. It is wonderful. We'll
(05:57):
talk a little bit more about that as we sort
of unrolled this podcast and the science behind ventriloquism. But
what I like about her act is that she she
can do the sort of straight up um insult comic
jokes visa be her her puppet Monk the Monkey. Yeah,
because that's the that's like low level ventriloquism humor, the idea,
(06:17):
it's not me. That's awful. It's this little guy. I
can't well what he just said. And that's the other thing.
They can really get away with saying a lot of
things that they normally wouldn't be able to and there's
a sort of power in that, right um. But she
also has a very serebral part of her act in
which she's sort of making a comment on the human condition,
and in one of her bits, she pretends as though
(06:40):
Monk has taken over her body and has possessed her,
and Monk is very cute just to see just we're
just just looking at a still image of in but
menacing and see that's the interesting thing is she really
does struggle with her relationship with this puppet and whether
or not she should continue with it. So it's it's interesting.
It's like something that she had gets a lot of
(07:00):
pleasure out of, but also at the same time doesn't
She feels completely nnacled to this as a profession. So
in that context you see her being possessed by Monk,
and there's some very dark undertones there that are expressed
and that we all sort of feel, you know, we're
tethered to something in our lives that we feel like, oh,
I can't escape it, well, you know, and it also
(07:21):
brings to mind some of the issues we talked about
in the episode we did about the Shadows self and
about uh and well we did the episode of two
about pro wrestling where we talked talking both of them
about what happens when we take on other personas in
one way or another, be it as part of an act,
if you're an actor, you know, a wrestling persona, or
(07:41):
you're going undercover as a as a as a vice agent, um,
all these these different roles we take on. What does
that do to us? What does what does what happens
to us when we sort of pour a portion of
our soul or our mind into this artificial creation and
and it sounds like this, uh, this, this uh, this
film explores some of that territory as well. Yeah, it
(08:02):
absolutely does. And it's funny that you brought that up
because I thought the same thing when I was watching
enough that this is a lot about um, you know,
what sort of personality you put out there. And then
this Monk character is really fulfilling aspect of her personality
because she says in the film, I feel kind of
bland as a person, but Monk feels makes me feel
as though I can express things that are hidden within me.
(08:24):
It falls in nicely with the because on one hand,
we have the more or less perceived reality of ventriloquism,
where it's that's somebody in a puppet saying a bunch
of awful stuff through it, and then we have this
fictional interpretation of it where it's like, oh, what if
there's something more significant it's taking place between puppet and
puppet master, And then the closer you look, you realize that, yes,
there is something more significant taking place In many cases. Yeah.
(08:48):
Another aspect of this film that gives it another level
of oddness is that um and I won't give it
all away, but basically she has been bequeathed six puppets
her ex lover, and these are bereaved puppets and she
has to do something with them, and uh, one of
them is based on her ex lover. It's it's the
(09:10):
face and um and she can't quite make his voice work,
and so it's weird because she's trying to sort of
like resurrecting him and her relationship with him through this puppet,
because in a way, these puppets were him. They were
all pieces of him that that he brought to life
with his own energy, and now he's gone, but these
puppets remain, and with certain extent she can reanimate them
(09:34):
and make them live again. But she also sort of
is burdened by these puppets, and one of them is
a grandmother puppet. And I won't go into it, but
there's a very creepy pool scene she takes the grandmother swimming.
It's very nice, right you think, Um, so yeah, it
does sort of uncover these these weird feelings that she
has about maybe that she's been burdened with this. Um.
(09:56):
But anyway, very interesting film. Let's get into the technical
aspects here of how ventriloquists fool our brains. Okay, well
this this is really interesting because it really comes into
the way that we interpret what we're seeing, the way
the way we the sense data enters our brain and
it's turned into conscious thought. Um. And this applies when
(10:18):
when you're when you're thinking of this, think of the
ventriloquist and the dummy, but also think of your television
set and it's speaker system, think of any kind of
puppetry or just the ability like I have a dinosaur
the stuff dinosaur on my desk. I can pick it
up and I can kind of talk and go, like,
got on with this podcast. It's going kind of along,
and you kind of buy into I buy into the
fact that he's talking even though I'm the one talking.
(10:39):
You know, just stop real quick. You just said something
that maybe you wouldn't normally say. Right, this is going
a little we're kind of going off the tracks here
again the power of the puppet. Maybe that's why he's here.
He's here to keep me on track. So he's looking
at you meaningfully. But the older idea was that we
have the five senses and is an actuality. There more
(11:01):
than five senses, but but the five primary senses are
entering our brain in a separate part of the brain
is dealing with each so side hearing, smell, touch, taste, uh,
the ideas. The old idea is that each part is
governed by its own corresponding region of the brain, but
not so. According to a two thousand seven Duke University
Medical Center study. So they were studying monkeys and they
(11:22):
found that auditory and visual information is processed together before
the combined signals make it into the brain's cortex, where
all the analytical stuff is going on. So, in other words,
the sound the ventriloquist voice, and the image the ventriloquist
with the moving mouth, and the and the mum mouthed puppeteer,
(11:44):
the audio and the visual combine before it reaches the
part of the mental factory where we have to make
conscious reason, reason thought out of it. Yeah, certainly in
instances where your brain sort of makes an assumption, right,
because you have the um, the inferior colliquelus, the tiny
round structure in their brain which is carrying visual and
(12:05):
auditory signals, bungling them all together. So if you're watching TV,
as you say, you're you're looking at the mouth and
thinking that the voice is emanating from the mouth speakers. Yeah,
and it's it's kind of it's handled in another department
before it reaches the uh, the really analytical portion. In fact,
according to the study they found it about six of
the neurons in the inferior colliculus can carry visual as
(12:27):
well as auditory signals. So again, visual and auditory information
gets combined early before the brain can process it in
the thought. Um, you know, it's like the brain is
where the smart guys hanging out but he has all
these underlings that are dealing with the actual sense data,
and so the sense data guys out there and he's like, yeah,
that's all this, uh, this little dummy made out of wood,
and he was totally talking what do you make of that?
(12:48):
And You're like, oh, okay, well what was he saying?
That's what I'm going to focus on, because I trust
you to tell me when there's a piece of wood
talking to me. You know, I was thinking about how
ventriloquous and UM magicians are so similar because they're both
relying on these little quick tricks to try to trick
your brain right, And I was thinking about the vanishing
(13:09):
coin trick, where you know, you see the coin in
one hand, you see it disappear, But really what's happening
is is this thing called persistence of vision. The audience
well actually see the coin in the left palm for
split second after the hands separate, for instance, And visual
neurons don't stop firing once you have a stimuli like
that UM, and it's no longer present. So our perception
(13:32):
of reality lags behind reality about one one of a second,
which is just enough for a magician to exploit. So again,
this same idea that the way that you're processing you know,
auditory and visual signals could be bungled up, and and
you know, puppeteer could take advantage of that same idea
(13:52):
magician and a coin trick. Yeah, I mean, I hate
to to in any way support the the idea that
the mind body can action. Idea of the of of
our brain is the is the rider on a horse.
But it's kind of like the brain is in this
dark box and uh, and then there's reality on the outside,
and we are given, as you say, a perception of
(14:13):
the reality. And and it is the fact that we're
dealing with the perception of the reality rather than the
reality that allows for a lot of these tricks to
take place. I don't even get me started about how
reality is just a three D computational model that we've
constructed these blueprints in our brain. We're not even really
paying attention. So much of what we're perceiving is an
illusion anyway. Um, but in our ability to to look
(14:35):
at a puppet and listen to a puppet and then
really feel like that that creature is alive, like in
a way, that's kind of a glitch in the system
that could not have possibly. I mean, it's just it
ends up becoming an artifact of our development. Well. And
then of course, uh, the ventriloquists also directs your attention
to the dummy, so that takes the attention away from
their mouth or from seeing their vocal courts moving right. Um,
(14:57):
And they are not, as we have learned, ruaring their
voice at all. They're adjusting the volume. Uh, but they are.
They are again just sort of adding to this idea
that that's actually the puppet talking. Your brain knows puppets
not talking, and yet it sort of accepts that. And
plus we're going to buy into it because we want to.
I mean, if you're going to a ventriloquist or a
puppet show because you don't want to believe, then you're
(15:20):
in the wrong. Uh, You're you're in the wrong place
for your entertainment. It's true. And but even if you
don't want to believe it, you end up to at
least the subject matter. Right. Another thing that ventriloquists do
to sort of perfect the art form is to make
substitutions with certain letters. Because certain letters like B, F, M, P,
(15:44):
the plosive P, V and W all rely on moving
your lips. They're called labial sounds. So what you have
to do, is a ventriloquist, is to then substitute other
letters or sounds that don't rely on you moving your
lips around. So something like an M you can substitute
with the end, which is more like an. It makes
(16:06):
more sense when you're the ventriloquist doing it. Um. So
if I say, hikin, guy, guy, I'm really using an
N in there, right Yeah. If I really listened closely
to it, you're saying Donny okay, joy Johnny right um,
so much creepier in person. By the way, well look
(16:27):
for the video because you do. We have a video
on the web Science on the Web episode coming up
that explores some of this ventral equism stuff. Then you'll
get to actually see clips of examples of it, and
you'll get to see Julie's fabulous parlor trick that she does.
Oh you've got a nice one to them, I do.
Oh yeah, well that one involved a little bit of
an additional cinematic magic, but still it's a wonderful ventriloquist voice.
(16:50):
Kids love it, though, like they're at a certain age.
I enjoy um pleating the two dots on my my
hand and doing the hand puppet. The senior wins. This
type guy. I tend to not have him talk though.
I just have him chew and kind of like look
at the kid and then eat things like, you know,
whatever is around, actual food if possible. And then also
I have him turned into a crab and crawl around
(17:13):
on the table. That's always fun. Do you ever have
him dipping tobacco? No, we can't really dip tobacco. He's
kind of just all he can do is crawl around
on the table like a crab and then ball back
up into a talking fist. But kids at a certain
age love it. So all right, well, let's take a
quick break, and we are going to talk about an
extreme example of this technique of letter substitution and muscle
(17:38):
control of a mismatch between your face and your lips.
Really amazing stuff. But let's take a quick break and
we'll be right back. All right, we're back. We're talking
about Vince Trilloquism. We've spoken about the creepies side of
(18:00):
ventriloquis stomach the will, the fictional creepy side, and then
the arguably creepy real life complications that occur when we
breathe life into an unmoving object. It's true. And um,
you know, we didn't really mention the etymology of the
word ventriloquist, but it comes from the Latin words ventire
stomach belliar womb. That's what that means, and low key
(18:22):
to speak, so it means to speak from the stomach.
But it's not necessarily the stomach here that that is
the key. It is really the ventriloquist brain and specifically
this act of bifurcation, of course, bifurcation meaning to split.
In the documentary Kevin Johnson A Wonderful, Wonderful Ventriloquist explains
(18:43):
how uh you have to take command of your facial muscles,
and he says that the ability to form words with
your tongue and then restrain the muscles that correspond with
the sound necessitates that the performer bifurcate their attention. So,
in other words, the thinking really really hard about what
they're saying. But at the same time they're trying to
(19:04):
rain in the muscles around their their mouth that naturally
want to move to the rhythm of speech. Of course,
and then sometimes they have to do something completely contrary
to what they're saying, right, they have to plaster this
expression on their face. That's the opposite of the emotions
that are being performed, because it really is like performing
yourself yourself and then a version of yourself at the
(19:26):
same time. And you might even be drinking water. That's
a favorite trick of course, Yeah, drinking water. Um. He
also has a beautiful opera voice is pretty amazing. Um.
He gives an extreme example of this by talking to
the camera and miss Matt purposely mismatching his mouth's movements
to the words that are coming out. So it's probably
(19:47):
one of the weird It looks like like the video
and the audio have become out of sync, but he's
creating the effect just completely organically by moving moving his
lips at one speech and then speaking at another. It's
it's amazing. Yeah, it's like there's a five second delay
on it. And he did say to Nina Conti like,
I can't look at you while I'm doing this because
(20:08):
it takes so much concentration to try to pull this
trick off on myself essentially. Um. But another expert that
she interviewed that I thought gave a great example of
how puppeteers are creating a solution. Is Nacho Estrata best
name ever by the way, Um he's a distant voice expert,
(20:31):
and he was showing Nina Conto how throwing your voice
is really just a matter again of misdirection and then
controlling that volume of the voice as well as the direction,
so you can sort of speak in a direction to do,
you know, trick the ear. Um. But I wanted to
play this clip for for you guys out there because
although you can't see it, you can hear the differences
of when he's quote unquote throwing his voice. So let's
(20:55):
check it out. As he uh describes someone being I
believe they are stuck in a cup a teacup, they
say through your voice. But I'm fooling your hearing. So
I can do something like I throw my voice in here,
but I'm not really throwing. It's a misdirection. So I said, hello,
say so it things like it's nothing in there. But
(21:21):
I'm just fully I'm using this to show you different
you're directing your attention here. Yeah, I love that dead
It's just you kind of have to see the video
to get the full effect because he's doing the whole
thing where he's putting it into the cup, and then
he's covering the cup up and it's just kind of
this kind of juggling of this sound and the and
I feel like his his you know, his hand movements
are important as well, because he's in the same way
(21:41):
that the addician says, hah, the coin is here, because
that's how I am moving my hand. He's doing the
same thing with this voice that he has taken out
like it's a physical object and put it into another object.
And what I like about this is I feel like
he has elevated the art form of ventriloquism to such
a height that he really is able to manipulate eight
uh the voice so well that it does really appear like, hey,
(22:04):
that voice is stuck in his his cup, which which
is not even a cup, but his hand representing a cup.
And it's such a well done like throwing your voice,
when it's actually done by someone who knows how to
do it, it's such a convincing act that that everyone's
interpretation of the act uh is completely wrong. Um. Basically,
when you encounter people throwing their voice in cartoons or
(22:26):
or you know, comedy shows, or or even in movies,
such as when a stranger calls back a horrible psychological
thriller in which the killer um perpetrates his crimes by
sneaking into people's homes. Uh, look like I guess early
in the morning or something, then stripping down and painting
himself so that he resembles a complex brick wall or
(22:49):
something like. It's not it's never as simple as I
look like the white wall now and I was standing
as a white wall. It's always something really elaborate that
there's no possible way he could have painted himself to
look like that does. Then he'll stand they're unseen and
throw his voice around so that it sounds like he's
elsewhere in the room. But of course it's just completely stupid,
because part of the the whole idea is that is
that you need to see the person who's throwing the
(23:11):
voice like that's an essential part of that direct it
somewhere so in reality, not just I can make it
seem like the corner is talking, and you know it's
just in reality you'd be like wise the dude who's
painted up sitting there talking to right right. But I
feel like it's all because the act is so convincing
and and the magic of it is is literally less
(23:31):
understood than other forms of puppetry and uh and and
voice manipulation, that we even though we know it's a trick,
we still don't really understand what's happening well. And one
of the things about that the tricks that are pulled
up is that it takes a ton of practice, years
and years of this to get really good at it.
And of course that means that this inanimate object that
you work with, you you really do begin to deepen
(23:55):
that relationship because it is sort of a therapeutic aspect. Right,
continue to talk to this puppet, you say things to
yourself that you normally wouldn't say. Right, you have a
fairly deep relationship with it. At least this seems to
be the case, um with what Nina Conti presented when
she interviewed the ventriloquists and so puppet master are pretty
(24:18):
wound together. So what happens when a ventriloquist passes away, Well,
that is a bereaved puppet, and it has to find
a home, and it does in the form of the
event Haven Museum, Okay, which will take bereave puppets in
Fort Mental Kentucky. It is the world's only public collection
of materials related to ventriloquism. There are seven hundred ventriloquist
(24:43):
dummies arranged in three buildings, some sitting in rows as
if waiting for a class to begin. That's a place
that I want to be in by myself. For the
most have been hours in that room by myself. Um.
There's some really unusual creations, including a head carved by
German prisoner in the be At Pow camp from World
War Two. Um. The vent performed for fellow prisoners as well,
(25:05):
is for the cook to get extra food. So there's
a lot of history that goes into this museum. It's
not just you know that the puppets are sitting, they're
gathering dust. But more importantly, vent Haven actually hosts a
convention every year where four hundred and fifty ventriloquists converge
on Fort Mitchell's restaurant. Scenes You're really talking nine hundred
(25:25):
at least participants. Though that's true, that was insensitive of me.
I just kept thinking about the town, like you know
that all the restaurants are probably, oh boy, pretty soon
the restaurants are gonna be filled up with people sitting
at their table talking to their puppets. Yeah, because I
understand that this convention, like other puppetry conventions, you have
people there with their puppet, and they're often they're communicating
(25:48):
with their puppet. They're communicating with other people via their puppet. Um,
like the link between puppet and puppet, puppeteer and puppet
becomes such that that it's just part of communication when
at least when you're in group. Well, you probably won't
be surprised to find out that most people who practice
ventral looquism or introverts and speak through their puppets. So um,
(26:11):
without the puppet, I think it's it's a lot harder
to communicate. So it's sort of it's odd because you
have false extroverts milling around in the in the crowd,
or maybe not false at that moment. All right, So
I think we've covered it pretty well. But Robert, I
wanted to know from you, if you were forced to
get a ventriloquist dummy, what would yours be? Oh? Well,
(26:34):
well I would I would not want to go with
the you know, traditional ventriloquist dummy, that's for sure. I
would want, you know, something the one that the bow
Tai one. That's the one I always think of, the
more traditional one with the dork hare. I don't know,
does anyone have a mommy ventrolus dummy ventrol aquist mummy?
Is it were? That would be a lot of fun.
Oh you could. There's so many mummy mommy jokes there.
(26:55):
I'm not sure what I oh, I know what I
would do. Okay, So this would be the whole get up.
The idea is that a Victorian explorer happened to just
you know, you know, during the tomb plundering period of
of colonalism. Um. He's he discovers this tomb and breaks
open the sarcophagus, but then the mummy overpowers him, which
(27:16):
is places with him and then locks him in. So
then the so the the actual mummy uh runs off
and you know and is still alive enjoying a wonderful
life in uh in England, while um, the Victorian gentleman
is is trapped in the sarcophagus for another hundred years.
And so my puppet would be essentially a British Victorian
(27:37):
mummy who would talk, So we'd be talking in a
you know, a nice British accent, but he would be
a mummy. That's fine. I think first of all, I
really want you to do this. Second of all, did
you just think about off the top of your head? Yes,
but but largely it was it came to be because
I was thinking, Mommy, Evnentrokas puppet would be great. But
I don't know what an ancient Egyptian accident would consist of.
(27:59):
But I love British accents, so that's what I would do.
You've got it all figured out. You've got to do this.
We know this, right, yeah? Okay? Uh. The other thing,
you know, I don't think we mentioned this, but comic
timing is incredibly important to this um to ventriloquism because
you can be a master at the voices, um you still,
but you still need to pick and make people laugh. Yeah,
(28:20):
because otherwise it's just sort of like, oh that's interesting. Yeah.
You gotta know your audience. You gotta taylor your act.
You're honest. We okay, well how about you. You. Let's
say you had your dream ventral equist to me, what
would your act be? I don't know. I mean an
animal comes to mind, um, and I think just a
foul mouthed one. I'm going to have to say. I mean,
(28:40):
I don't think that comes as a surprise probably one
that's interested in schatology. This is not an act I
think anybody wants to see. Maybe maybe you'll go with
some sort of extreme prehistoric mammal, which is going to
be the topic of a couple of upcoming episodes. Maybe
there's something in there, I think, so, yeah, all right,
perhaps it will mammoth. All right, Well, there you have it,
(29:04):
Ventriloquist Dummies explained. Hopefully everyone has a little more a
little more respect for the art form and a little
a little more of an understanding about what's going on
when someone is when you're watching a puppeteer use a
puppet and buying into the act, what's happening when somebody
is actually throwing their voice? Um, how we're all brain roubes.
(29:24):
Really yeah, essentially, and you know, the the puppetries is awesome,
but it just kind of a glitch in our our
perceptions of reality. So if you have something you would
like to share about this, I'm sure we have some
puppeteers out there as we're listening to the show. If
you are a puppeteer, if you are a ventriloquist, if
you can throw your voice any of these things, or
if you just really appreciate the art form or are
(29:45):
terrified of the art form. Really, whatever your thoughts are,
we'd love to hear about them. You can find us
online as always at the Mothership stuff to Blow Your
Mind dot com, but you can also find us on
Facebook and tumbler. We are stuff to Blow your Mind
on both of those. You can find us on Twitter,
where our handle is blow the Mind, and on YouTube
we are Mind Stuff Show, and you can always drop
(30:07):
us a line at below the Mind at Discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff with all your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
what is your relationship with ventriloquism? How do you how
think you view ventriloquisms and their dummies, their act the
(00:23):
the art form of ventriloquism is kind of a subset
of the puppetry storytelling medium. Well, I love puppetry, as
you know, so I have a soft spot in my
heart for ventriloquists and the dummies and the puppets. Um.
I think it is a wonderful art form. However, I
do recognize that a lot of people think it's creepy,
(00:44):
uh for good reason, because you have this inanimate object
that you're bringing to life. Yeah, but then, of course
that's that's kind of all of puppetry. And granted you
have individuals who claim to be creeped out by all puppets,
which I find tends to be more of a like
a frailty of the imagination because you're you're cutting out
an entire storytelling medium that is that is, you know,
almost as old as humanity. I've we've been telling stories,
(01:08):
uh for so long, and a lot of the time
we've been using inanimate objects to tell them it's true. Um.
And actually this is really interesting. In ancient times, ventriloquists
were actually thought to be able to speak to the
dead and predict the future, and then the voices seemed
to come from their stomachs, and that was the thought
to be the voice of the dead. And this continues
(01:30):
today with the work of Jeff Dunham. That's right, that's right.
By the nineteenth century, ventriloquism became a form of entertainment
and then people started to use dummies, but before that
they were just throwing their voices. And in fact, in
some parts of the world, such among the tribes of
the Zulu, Inuit and Maori, ventriloquism is still used for
(01:51):
religious in ritual purposes. So there you go, just in
case you thought that ventriloquism was just a throwback to
you know, of this early twentieth century art form, the
creepy wooden doll head. No, it's been around for a
long time now, that the creepy wooden doll head, and
then the vaudevillian act of ventrol equism is probably what
still resonates with most people, and probably not so much
(02:14):
the actual acts. I think most people when you when
people think of ventriloquism, they're not even necessarily remembering any
kind of actual ventriloquistack that they've seen. And I've seen
some some good ones here and there. I don't actually
actively seek it out, but occasionally, yeah, and but occasionally,
in the course of of just going about your day life,
you're going to run into a ventriloqual stack. And and
(02:37):
some artists make go at being lively with it and
creative and doing something interesting. But over the years, of
course they they've also factored into a number of horror
films and uh and and creepy interpretations. A few that
come to mind. There was a nineteen sixty four film
called Devil Doll, which is probably most known today as
as having been used in an episode of Mystery Science
(02:58):
Theater three thousand. But it is even even with the
silhouetted figures at the bottom, with the with the mike
and the bots riffing on it and making fun of it,
it's like a legitimately creepy film. It's one of these
where it's where there's magic and there's a there's this
tug of war between ventrilo was Dummy and uh and
and puppet Master about who's in charge of who. And
(03:20):
it's one of those films where the film quality is
so poor, the acting is so weird that it almost
feels like some sort of a documentary. You almost get
this this feel feeling like you're peeking through a keyhole
and at something that's actually happened. And I find it
to be a really unsettling film, despite it being kind
of boring and and and despite always having seen it
(03:40):
with people making fun of it. You know why I
think that is because I think that even though there's
all sorts of misdirection and illusion used in ventriloquism, there
is a truth to it, meaning that there's a relationship
between this puppet and the master, which means to say
that that is a splintering of the ventriloquists personality. Yes,
(04:05):
it's just another version of them. Yeah. So a lot
of these these horror tales basically come down to this
idea that there is some deeper connection between between puppet
and puppet Master. You see that in the Dummy episode
from UM the Twilight Zone. You see it in Magic,
which started Anthony Hopkins to the Ventriloquist. Uh, you see
it in the Batman Villain the Ventriloquist, where it's the
(04:27):
ventriloquist dummy that's like a little mobster kind of character. Um.
Then there was an episode of Tales from the Crypt
that I strongly remember as well, called The Ventriloquists Dummy,
in which this character is played by Bobcat Goldway, who
is this up and coming ventrol aquist who wants to
get some tips from this older master played by Don Rickles.
And the big reveal here is that Don Rickles character
(04:50):
it's not really a ventriloquist dummy. It's like a parasitic
twin that's monsters little creature on the end of his
his hand. What which that just wears a mask? What
is the name of this film? This is the Ventriloquist Dummy.
And it was an episode of Tales from the Crypt
that has everything I love in it. And I think
I have mentioned before shamefully that I really really do
(05:12):
like Don Rickles. His his humor. Oh well, he's an
insult comic really yeah, yeah, And he's acting in this
he's he's actually really good in this, and Bobcat's fun
as well. It's it's one of those, uh, those episodes
of Tales from the Crypt that is at once like
Tales from the Crypt at its best and worst, depending
on exactly what you're expecting from that show. So anyway,
and then of course today we have Jeff done him,
(05:33):
which which I find kind of frightening and horrifying as well.
Um yeah, I mean he's incredibly popular, and the thing
is is that he's not incredibly popular because ventriloquism is
incredibly popular. He just uses it as a medium and
has been successful at it. But I really wanted to
bring up Nina Conti. She is a ventriloquist. She has
a documentary called Her Master's Voice. It is wonderful. We'll
(05:57):
talk a little bit more about that as we sort
of unrolled this podcast and the science behind ventriloquism. But
what I like about her act is that she she
can do the sort of straight up um insult comic
jokes visa be her her puppet Monk the Monkey. Yeah,
because that's the that's like low level ventriloquism humor, the idea,
(06:17):
it's not me. That's awful. It's this little guy. I
can't well what he just said. And that's the other thing.
They can really get away with saying a lot of
things that they normally wouldn't be able to and there's
a sort of power in that, right um. But she
also has a very serebral part of her act in
which she's sort of making a comment on the human condition,
and in one of her bits, she pretends as though
(06:40):
Monk has taken over her body and has possessed her,
and Monk is very cute just to see just we're
just just looking at a still image of in but
menacing and see that's the interesting thing is she really
does struggle with her relationship with this puppet and whether
or not she should continue with it. So it's it's interesting.
It's like something that she had gets a lot of
(07:00):
pleasure out of, but also at the same time doesn't
She feels completely nnacled to this as a profession. So
in that context you see her being possessed by Monk,
and there's some very dark undertones there that are expressed
and that we all sort of feel, you know, we're
tethered to something in our lives that we feel like, oh,
I can't escape it, well, you know, and it also
(07:21):
brings to mind some of the issues we talked about
in the episode we did about the Shadows self and
about uh and well we did the episode of two
about pro wrestling where we talked talking both of them
about what happens when we take on other personas in
one way or another, be it as part of an act,
if you're an actor, you know, a wrestling persona, or
(07:41):
you're going undercover as a as a as a vice agent, um,
all these these different roles we take on. What does
that do to us? What does what does what happens
to us when we sort of pour a portion of
our soul or our mind into this artificial creation and
and it sounds like this, uh, this, this uh, this
film explores some of that territory as well. Yeah, it
(08:02):
absolutely does. And it's funny that you brought that up
because I thought the same thing when I was watching
enough that this is a lot about um, you know,
what sort of personality you put out there. And then
this Monk character is really fulfilling aspect of her personality
because she says in the film, I feel kind of
bland as a person, but Monk feels makes me feel
as though I can express things that are hidden within me.
(08:24):
It falls in nicely with the because on one hand,
we have the more or less perceived reality of ventriloquism,
where it's that's somebody in a puppet saying a bunch
of awful stuff through it, and then we have this
fictional interpretation of it where it's like, oh, what if
there's something more significant it's taking place between puppet and
puppet master, And then the closer you look, you realize that, yes,
there is something more significant taking place In many cases. Yeah.
(08:48):
Another aspect of this film that gives it another level
of oddness is that um and I won't give it
all away, but basically she has been bequeathed six puppets
her ex lover, and these are bereaved puppets and she
has to do something with them, and uh, one of
them is based on her ex lover. It's it's the
(09:10):
face and um and she can't quite make his voice work,
and so it's weird because she's trying to sort of
like resurrecting him and her relationship with him through this puppet,
because in a way, these puppets were him. They were
all pieces of him that that he brought to life
with his own energy, and now he's gone, but these
puppets remain, and with certain extent she can reanimate them
(09:34):
and make them live again. But she also sort of
is burdened by these puppets, and one of them is
a grandmother puppet. And I won't go into it, but
there's a very creepy pool scene she takes the grandmother swimming.
It's very nice, right you think, Um, so yeah, it
does sort of uncover these these weird feelings that she
has about maybe that she's been burdened with this. Um.
(09:56):
But anyway, very interesting film. Let's get into the technical
aspects here of how ventriloquists fool our brains. Okay, well
this this is really interesting because it really comes into
the way that we interpret what we're seeing, the way
the way we the sense data enters our brain and
it's turned into conscious thought. Um. And this applies when
(10:18):
when you're when you're thinking of this, think of the
ventriloquist and the dummy, but also think of your television
set and it's speaker system, think of any kind of
puppetry or just the ability like I have a dinosaur
the stuff dinosaur on my desk. I can pick it
up and I can kind of talk and go, like,
got on with this podcast. It's going kind of along,
and you kind of buy into I buy into the
fact that he's talking even though I'm the one talking.
(10:39):
You know, just stop real quick. You just said something
that maybe you wouldn't normally say. Right, this is going
a little we're kind of going off the tracks here
again the power of the puppet. Maybe that's why he's here.
He's here to keep me on track. So he's looking
at you meaningfully. But the older idea was that we
have the five senses and is an actuality. There more
(11:01):
than five senses, but but the five primary senses are
entering our brain in a separate part of the brain
is dealing with each so side hearing, smell, touch, taste, uh,
the ideas. The old idea is that each part is
governed by its own corresponding region of the brain, but
not so. According to a two thousand seven Duke University
Medical Center study. So they were studying monkeys and they
(11:22):
found that auditory and visual information is processed together before
the combined signals make it into the brain's cortex, where
all the analytical stuff is going on. So, in other words,
the sound the ventriloquist voice, and the image the ventriloquist
with the moving mouth, and the and the mum mouthed puppeteer,
(11:44):
the audio and the visual combine before it reaches the
part of the mental factory where we have to make
conscious reason, reason thought out of it. Yeah, certainly in
instances where your brain sort of makes an assumption, right,
because you have the um, the inferior colliquelus, the tiny
round structure in their brain which is carrying visual and
(12:05):
auditory signals, bungling them all together. So if you're watching TV,
as you say, you're you're looking at the mouth and
thinking that the voice is emanating from the mouth speakers. Yeah,
and it's it's kind of it's handled in another department
before it reaches the uh, the really analytical portion. In fact,
according to the study they found it about six of
the neurons in the inferior colliculus can carry visual as
(12:27):
well as auditory signals. So again, visual and auditory information
gets combined early before the brain can process it in
the thought. Um, you know, it's like the brain is
where the smart guys hanging out but he has all
these underlings that are dealing with the actual sense data,
and so the sense data guys out there and he's like, yeah,
that's all this, uh, this little dummy made out of wood,
and he was totally talking what do you make of that?
(12:48):
And You're like, oh, okay, well what was he saying?
That's what I'm going to focus on, because I trust
you to tell me when there's a piece of wood
talking to me. You know, I was thinking about how
ventriloquous and UM magicians are so similar because they're both
relying on these little quick tricks to try to trick
your brain right, And I was thinking about the vanishing
(13:09):
coin trick, where you know, you see the coin in
one hand, you see it disappear, But really what's happening
is is this thing called persistence of vision. The audience
well actually see the coin in the left palm for
split second after the hands separate, for instance, And visual
neurons don't stop firing once you have a stimuli like
that UM, and it's no longer present. So our perception
(13:32):
of reality lags behind reality about one one of a second,
which is just enough for a magician to exploit. So again,
this same idea that the way that you're processing you know,
auditory and visual signals could be bungled up, and and
you know, puppeteer could take advantage of that same idea
(13:52):
magician and a coin trick. Yeah, I mean, I hate
to to in any way support the the idea that
the mind body can action. Idea of the of of
our brain is the is the rider on a horse.
But it's kind of like the brain is in this
dark box and uh, and then there's reality on the outside,
and we are given, as you say, a perception of
(14:13):
the reality. And and it is the fact that we're
dealing with the perception of the reality rather than the
reality that allows for a lot of these tricks to
take place. I don't even get me started about how
reality is just a three D computational model that we've
constructed these blueprints in our brain. We're not even really
paying attention. So much of what we're perceiving is an
illusion anyway. Um, but in our ability to to look
(14:35):
at a puppet and listen to a puppet and then
really feel like that that creature is alive, like in
a way, that's kind of a glitch in the system
that could not have possibly. I mean, it's just it
ends up becoming an artifact of our development. Well. And
then of course, uh, the ventriloquists also directs your attention
to the dummy, so that takes the attention away from
their mouth or from seeing their vocal courts moving right. Um,
(14:57):
And they are not, as we have learned, ruaring their
voice at all. They're adjusting the volume. Uh, but they are.
They are again just sort of adding to this idea
that that's actually the puppet talking. Your brain knows puppets
not talking, and yet it sort of accepts that. And
plus we're going to buy into it because we want to.
I mean, if you're going to a ventriloquist or a
puppet show because you don't want to believe, then you're
(15:20):
in the wrong. Uh, You're you're in the wrong place
for your entertainment. It's true. And but even if you
don't want to believe it, you end up to at
least the subject matter. Right. Another thing that ventriloquists do
to sort of perfect the art form is to make
substitutions with certain letters. Because certain letters like B, F, M, P,
(15:44):
the plosive P, V and W all rely on moving
your lips. They're called labial sounds. So what you have
to do, is a ventriloquist, is to then substitute other
letters or sounds that don't rely on you moving your
lips around. So something like an M you can substitute
with the end, which is more like an. It makes
(16:06):
more sense when you're the ventriloquist doing it. Um. So
if I say, hikin, guy, guy, I'm really using an
N in there, right Yeah. If I really listened closely
to it, you're saying Donny okay, joy Johnny right um,
so much creepier in person. By the way, well look
(16:27):
for the video because you do. We have a video
on the web Science on the Web episode coming up
that explores some of this ventral equism stuff. Then you'll
get to actually see clips of examples of it, and
you'll get to see Julie's fabulous parlor trick that she does.
Oh you've got a nice one to them, I do.
Oh yeah, well that one involved a little bit of
an additional cinematic magic, but still it's a wonderful ventriloquist voice.
(16:50):
Kids love it, though, like they're at a certain age.
I enjoy um pleating the two dots on my my
hand and doing the hand puppet. The senior wins. This
type guy. I tend to not have him talk though.
I just have him chew and kind of like look
at the kid and then eat things like, you know,
whatever is around, actual food if possible. And then also
I have him turned into a crab and crawl around
(17:13):
on the table. That's always fun. Do you ever have
him dipping tobacco? No, we can't really dip tobacco. He's
kind of just all he can do is crawl around
on the table like a crab and then ball back
up into a talking fist. But kids at a certain
age love it. So all right, well, let's take a
quick break, and we are going to talk about an
extreme example of this technique of letter substitution and muscle
(17:38):
control of a mismatch between your face and your lips.
Really amazing stuff. But let's take a quick break and
we'll be right back. All right, we're back. We're talking
about Vince Trilloquism. We've spoken about the creepies side of
(18:00):
ventriloquis stomach the will, the fictional creepy side, and then
the arguably creepy real life complications that occur when we
breathe life into an unmoving object. It's true. And um,
you know, we didn't really mention the etymology of the
word ventriloquist, but it comes from the Latin words ventire
stomach belliar womb. That's what that means, and low key
(18:22):
to speak, so it means to speak from the stomach.
But it's not necessarily the stomach here that that is
the key. It is really the ventriloquist brain and specifically
this act of bifurcation, of course, bifurcation meaning to split.
In the documentary Kevin Johnson A Wonderful, Wonderful Ventriloquist explains
(18:43):
how uh you have to take command of your facial muscles,
and he says that the ability to form words with
your tongue and then restrain the muscles that correspond with
the sound necessitates that the performer bifurcate their attention. So,
in other words, the thinking really really hard about what
they're saying. But at the same time they're trying to
(19:04):
rain in the muscles around their their mouth that naturally
want to move to the rhythm of speech. Of course,
and then sometimes they have to do something completely contrary
to what they're saying, right, they have to plaster this
expression on their face. That's the opposite of the emotions
that are being performed, because it really is like performing
yourself yourself and then a version of yourself at the
(19:26):
same time. And you might even be drinking water. That's
a favorite trick of course, Yeah, drinking water. Um. He
also has a beautiful opera voice is pretty amazing. Um.
He gives an extreme example of this by talking to
the camera and miss Matt purposely mismatching his mouth's movements
to the words that are coming out. So it's probably
(19:47):
one of the weird It looks like like the video
and the audio have become out of sync, but he's
creating the effect just completely organically by moving moving his
lips at one speech and then speaking at another. It's
it's amazing. Yeah, it's like there's a five second delay
on it. And he did say to Nina Conti like,
I can't look at you while I'm doing this because
(20:08):
it takes so much concentration to try to pull this
trick off on myself essentially. Um. But another expert that
she interviewed that I thought gave a great example of
how puppeteers are creating a solution. Is Nacho Estrata best
name ever by the way, Um he's a distant voice expert,
(20:31):
and he was showing Nina Conto how throwing your voice
is really just a matter again of misdirection and then
controlling that volume of the voice as well as the direction,
so you can sort of speak in a direction to do,
you know, trick the ear. Um. But I wanted to
play this clip for for you guys out there because
although you can't see it, you can hear the differences
of when he's quote unquote throwing his voice. So let's
(20:55):
check it out. As he uh describes someone being I
believe they are stuck in a cup a teacup, they
say through your voice. But I'm fooling your hearing. So
I can do something like I throw my voice in here,
but I'm not really throwing. It's a misdirection. So I said, hello,
say so it things like it's nothing in there. But
(21:21):
I'm just fully I'm using this to show you different
you're directing your attention here. Yeah, I love that dead
It's just you kind of have to see the video
to get the full effect because he's doing the whole
thing where he's putting it into the cup, and then
he's covering the cup up and it's just kind of
this kind of juggling of this sound and the and
I feel like his his you know, his hand movements
are important as well, because he's in the same way
(21:41):
that the addician says, hah, the coin is here, because
that's how I am moving my hand. He's doing the
same thing with this voice that he has taken out
like it's a physical object and put it into another object.
And what I like about this is I feel like
he has elevated the art form of ventriloquism to such
a height that he really is able to manipulate eight
uh the voice so well that it does really appear like, hey,
(22:04):
that voice is stuck in his his cup, which which
is not even a cup, but his hand representing a cup.
And it's such a well done like throwing your voice,
when it's actually done by someone who knows how to
do it, it's such a convincing act that that everyone's
interpretation of the act uh is completely wrong. Um. Basically,
when you encounter people throwing their voice in cartoons or
(22:26):
or you know, comedy shows, or or even in movies,
such as when a stranger calls back a horrible psychological
thriller in which the killer um perpetrates his crimes by
sneaking into people's homes. Uh, look like I guess early
in the morning or something, then stripping down and painting
himself so that he resembles a complex brick wall or
(22:49):
something like. It's not it's never as simple as I
look like the white wall now and I was standing
as a white wall. It's always something really elaborate that
there's no possible way he could have painted himself to
look like that does. Then he'll stand they're unseen and
throw his voice around so that it sounds like he's
elsewhere in the room. But of course it's just completely stupid,
because part of the the whole idea is that is
that you need to see the person who's throwing the
(23:11):
voice like that's an essential part of that direct it
somewhere so in reality, not just I can make it
seem like the corner is talking, and you know it's
just in reality you'd be like wise the dude who's
painted up sitting there talking to right right. But I
feel like it's all because the act is so convincing
and and the magic of it is is literally less
(23:31):
understood than other forms of puppetry and uh and and
voice manipulation, that we even though we know it's a trick,
we still don't really understand what's happening well. And one
of the things about that the tricks that are pulled
up is that it takes a ton of practice, years
and years of this to get really good at it.
And of course that means that this inanimate object that
you work with, you you really do begin to deepen
(23:55):
that relationship because it is sort of a therapeutic aspect. Right,
continue to talk to this puppet, you say things to
yourself that you normally wouldn't say. Right, you have a
fairly deep relationship with it. At least this seems to
be the case, um with what Nina Conti presented when
she interviewed the ventriloquists and so puppet master are pretty
(24:18):
wound together. So what happens when a ventriloquist passes away, Well,
that is a bereaved puppet, and it has to find
a home, and it does in the form of the
event Haven Museum, Okay, which will take bereave puppets in
Fort Mental Kentucky. It is the world's only public collection
of materials related to ventriloquism. There are seven hundred ventriloquist
(24:43):
dummies arranged in three buildings, some sitting in rows as
if waiting for a class to begin. That's a place
that I want to be in by myself. For the
most have been hours in that room by myself. Um.
There's some really unusual creations, including a head carved by
German prisoner in the be At Pow camp from World
War Two. Um. The vent performed for fellow prisoners as well,
(25:05):
is for the cook to get extra food. So there's
a lot of history that goes into this museum. It's
not just you know that the puppets are sitting, they're
gathering dust. But more importantly, vent Haven actually hosts a
convention every year where four hundred and fifty ventriloquists converge
on Fort Mitchell's restaurant. Scenes You're really talking nine hundred
(25:25):
at least participants. Though that's true, that was insensitive of me.
I just kept thinking about the town, like you know
that all the restaurants are probably, oh boy, pretty soon
the restaurants are gonna be filled up with people sitting
at their table talking to their puppets. Yeah, because I
understand that this convention, like other puppetry conventions, you have
people there with their puppet, and they're often they're communicating
(25:48):
with their puppet. They're communicating with other people via their puppet. Um,
like the link between puppet and puppet, puppeteer and puppet
becomes such that that it's just part of communication when
at least when you're in group. Well, you probably won't
be surprised to find out that most people who practice
ventral looquism or introverts and speak through their puppets. So um,
(26:11):
without the puppet, I think it's it's a lot harder
to communicate. So it's sort of it's odd because you
have false extroverts milling around in the in the crowd,
or maybe not false at that moment. All right, So
I think we've covered it pretty well. But Robert, I
wanted to know from you, if you were forced to
get a ventriloquist dummy, what would yours be? Oh? Well,
(26:34):
well I would I would not want to go with
the you know, traditional ventriloquist dummy, that's for sure. I
would want, you know, something the one that the bow
Tai one. That's the one I always think of, the
more traditional one with the dork hare. I don't know,
does anyone have a mommy ventrolus dummy ventrol aquist mummy?
Is it were? That would be a lot of fun.
Oh you could. There's so many mummy mommy jokes there.
(26:55):
I'm not sure what I oh, I know what I
would do. Okay, So this would be the whole get up.
The idea is that a Victorian explorer happened to just
you know, you know, during the tomb plundering period of
of colonalism. Um. He's he discovers this tomb and breaks
open the sarcophagus, but then the mummy overpowers him, which
(27:16):
is places with him and then locks him in. So
then the so the the actual mummy uh runs off
and you know and is still alive enjoying a wonderful
life in uh in England, while um, the Victorian gentleman
is is trapped in the sarcophagus for another hundred years.
And so my puppet would be essentially a British Victorian
(27:37):
mummy who would talk, So we'd be talking in a
you know, a nice British accent, but he would be
a mummy. That's fine. I think first of all, I
really want you to do this. Second of all, did
you just think about off the top of your head? Yes,
but but largely it was it came to be because
I was thinking, Mommy, Evnentrokas puppet would be great. But
I don't know what an ancient Egyptian accident would consist of.
(27:59):
But I love British accents, so that's what I would do.
You've got it all figured out. You've got to do this.
We know this, right, yeah? Okay? Uh. The other thing,
you know, I don't think we mentioned this, but comic
timing is incredibly important to this um to ventriloquism because
you can be a master at the voices, um you still,
but you still need to pick and make people laugh. Yeah,
(28:20):
because otherwise it's just sort of like, oh that's interesting. Yeah.
You gotta know your audience. You gotta taylor your act.
You're honest. We okay, well how about you. You. Let's
say you had your dream ventral equist to me, what
would your act be? I don't know. I mean an
animal comes to mind, um, and I think just a
foul mouthed one. I'm going to have to say. I mean,
(28:40):
I don't think that comes as a surprise probably one
that's interested in schatology. This is not an act I
think anybody wants to see. Maybe maybe you'll go with
some sort of extreme prehistoric mammal, which is going to
be the topic of a couple of upcoming episodes. Maybe
there's something in there, I think, so, yeah, all right,
perhaps it will mammoth. All right, Well, there you have it,
(29:04):
Ventriloquist Dummies explained. Hopefully everyone has a little more a
little more respect for the art form and a little
a little more of an understanding about what's going on
when someone is when you're watching a puppeteer use a
puppet and buying into the act, what's happening when somebody
is actually throwing their voice? Um, how we're all brain roubes.
(29:24):
Really yeah, essentially, and you know, the the puppetries is awesome,
but it just kind of a glitch in our our
perceptions of reality. So if you have something you would
like to share about this, I'm sure we have some
puppeteers out there as we're listening to the show. If
you are a puppeteer, if you are a ventriloquist, if
you can throw your voice any of these things, or
if you just really appreciate the art form or are
(29:45):
terrified of the art form. Really, whatever your thoughts are,
we'd love to hear about them. You can find us
online as always at the Mothership stuff to Blow Your
Mind dot com, but you can also find us on
Facebook and tumbler. We are stuff to Blow your Mind
on both of those. You can find us on Twitter,
where our handle is blow the Mind, and on YouTube
we are Mind Stuff Show, and you can always drop
(30:07):
us a line at below the Mind at Discovery dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff Works dot com
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.