THE HUMAN SCREAM

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and I'm not going to scream to start this off because I care about all of you listening.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 That was a misfortune.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're talking about Julia helped us out with this one and I commissioned this one and I don't remember what instigated it. It definitely wasn't from hearing somebody scream.

Speaker 2 I may have seen an article or something that piqued my interest. And I was like, wait a minute, what, like screaming is interesting that people scream.

Speaker 2 And for all different kinds of reasons, people scream.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that's why I picked it. Here we are.
Yeah, I was very surprised and impressed that it's one of those ones where you just, you think you know about it because you never really thought about it.

Speaker 2 And when you dive into it, there's a lot more to it than you ever realized, although all of it makes sense anecdotally. You're like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I've done that.
I've screamed like that.

Speaker 2 I've screamed and screamed and screamed again.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I like ones like this. I guess

Speaker 2 human nature explained. And there's a comma in there somewhere.
Somewhere in there. Definitely not a colon.

Speaker 2 We should get some nuts and bolts out of the way as far as like, everyone knows what a scream is. It's obviously a very loud, high-pitched, harsh thing on the ears.

Speaker 2 It's a sound sound that you make with,

Speaker 2 I was about to say with your mouth, but we'll get to the parts that make the scream. But nuts and bolts-wise, the scream is in about the 80 to 120 decibel range in volume.

Speaker 2 60 decibels is normal speech.

Speaker 2 Unless you're my wife, that's more like an A75, I would say.

Speaker 2 She and

Speaker 2 her friend, Stacey, are two of the loudest humans on earth. And they admit that.

Speaker 2 They're not wallflowers, and they own it, and I respect it. Nice.

Speaker 2 They reach frequent, not Stacy and Emily, but humans, or I'm sorry, the human scream can reach a frequency in the range of 2,000 to 3,000 hertz, whereas a normal talker is about 80 to 300 hertz.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and for dum-dums with sound like me, the higher the hertz, the higher the pitch. So hertz is a measure of actual frequency.

Speaker 2 Pitch is basically a measure or a description description of how we experience that frequency. That's right.
And just to clear up something for what's coming later,

Speaker 2 a sound, a tone can have two different frequencies. I've got it.
I have it now.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 That's it?

Speaker 2 No, I can't wait to explain it later because it's going to get flubbed all over the place.

Speaker 2 Well, it is, it isn't intuitive. Like you would think like a guitar string makes like, you know, one

Speaker 2 frequency range, but it's just, yeah, it's not true. It's one of those things.
Yeah, it's just not true. We'll just leave it at that.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves, Chuck.

Speaker 2 Yeah, back to screaming, right? Yeah, because if you think about screaming, I always think of someone screaming usually in a horror movie or something like that.

Speaker 2 I haven't heard too many like real deal screams in real life, which is nice.

Speaker 2 But we're not the only animals that scream. There's plenty of other animals in the animal kingdom that scream that we know of.
I'm quite sure there's plants that scream too. We just can't hear them.

Speaker 2 Maybe.

Speaker 2 But birds scream, seals, marmots, mountain lions, and I didn't know giraffes scream. That's got to be off-putting.
The funniest scream of all is a goat screaming. Yeah.

Speaker 2 If you have never witnessed a goat scream, go right now to YouTube and just look up goat screaming videos.

Speaker 2 And they don't all scream the same way, but every once in a while, one of them is going to come along and scream like a man. And it is like you will, you can't not laugh out loud when you see it.

Speaker 2 Every time I watch the same goat scream over and over again, and I laughed out loud every time I watched it. Yeah, and it's so

Speaker 2 non-goat sounding because it's not even like a loud bleat that you wonder, like, is somebody punking me? And that's just like, you know, that's James Conn from Misery that they're looping in there.

Speaker 2 It does kind of sound like that. Another one to look up real quick are two links in Ontario screaming at each other.
It's like right in their faces. Have you seen that one? I haven't seen that one.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's nuts.

Speaker 2 Animals,

Speaker 2 well, they, well, let's just talk about why anything screams. It's a very effective tool.

Speaker 2 It's obviously a great fear response because everyone's going to sit up and take notice because it's so harsh and loud. It's a very jarring thing.
It can also distract predators.

Speaker 2 Obviously, screaming if you're lost, you know, a scream can travel a great distance in the woods or anywhere, and you can, you know, alert somebody from a great distance.

Speaker 2 So it's a great communicative tool for humans and animals alike. Yeah.
And that loudness, I saw the Guinness record for the loudest scream.

Speaker 2 is 129 decibels, which is one decibel under a jet engine

Speaker 2 and almost 10 times louder than a police siren.

Speaker 2 I wonder who that was. I don't know, but man, I can't imagine that they did that too many times because, as we'll see, screaming can really mess up your

Speaker 2 neck junk. Yeah,

Speaker 2 that's really gross.

Speaker 2 I'm getting older, so I'm getting more and more neck junk.

Speaker 2 Very distressing.

Speaker 2 Neck junk, too.

Speaker 2 All right, so humans are born with this ability. We know how to scream right away because we come out of the womb screaming.

Speaker 2 In fact, that's a very comforting sound when a baby is born is that first scream, they're going to clear that phlegm in their airway so they can breathe. It lets everybody know, hey, I'm here.

Speaker 2 I'm ready for action. I'm feeling good despite the fact that I'm screaming.

Speaker 2 If a baby is born and there is no scream, that is a very scary, scary moment for parents and everybody in that room. Yeah, I can imagine.

Speaker 2 It's like the one time where not screaming means that there's an issue. Yeah.
You know?

Speaker 2 know totally um and there's a lot of information in a baby's scream it says i'm in distress i'm in pain i'm i could use a nosh um

Speaker 2 there's just a lot that that makes a parent because we're tuned to this kind of thing especially if you're the parent of that baby studies show that you respond to your own baby's cries or screams a lot more easily or quickly than somebody who is not the parent of that baby but you rush over there and you say here's some food Here's a little blanket.

Speaker 2 And way to go, you just got all the phlegm out of your throat. So now you can breathe normally.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I remember when you met Ruby as a baby and she was screaming and you're like, what the hell's wrong with this kid? Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I just, you know, I tried to bounce her on my knee faster and it did the opposite of help. And I said, oh, Josh, I'm in tune already.
Not in tune, attuned already. I was also in tune.

Speaker 2 And I said, that just means she's hungry. So just

Speaker 2 raise your shirt. Yeah.
Give her what she needs. That didn't work either.
She got like a hair in her mouth, though. Oh, my God.
This got really disturbing very fast. Yeah, we got it out.

Speaker 2 What about that cat cry? So there is a

Speaker 2 syndrome that's colloquially called, I think, cried a chat, cry of the cat in French. And it has some similarities to Down syndrome.

Speaker 2 But one of the defining characteristics of cre du chat is a larynx malformation so that babies, when they cry, like the loud screaming cry, have a make a very specific cry that sounds very much like a cat crying.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 If like you can find a couple of videos on YouTube of people with their baby with Creed de Schott crying, and it's really cute in a lot of ways, but also you're like, that sounds a lot like a cat.

Speaker 2 And it's so distinct that you can actually initially diagnose an infant with Creed de Schott syndrome because of their cry. It's that distinct.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, that's a benefit that can save a lot of time

Speaker 2 and discomfort for this kid in diagnosing this kind of condition. Exactly.
It's great. It also is a sign, obviously, when a kid is screaming,

Speaker 2 saying, hey, parent,

Speaker 2 go into fight or flight mode because I need something.

Speaker 2 And, you know, if it's one of distress, even more so, obviously, and not just like, I'm hungry, like severe distress.

Speaker 2 I don't know that we need to discuss fight or flight in detail because we did it 364 times over the first like five years of the show. Right.
But everyone knows what that is, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I would think so. I don't think we really need to describe fight or flight.
You're like, but it's

Speaker 2 not myself.

Speaker 2 I exercise great restraint. Nice work.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, anyway, I'll take it from here, Chuck. Yeah.
Because the reason you brought that up is screams activate fight or flight mode in some really like basic ways, as we'll see.

Speaker 2 And so, a scream actually activates in you a human who hears a scream that readiness to like either spring into action or run like hell or freeze or fawn is the other one now.

Speaker 2 Um, because the fight-or-flight syndrome's really come a long way since we last talked about it. And fawn is the response that you want when a baby's crying.
You want to go and be like, oh, it's okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's right. Uh, here, never mind.
I'm going to abandon that line of thought. I think you said.

Speaker 2 So let's talk about sound for a minute because all sound comes from and is perceived by us through a series of processes in the brain.

Speaker 2 And most of these are in the higher brain region, but screams are different. They happen in the lower brain region.
And

Speaker 2 it's a very interesting thing. It kind of lives in its own, as far as like humans making sound, lives in its own area.
It's very distinct from all the other sounds we make. Yeah, and it's a lot faster

Speaker 2 to basically activate us than the normal speech that we hear, right? So when you talk, when you're making just talk, like I am right now, say, this is a good example.

Speaker 2 I'm using this description as an example in real time, okay? That's right. So I'm using my laryngeal motor cortex.
That's basically running the show right now.

Speaker 2 And that is a higher brain process, right? So I'm using cognition. I'm figuring out how my mouth should move, which also requires fine motor coordination.
I'm processing sound.

Speaker 2 I think from our internal dialogue episode, I'm doing a quick quality check right before I actually say the words.

Speaker 2 Do you sound like Josh? Exactly. And do I sound like a Muppety tenor? I do.
Let's go.

Speaker 2 And then this stuff is sent to the brainstem, which basically says, okay, larynx and vocal cords and lungs and abdominal muscles, let's talk. That's normal speech.

Speaker 2 And again, it requires a lot of higher brain processing. Screaming uses a different set of equipment to make itself happen.
It's nuts because you think screaming is a form of speech.

Speaker 2 It's actually not, even though we use a lot of the same stuff, a lot of the same bait and tackle, say,

Speaker 2 like it's its own thing, which is, I just find, this is where I'm like, okay, this is super fascinating now. Yeah, that's right.
So for screams

Speaker 2 and some involuntary vocalizations, but really screams, the sound production takes a different, and like you said, a much faster path.

Speaker 2 The signal starts in the limbic system and it skips that higher brain processing.

Speaker 2 It happens in the amygdala, basically. The emotional stimulus that the amygdala is all about just sends a scream signal.
It's sort of like a direct path, like a express train.

Speaker 2 through that brainstem

Speaker 2 to all the anatomy that you were talking about and your in your the neck junk. And that scream just comes out immediately.

Speaker 2 And the craziest part is our body actually picks up on this before our ears and brain can even process what we've just heard.

Speaker 2 Yeah, once the scream comes out of someone else, when we hear that scream, it puts us in fight or flight mode before we're even consciously aware that we have heard a scream.

Speaker 2 That's how finely tuned we are to responding to screams, which again, this is is something you just think exists out there. And then when you dig in, you're like, my God.

Speaker 2 So there's like a whole, a whole set of processes that take place that again, are different than how we would respond if we hear regular speech, right? So it follows some of the same processes.

Speaker 2 It hits the outer ear, goes to the ear canal, the eardrum goes boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 2 That is amplified in the middle ear, and that goes on to the cochlea, which triggers a wave along the basilar membrane, which says, I'm going to turn this into an electrical signal, sends it to the auditory nerve, which sends it to the brainstem, and then to the thalamus.

Speaker 2 And the thalamus is the sensory clearinghouse. It sends this to that and that to that.
All of your sensory information goes to the thalamus. And here is where it diverges from normal speech.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I mean, that's why when somebody screams like a blood-curdling scream out in public, you're you're instantly reacting.

Speaker 2 You don't hear that and then decide like, well, maybe I should go see what's going on over there.

Speaker 2 Like your body is instantly reacting because it is unconsciously picked up on that screen before it's even registered in your brain. So it's, it's really a pretty remarkable sort of evolutionary

Speaker 2 trait, I think, like to

Speaker 2 help rescue, you know, probably back in Tuk-Tuk's days,

Speaker 2 the wife or baby that the

Speaker 2 husband who's out hunting and gathering has to protect from whatever dangers are around the fire. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And the reason why that happens is because when it hits that thalamus, it gets sent two different ways. Like it gets sent the normal way to that higher brain processing.

Speaker 2 And when it goes through that higher brain processing, that's when you become conscious of hearing that scream.

Speaker 2 But what's happened even faster is it got sent to that amygdala and that sent in the fight-or-flight response.

Speaker 2 And that happened before your higher brain finished processing, which is just it's it has so there's this own pathway for just screams that the human the human brain has evolved

Speaker 2 to basically make you able to respond to a scream faster. It has its own expressway.
Screams only, essentially, is what it says.

Speaker 2 And if you're regular speech, you try to use that same expressway, it's got those tire-bursting spikes that will just stop you cold right there.

Speaker 2 And they'll send you back along the way you're supposed to go to the higher brain. You go back to Talk Town, buddy.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 And it's going to take you a while to get there because you don't have tires. You're driving on just rims now.
That's right. Because you were dumb and you made a poor decision.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you shouldn't do that because you're going to damage those rims. You need to pull over immediately.
Yeah, it's bad.

Speaker 2 Should we take a break? Yeah, I think so. All right.
We're going to take a break and come back. And Josh is going to explain something called the roughness domain right after this.

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Speaker 2 It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too.
Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply.

Speaker 2 See Capital One.com/slash bank. Capital One NA, member F D I C

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Speaker 2 All right, Chuck, here we go. Here's the flubbing.
Okay. Well, we'll see.
It's a little brain breaking, but we'll get it. I think it's one of those things where

Speaker 2 I just thought too hard about it, and I've made it brainbreaking. But so

Speaker 2 screams have something in common, and that is that they exist in a region of human perception that's called the roughness domain. Okay.

Speaker 2 And if you take

Speaker 2 someone's voice, right?

Speaker 2 It has a certain frequency. My voice has a certain frequency.
You can recognize it as mine. But you can take my voice and make it modulate, right? So

Speaker 2 like the British police car that goes, do, do, do, do, do, do, that's modulating, right? So it has its own its own frequency

Speaker 2 right but you're making it um change pitch

Speaker 2 so that's a second frequency that it has and if that frequency is between 30 hertz and 150 hertz that modulation between up and down or left and right however you want to look at it that is um that roughness area and it also seems to be reserved as far as human sounds go just for screams yeah Yeah.

Speaker 2 There was a study. They learned this because of a study.

Speaker 2 Well, how did I do?

Speaker 2 Oh, you did great. Okay, kid.
I'm sorry. I didn't the customary.
Thank you. We usually edit the claps out.
I think we should leave that one in. Yeah, yeah, let's leave that one in.

Speaker 2 They know this because in 2015,

Speaker 2 NYU, the neuroscientist there, published a study supporting this role of amplitude modulation.

Speaker 2 And the crazy part is that the only other sound in that roughness domain, like that's the only sound a human can make that's like that the only other sounds are all artificial alarms so the human screen lives in the rough this domain alongside sirens and car alarms and you know just other other like a klaxon maybe

Speaker 2 what is that is that the bad guys in doctor who

Speaker 2 i think a klaxon is the

Speaker 2 oh those are terrible like pull your credit card out of the card terminal does it actually do that yes

Speaker 2 They did originally. I think they've kind of stopped, but it used to be really jarring.
Yeah, I mean, because that's a sound that happens when a nuclear facility is melting down. Right.

Speaker 2 Forget your credit card, meltdown in nuclear facility. Basically, the same thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so thanks, NYU, for that, right? Well, okay, that was just... part one of this study.
This is a really robust study.

Speaker 2 So they analyzed recorded sounds and they found that screams were all in roughness and the only other sounds that were in there were alarms, right?

Speaker 2 Then they got a bunch of volunteers, almost guaranteed NYU undergrads looking for extra credit. And they said, we want you to make a bunch of sounds.
We want you to scream.

Speaker 2 We want you to speak normally. We want you to scream, speak.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And make a bunch of meaningless vocalizations like yips, yammers, yelps, that whole thing, right? Sure. And then they analyzed those just like they analyzed the recorded sounds.

Speaker 2 And they found that all of the scream sounds were in the roughness domain and all of the non-scream sounds including yips and yammers were not in the roughness domain whatsoever.

Speaker 2 So they're really zeroing in and yet there's more to this study. This is how robust it was.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so then they said, all right, we got out this collection of sounds, neutral sounds is what we'll call the ones that aren't screams, and then the screamy things.

Speaker 2 And they brought in some other volunteers, other NYU students for sure, and said, all right, we want you to rate the scariness, like maybe on a one to 10, one to five, who knows what they used, maybe a Yelp star system.

Speaker 2 Okay. And they said, rate the scariness of the sounds.
All the sounds in the roughness domain, this is pretty obvious, were rated as scarier than the neutral sounds.

Speaker 2 And the sounds that were rated the scariest were the ones that were highest on the roughness scale. All makes sense.
Right. So they're really drilling down here.
It keeps going, everybody.

Speaker 2 They actually took volunteers, probably the same ones who rated the scariness of the sounds, and they scanned them while they were listening to scary sounds.

Speaker 2 And not just screams, but also artificial alarms too, and probably some of the nonsense sounds and musical sounds.

Speaker 2 And as they were listening, the screams and the alarms were the only ones that caused spikes in the amygdala. Remember, the amygdala

Speaker 2 is where that set-aside pathway for screams is.

Speaker 2 And that the higher on the roughness scale, if you can call it that, that the screams or alarms were, the greater the amygdala activity.

Speaker 2 And then the greater the amygdala activity that was shown in the scans, the higher those sounds had been rated for scariness by the volunteers previously.

Speaker 2 And when they wrapped it up and put all this together, they were like, I forgot what we were studying in the first place.

Speaker 2 So the upshot, to borrow a term from Josh, is that it seems like humans are specifically attuned

Speaker 2 and our amygdala is specifically activated by the sound of a scream to say like, hey, it's time to panic or it's time to kick into high gear. They found that this works if you're awake or asleep.

Speaker 2 The rough vocalizations in that rough domain that we were talking about penetrate human sleep cycles. more than neutral vocalizations.

Speaker 2 And that's not to say that like, yeah, of course, it's louder, dummy. We're not talking about decibels here.
We're talking about a frequency range.

Speaker 2 Like, I think what they're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that

Speaker 2 a scream that might be the same decibel level as like a really loud talk will penetrate that sleep cycle unlike that really loud talk.

Speaker 2 Yes, and they think it's because the amygdala is tuned to that 30 to 150 hertz roughness band.

Speaker 2 So the amygdala has its own route for getting you aroused, and not necessarily in the best way, when you hear a scream.

Speaker 2 And it's also listening out to a specific band of modulation to that scream's existence.

Speaker 2 So clearly, thanks to our NYU researchers back in 2015, screams are a really important and kind of overlooked part of human speech, right?

Speaker 2 And for sure. And they think also, Chuck, that not only has

Speaker 2 like have we evolved to develop this alarm system, which clearly is what it is?

Speaker 2 Because not only are you saying help, you're also, depending on how nice or altruistic the people listening are, you're also saying,

Speaker 2 look out, there's danger. And they may run away if they flee, or they might run to you to help you if they're ready to fight.
But they also have shown that screams have evolved in other ways too.

Speaker 2 Like, we don't scream just out of an alarm system anymore. There's actually at least six other screams that they've discovered that correlate or correspond to six other separate emotions.

Speaker 2 Yeah, anger, of course, is going to be one. You can scream at somebody in traffic.
There's a Europe song called Scream of Anger.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 2 And Europe, of course, is known for a different song.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but you know what? I heard,

Speaker 2 oh, what was it? That other Europe song I forgot about the other day on Hair Nation, on Sirius XM. Okay.

Speaker 2 Which I'm still pounding, by the way. I can't get away from it.
I'm so back into the hair metal. It's really funny.
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 What was it? Keep on walking that road and I'll follow.

Speaker 2 And if a mirror should break,

Speaker 2 superstitious.

Speaker 2 That was Europe? Yeah, that was Europe. That was their big song besides Final Countdown.
Okay. Well, so Scream of Anger.
That's a great song. Okay.
Scream of Anger is even better.

Speaker 2 It's like actual metal tinge.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You just made me think of Europe.

Speaker 2 They're definitely not screamers. They had voices of angels.
They did.

Speaker 2 Obviously scream and fear, which is kind of one of the things we've been talking about.

Speaker 2 Screaming in pain. Yikes.
That's something that I have never experienced.

Speaker 2 I've felt great deals of physical pain, but I'm very internal. I kind of go inward.

Speaker 2 But I've been to emergency rooms and a screamer in an emergency room is a very unsettling. situation.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 The one I always associate with that is Tom Berringer telling that guy who got shot in the gut and platoon to eat the pain.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's right. That guy was definitely screaming in pain.
Yeah, yeah. He put his hand over his mouth.

Speaker 2 And it was. What was that Junior? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So there's also, this one's great. A scream of extreme joy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like at a concert, maybe? Sure, that's one.

Speaker 2 Or if you watch The Simpsons and go back and watch, I think the murder house episode where Marge is a real estate agent selling a murder house to Ned Flanders, you hear a terrible scream, and it turns out it's Ned Flanders screaming in joy because there's purple drapes in the house.

Speaker 2 It's great. Just go look it up.
It's like a 10-the clip.

Speaker 2 I guess, you know, we're not going to dance around this. We're adults here.

Speaker 2 Obviously, during intercourse, an orgasm can produce quite a scream, I'm told. Yeah, next to that, I just have an ellipse.
Right.

Speaker 2 Intense pleasure. So, you know, that extreme joy and intense pleasure probably encapsulates both of those, if you're doing it right.

Speaker 2 And then a scream of sadness.

Speaker 2 And I guess this is just

Speaker 2 like wailing plus.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I feel like this one may have just been mislabeled because I think you can make a case that what they're describing here is actually a scream of emotional pain, not physical pain, emotional pain.

Speaker 2 Well, that's what sadness is, right? Yeah, I guess so. So, sure.
I mean, maybe it's just me that was like, no, that's wrong.

Speaker 2 A really good example of it, as far as movies go, is Tony Collette in Hereditary. Oh, God.
She finds out that her daughter has died. It's gut-wrenching the work she does.

Speaker 2 Like, oh, my God, it's really tough to watch. And of course, it's all over the internet.
I

Speaker 2 am about to say something I thought I would never say. I think I would like to see that movie again.
Oh, why? Did you not like it the first time? I loved it, but it's a tough movie. Oh, it is.

Speaker 2 And it was one of those where I was like, well, that was amazing, but I don't think I I need to see that ever again. But I think I might want to because it was really that great.

Speaker 2 I've seen people here there describe it as potentially the darkest dark comedy around. Oh, interesting.
And there's this one part that I think kind of supports it.

Speaker 2 Do you remember the part where Stephen is in the classroom and he messes himself up pretty good?

Speaker 2 It's been a while, but yeah, sort of. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's really good.

Speaker 2 I've seen it, I think just a couple of times, but the second time I saw it was not too long ago.

Speaker 2 But Chuck, please, please watch saint maud as far as a 24 horror movies go that's one of the more overlooked ones it is off the chain it's so good and it's just so nuts man

Speaker 2 uh why have i heard of that is that i've told you to watch this before i think yeah and i don't think you watched it because you would have definitely come back and been like dude okay saint maud that's all i need to say okay dude yeah

Speaker 2 well it's a british horror film i'm all i'm all about those it's it's good there's it's rough though. Like, this is not for kids, and there's, you know, really upsetting stuff throughout.

Speaker 2 So, just FYI.

Speaker 2 All right. So, back to screaming.

Speaker 2 Obviously, rage, fear, pain, these are alarm screams. The non-alarm screams, like we talked about, the joy, intense pleasure.

Speaker 2 I don't think I'll throw sadness in there because that can be alarm. But those aren't things that you will find in the animal kingdom.

Speaker 2 It is a distinctly, uniquely human instinct to signal something positive with a scream. Animals don't scream out in joy.
No, but we do think that some non-human primates scream out in grief, though.

Speaker 2 Isn't that awful? Oh man, yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that's a great way to end this section and start with the ab break. What do you think? Yeah, let's do it.

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Speaker 2 All right, so back to screaming.

Speaker 2 I was afraid you were going to scream at one point. No, I wouldn't do that.
Not something we're going to do. I can't remember the last time I tried to scream.
Yeah, me.

Speaker 2 Like just, like, as a, like, hey, what's your scream sound like at a party or something? Who does that? You know, that old party trick.

Speaker 2 And I wonder,

Speaker 2 like, I always think of, like, the best scream I've ever heard is probably

Speaker 2 from American movie, the documentary.

Speaker 2 You saw that, right? No.

Speaker 2 The American movie, it was about

Speaker 2 the guys in Wisconsin making the low-budget horror movie. That's why I always say Coven, because he pronounced it Coven.
I never saw that. I know what you're talking about.
Is it worth seeing?

Speaker 2 Oh, it's one of the great, great documentaries of all time. Highly recommend it.
But Mike Schenck, rest in peace, Mike has left us. Very sadly, there's one part in there where

Speaker 2 the main guy is

Speaker 2 trying to record screams for his low-budget horror film he's making in the studio. And Mike Schenck, who's this very, very low-key friend of his,

Speaker 2 out of nowhere, I'll send you the clip, produces the most blood-curdling scream I've ever heard in my life. It's incredible.
Oh, definitely.

Speaker 2 And one of the funnier parts of that, too, because nobody saw it coming, including his friend. And his reaction is great.
And it's just one of the great parts of that movie.

Speaker 2 Well, me and everybody listening will definitely see it coming now.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's yeah. I guess that is a little bit of a spoiler, but it's a 20-year-old documentary.
So, you know, all right. I'll watch it, though, okay? If you watch ET.
E.T. goes home to everybody.

Speaker 2 Okay, so. There's a

Speaker 2 name that's been kind of bestowed on some actresses over the years,

Speaker 2 which is Scream Queen.

Speaker 2 I always associate that with Jamie Lee Curtis, who got that from Halloween and Prom Night.

Speaker 2 It actually dates back like 50 plus years before Halloween with Faye Rae when she was in King Kong in 1933.

Speaker 2 Apparently, I've not seen the original King Kong, but her screams are supposedly really terrifying. And they did them all in post-production, like apparently American movie.

Speaker 2 And then they mixed them together to just make them as disturbing as possible. But Faye Rae, Rae, the 1930s actress, was the original Scream Queen.
That's right. It's a pretty good scream.

Speaker 2 Not nearly as chilling as Mike Shanks, but it was 1933. They did a pretty good job.

Speaker 2 You usually associate it with

Speaker 2 like a scream queen.

Speaker 2 It's usually a woman screaming in a horror movie. That's just sort of the trope.
But there have been some notable man screams. James Conn, certainly I mentioned earlier from Misery.

Speaker 2 But another that was done in post-production, but is so great. You should just check out this clip on YouTube.

Speaker 2 It's the chilling ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1978 with Donald Sutherland.

Speaker 2 And you know who was in charge of that scream, my friend. You probably looked this up, but it's our old pal from Star Wars

Speaker 2 who was hitting that high-tension wire with a wrench,

Speaker 2 Ben Burt. Yeah, he was just a legend, wasn't he? Yeah, apparently this was layering pig squeals on top of each other.

Speaker 2 And it's a very, it's a sort of a classic ending to that movie because that is the sound that the pod people make when they see a human.

Speaker 2 And, well, I mean, I guess this is all spoiler stuff, but it's from 1978. Donald Sutherland makes that sound at the end when he sees a human indicating chillingly that he is now a pod person.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So keep an eye on Donald Sutherland when you watch that movie for the first time. Yeah, for sure.
There's a couple others.

Speaker 2 Thomas Jane gives a really terrible scream at the end of The Mist,

Speaker 2 which has one of the most unsettling

Speaker 2 endings, I think, of any movie ever. Maybe Tied With It Comes in the Night,

Speaker 2 which is another really unsettling A24 movie. Bruce Campbell, he's a great man-screamer, I guess, Scream King.
He does everything great.

Speaker 2 And then Justin Long, he's definitely, he's been in way more horror movies than you would think, but I'm pretty sure he screams pretty well in Barbarian.

Speaker 2 Great movie. And then also, I can't help but bring up, since I mentioned Justin Long, he's in a new movie called Coyotes, which is a horror comedy about coyotes going on a rampage.

Speaker 2 And it just so happens that my niece Mila Harris is in that movie, too. She plays his and Kate Bosworth's daughter.
Oh, that's great. I love that.
It's out now.

Speaker 2 The odd connection of Justin Long and Hodgman, of course, with the Mac Apple commercials. For sure.

Speaker 2 When I was out in New York at that time, after hanging out with Hodgman, you and I, I think, went to a thing with him. Then later that night, I saw Justin Long out.
Oh, weird.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 had to say something to him. I was like, you know, John's a friend of mine.
I was just hanging out with him. It's funny that I saw you.

Speaker 2 And he said, well, Mila, Josh's future niece, is right behind me. That's awesome.
It was very funny. Thanks for circling back like that.
That was really kind. Of course.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, we have to also give adieu to the a couple of more Scream queens, very famously Janet Lee and Psycho. And you got to talk about Nev Campbell in the movie Scream.

Speaker 2 Yes, and I would make an assertion that Mia Goth is the current Scream queen from the Maxim trilogy. I think she's great.
She's great. She's the one killing it right now.
Yeah, she's awesome.

Speaker 2 And speaking of Scream, and I'm only plugging an old movie crush because guest Nate Bargettsi. is now the biggest comedian on planet Earth.
I know, it's so great.

Speaker 2 But I had Nate on because I was a fan of Nate's very early on, and I just wanted to meet Nate. So I drove to Nashville and had Nate on, and his movie Crush pick was Scream.

Speaker 2 Did he know you were coming?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I cornered him in the studio, and he's like, who's this guy? He's such a good guy, too, man. It's like his comedy is perfect.
Like, he's, it's, I'm just really happy that he's so huge now.

Speaker 2 He's a great guy and super, super nice in person.

Speaker 2 And I'm sure he is still that way even now that he's super famous. He seems like he's still a great guy.
But Nate was a very charming guest.

Speaker 2 So you can, if you want to, if you're a big fan of nate's now and you want to hear him talk to me you can check out that old movie crush don't just check out that old movie crush check out all the movie crushes because they are all priceless gems yeah i definitely miss that show but you know some things just uh have to be retired eventually exactly chuck yeah um so did you mention death metal i thought you did

Speaker 2 uh i don't think so but that's obviously a place where screaming uh can be a profession in a way so yeah so the university of Utah conducted these tests where they took dynamic MRI.

Speaker 2 So, like, you don't have to just be laying down still to get an MRI image of a person. They took MRIs of a guy named Will Ramos, who's a Death Core singer for a band called Lorna Shore.

Speaker 2 And he is extraordinarily talented. Whether you like Death Core or can't stand Death Core, go look up to the Hellfire, the Lorna Shore video.

Speaker 2 And his range of the work he does with screaming, like Death core screaming, is

Speaker 2 you can't help but be impressed. He's really good, right? So they got a really good person to study because not only is he really good at screaming death core-wise or death metal-wise,

Speaker 2 his vocal junk, his neck junk is like entirely intact. Like it's really healthy.
He's been doing this for years and he hasn't done any damage.

Speaker 2 So these University of Utah researchers are like, what are you doing? Can we take MRIs of you singing? And they did.

Speaker 2 And it's really cool because the one of him just singing normally, you can barely see any movement in inside the neck, right?

Speaker 2 When he screams, it just is chaos in there. And apparently, people who know what the anatomy is can look at it and be like, oh my God, he's doing this.

Speaker 2 And this is how he's keeping from ruining his vocal cords. So they actually got pretty far with it.
But it's worth checking out that article because just for the MRIs side by side. Amazing.

Speaker 2 I thought so, too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and you know, it sounds like he has something special going on in his neck junk because screaming can definitely like

Speaker 2 it's very hard on your on your throat.

Speaker 2 So good for him. He found his calling.
He found his niche. He got in where he fought in.
That's right.

Speaker 2 Another reason to scream kind of here is we're finishing up is pain control. They did a pretty interesting survey in 2020 of children that had been in the hospital and

Speaker 2 pain, like screaming to relieve pain control, it turns out is probably a thing. I haven't seen like a, the most robust scientific study, but at least from this survey,

Speaker 2 children routinely described feeling, a feeling of liberation when they screamed and then a feeling of calmness afterward that helped them experience pain in a, in a more manageable way.

Speaker 2 The problem is, is that adults and doctors and nurses can't take it.

Speaker 2 Obviously, parents, it's going to be very disturbing because they're going to try and get their kid to not scream. And the same goes for doctors and nurses trying to comfort them.

Speaker 2 But this is the saddest quote of all. It seems like it helped them.
And an eight-year-old noted, maybe it's good to scream, but they don't know that. Nobody asks me.

Speaker 2 My God. I know.
Sad. It's awful.

Speaker 2 The reason why they think that it does

Speaker 2 help with pain relief is because one of the hormones or one of the chemicals released in the fight-or-flight response is our endorphins, which can dull pain.

Speaker 2 So, it does make sense that screaming could help you with pain.

Speaker 2 There's another cleverer use of screaming, if you ask me, than screaming in the emergency room, which is replacing the current paradigm for creating anxiety inside a lab to study anxiety for research,

Speaker 2 which is to threaten people with a shock. And they've actually found that you can threaten people with a scream and generate anxiety just as reliably.

Speaker 2 So people are like, we should stop threatening people with shocks because it's unethical and just start saying somebody's going to scream in a second or maybe two seconds. You're never going to know.

Speaker 2 And that can generate anxiety as well.

Speaker 2 But, you know, we're so soft. Before long, they're going to be like, you can't scream at people either.
Right. They'll be like, we want you to feel anxiety right now, please.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Would you do that for them? I'm sure the participant would be like, I feel anxiety all the time. Can do.

Speaker 2 And then I guess finally, we should at least mention scream therapy or primal scream therapy. I feel like we talked about this at a certain point, but this has been around since the 60s.

Speaker 2 I felt like it was probably biggest maybe in the late 60s and 70s.

Speaker 2 The original primal scream therapy psychologist was

Speaker 2 Arthur Janoff.

Speaker 2 And this was based on the idea that like we all had this repressed trauma from childhood, it's stored as primal pain. And Arthur Janoff said, well, you know what?

Speaker 2 A good old-fashioned screaming session can release that stuff and get it out there.

Speaker 2 The bad news is it turns out there's not a lot of evidence that supports it as

Speaker 2 being a credible form of therapy. No.
And actually, I think it's possible it can hurt in trauma therapy because screaming can arouse anxiety in the person screaming even too.

Speaker 2 So not necessarily the best thing to do. No, but very 60s, 70s, I could see that being a thing.
Super. There's like one of those wicker chairs that people used to take prom pictures in.

Speaker 2 One of the wicker throne. There's definitely one of those in the office.
Yeah, I think Black Moses album cover wasn't Isaac Hayes in one of those? I believe so, yeah.

Speaker 2 Was there like a panther laying at his feet, too?

Speaker 2 Probably. There should have been.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, obviously, since we started talking about Isaac Hayes, I think we just unlocked listener mail, Chuck.

Speaker 2 That's right. And I am wrong, actually, because, of course, the Black Moses album cover was just that great picture of Isaac Hayes with the shades on and wearing that sort of striped-colored hood.

Speaker 2 But maybe it was on the back. I definitely have seen Isaac Hayes in a wicker throne.
There you go.

Speaker 2 Maybe it was Escape from New York. All right, guys.

Speaker 2 This is Leslie. All right, guys.
I don't remember how I was turned on to your podcast, but I've been a regular listener for several years now. And finally, I'm getting around to writing.

Speaker 2 I often wished I was in the studio during a recording so I could comment or applaud. Hey, like I did today.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was sad to learn that you weren't doing San Francisco Sketchfest this year, but I'm hoping you come back next year and my friend Christina and I will be there.

Speaker 2 I wanted to write when the topic was animal communication. because the musical interlude was an homage to the Beach Boys pet sounds, which was brilliant.
You can thank Jerry for that, by the way.

Speaker 2 I work in animal care, you see, so I love your animal episodes. I appreciate how you guys accept correction, showing it's okay to make a mistake as long as you learn from it.

Speaker 2 And I appreciate how you present important yet sensitive topics in a respectful way, or how you share multiple points of view on divisive issues.

Speaker 2 I just want to thank you for keeping me company during my commute, explaining complex things, making seemingly unsavory topics palatable. Entertaining me, educating me, and more.

Speaker 2 P.S., in support of your efforts to grow your listenership still, I shared your Sesame Street episode on my Facebook page. So Leslie, really appreciate that.
Yeah. And then there's a PPS.

Speaker 2 I've often thought a good drinking game could be to drink every time Chuck says, that's right, roll off the tongue. Or for sure.
For sure.

Speaker 2 But I don't drink alcohol, so if I were to play, I'd probably just get really well hydrated.

Speaker 2 It's very funny, Leslie S in the San Francisco Bay Area. And

Speaker 2 yeah, Leslie, we'd love to see you at our show next year because hopefully we'll be there. That was really, really sweet.
What a very nice email, Leslie.

Speaker 2 Thank you for taking the time to write all that. And thank you for sharing our Sesame Street episode.
It was a pretty good one to share, if you ask me.

Speaker 2 And if you want to be like Leslie and send us a very nice email, we always love getting those. You can send it off to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com.

Speaker 1 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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