THE HUMAN SCREAM

Have you ever thought much about screaming? Well we have, and today you'll learn everything we learned. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:39Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:48Josh Clark?

  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.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58Josh Clark?

  That wasn't a scream.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  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. 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 and for all different kinds of reasons, people scream. And that's why, that's why I picked it.

• 2:28Josh Clark?

  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. 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. I screamed and screamed and screamed again. It, yeah, I like ones like this. I guess human, human nature explained. And there's a comma in there somewhere.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Somewhere in there. Definitely not a colon. 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. It's a sound that you make with, I was about to say with your mouth, but we'll, 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. 60 decibels is normal speech. Unless you're my wife, that's more like an A75, I would say. She and her, her friend Stacy are two of the loudest humans on earth and they, they admit that. They're not wallflowers and they own it and I respect it.

• 3:44Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And for, for dum-dums with sound like me, the higher the hertz, the higher the pitch. So hertz is a measure of actual frequency. Pitch is basically a measure or a description of how we experience that frequency.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  That's right. And just to clear up something for what's coming later, a, a sound, a tone can have two different frequencies.

• 4:23Josh Clark?

  I've got it. I have it now.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  That's it?

• 4:29Josh Clark?

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

• 4:34Speaker 02

  Well, it is, it isn't too intuitive. Like, you would think like a guitar string makes like, you know, one, one frequency range, but it's just, yeah, it's not true. It's one of those things.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's just not true. We'll just leave it at that. But we're, we're getting ahead of ourselves, Chuck.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, back to screaming, right?

• 4:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because if you think about screaming, I always think of someone screaming, usually in a horror movie or something like that. I haven't heard too many like real deal screams in, in real life, which is nice. But we're not the only animals that scream. There's plenty of other animals in the animal kingdom that, that scream that we know of. I'm quite sure there's plants that scream too. We just can't hear them.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Mammy.

• 5:18Josh Clark?

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

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:32Josh Clark?

  If you have never witnessed a goat scream, go right now to YouTube and just look up goat screaming videos. And they don't all scream the same way, but every once in a while, one of them's gonna come along and scream like a man. And it is like you will, you can't not laugh out loud when you see it. Every time, I watched the same goat scream over and over again, and I laughed out loud every time I watched it.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's so, uh, non-goat sounding because it's not even like a loud bleat that you wonder like, is somebody punkin' me? And that's just like, you know, that's James Caan from Misery that they're looping in there.

• 6:11Josh Clark?

  Does kinda sound like that. Um, another one to look up real quick are Two Lynx in Ontario screaming at each other. It's like right in their faces. Have you seen that one?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  I haven't seen that one.

• 6:21Josh Clark?

  Oh, it's, it's nuts.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Animals, well, they, well, let's just talk about why anything screams. It's a very effective tool. It's obviously a great fear response because everyone's gonna sit up and take notice because it's so harsh and loud. It's a very jarring thing. It can also distract predators. 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. So it's a, it's a great communicative tool for humans and animals alike.

• 6:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and that loudness, I saw the Guinness Record for the loudest scream is 129 decibels, which is one decibel under a jet engine and almost, and almost 10 times louder than a police siren.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  I wonder who that was.

• 7:13Josh Clark?

  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, your neck junk.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's really gross. Uh, I'm getting older, so I'm getting more and more neck junk.

• 7:29Josh Clark?

  I've got a lot of neck junk, too.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Uh, all right, so humans are born with this ability. We know how to scream right away because we, we come out of the womb screaming. In fact, that's a very comforting sound when a baby is born is that first scream. They're gonna clear that phlegm in their airway so they can breathe. It lets everybody know, hey, I'm here, I'm ready for action, I'm feeling good despite the fact that I'm screaming. If, if a baby is born and there is no scream, that is a very scary, scary moment for parents and everybody in that room.

• 8:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I can imagine. It's like the one time where not screaming means that there's an issue.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 8:12Josh Clark?

  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.

• 8:21Josh Clark?

  There's just a lot 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. And way to go, you just got all the phlegm out of your throat, so now you can breathe normally.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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?

• 8:53Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah. I just, you know, I tried to bounce her on my knee faster and it did the opposite of help.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  And I said, oh Josh, I'm in tune already. Not in tune, attuned already. I was also in tune. And I said, that just means she's hungry, so just raise your shirt.

• 9:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Give her what she needs.

• 9:13Josh Clark?

  That didn't work either. She got like hair in her mouth though.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Oh my God. This got really disturbing very fast.

• 9:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we got it out.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  What about that cat cry?

• 9:23Josh Clark?

  So there is a syndrome that's colloquially called, I think, cri de chat, cry of the cat in French. And it has some similarities to Down syndrome, but one of the defining characteristics of cri de 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.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:50Josh Clark?

  If, like, you can find a couple of videos on YouTube of people with their baby with cri de chat of crying and it's really cute in a lot of ways, but also you're like, that sounds a lot like a cat. And it's so distinct that you can actually initially diagnose an infant with cri de chat syndrome because of their cry. It's that distinct.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, I mean, that's a benefit that can save a lot of time and discomfort for this kid in diagnosing this kind of condition.

• 10:20Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  It's great. It also is a sign, obviously, when a kid is screaming, saying, hey, parent, go into fight or flight mode because I need something. And, you know, if it's one of distress, even more so, obviously, and not just like, I'm hungry, like severe distress. 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.

• 10:47Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  But everyone knows what that is, right?

• 10:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I would think so. I don't think we really need to describe fight or flight.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  You're like, uh, but it's uh.

• 10:56Josh Clark?

  I didn't. I stopped myself. I exercised great restraint.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Nice work.

• 11:02Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, anyway, I'll take it from here, Chuck.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:05Josh Clark?

  Because the reason you brought that up is screams activate fight or flight mode in some really like basic ways, as we'll see. 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. Um, cause 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 over and be like, oh, it's okay.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. Uh, here. Never mind. I'm gonna abandon that line of thought.

• 11:42Josh Clark?

  I think you should.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Uh, 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. And most of these are in the higher brain region, but screams are different. They happen in the lower brain region. And um, it's, 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.

• 12:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And it's a lot faster um, to basically activate us than the normal speech that we hear, right? So when you talk and when you're making just, just talk like I am right now, say, this is a good example. I'm using this description as an example in real time. Okay?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 12:30Josh Clark?

  So I'm using my laryngeal motor cortex. That's basically running the show right now. 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. Processing sound. Uh, I think from our internal dialogue episode, I'm doing a quick quality check right before I actually say the words.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, sound like Josh.

• 12:55Josh Clark?

  Exactly. And do I sound like a muppety tenor? I do. Let's go. 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. And again, it requires a lot of higher brain processing. Screaming uses a different set of equipment to to make itself happen. It's nuts because you think screaming is a form of speech. It's actually not, even though we use a lot of the same stuff, a lot of the same bait and tackle, say. Like, it's its own thing, which is I just find this is where I'm like, okay, this is super fascinating now.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. So for screams and some involuntary vocalizations, but really screams, the sound production takes a different, and like you said, a much faster path. The signal starts in the limbic system and it skips that higher brain processing. 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 through that brainstem to all the anatomy that you were talking about and your, and your, you know, the neck junk. And that scream just comes out immediately. And the craziest part is our body actually picks up on this

• 14:20Speaker 02

  before our ears and brain can even process what we've just heard.

• 14:24Josh Clark?

  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. That's how, that's how finely tuned we are to responding to screams. Which, again, this is something you just think exists out there. And then when you dig in, you're like, my God. 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. It hits the outer ear, goes through the ear canal. The eardrum goes boom, boom, boom. That is amplified in the middle ear and that goes on to the cochlea,

• 15:07Josh Clark?

  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. 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.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I mean, that's why when somebody screams, like a blood-curling scream out in public, you're instantly reacting. You don't hear that and then decide like, well, maybe I should go see what's going on over there. Like, your body's instantly reacting because it is unconsciously picked up on that scream before it's even registered in your brain. So it's really a pretty remarkable sort of evolutionary trait, I think, like to help rescue, you know, probably back in Tuk Tuk's days, the wife or baby that the husband who's out hunting and gathering has to protect from whatever dangers are around the fire.

• 16:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, 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. And when it goes through that higher brain processing, that's when you become conscious of hearing that scream. But what's happened even faster is it got sent to that amygdala and that sent in the fight or flight response. And that happened before your higher brain finished processing, which is just, it's, so there's this own pathway for just screams that the human brain has evolved to basically make you able to respond to a scream faster. It has its own expressway. Screams only, essentially, is what it says.

• 16:53Josh Clark?

  And if your regular speech, you try to use that same expressway, it's got those tire-bursting spikes that will just stop you cold right there. And they'll send you back along the way you're supposed to go to the higher brain.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  You go back to Talktown, buddy.

• 17:09Josh Clark?

  Exactly, 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. Because you were dumb and you made a poor decision.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you shouldn't do that because you're going to damage those rims. You need to pull over immediately.

• 17:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's bad.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Should we take a break?

• 17:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  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.

• 17:47Josh Clark?

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• 18:10Josh Clark?

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• 18:26Speaker 02

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• 18:48Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 18:50Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 18:53Speaker 02

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• 19:17Josh Clark?

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• 19:23Speaker 04

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• 19:29Speaker 02

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• 19:40Josh Clark?

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• 19:44Speaker 05

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• 19:50Speaker 02

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• 20:03Josh Clark?

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• 20:16Speaker 02

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• 20:26Josh Clark?

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• 21:11Josh Clark?

  All right, Chuck, here we go. Here's the flubbing, okay?

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Well, we'll see. It's a little brain breaking, but we'll get it.

• 21:18Josh Clark?

  I think it's one of those things where if I just thought too hard about it, and I've made it brain breaking. But so screams have something in common, and that is that they exist in a region of human perception that's called the roughness domain, okay? And if you take someone's voice, right?

• 21:42Josh Clark?

  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 like the British police car that goes

• 21:57Josh Clark?

  that's modulating, right? So it has its own, its own frequency. Right? But you're making it change pitch. 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 that roughness area. And it also seems to be reserved as far as human sounds go, just for screams.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a study. They learned this because of a study.

• 22:34Josh Clark?

  How'd I do?

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Oh, you did great.

• 22:36Josh Clark?

  Okay, good.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  I'm sorry. I didn't, the customary.

• 22:38Josh Clark?

  Thank you. We usually edit the claps out. I think we should leave that one in.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, let's leave that one in. They know this because in 2015, NYU, the neuroscientists there published a study supporting this role of amplitude modulation. And the, 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 roughness domain alongside sirens and car alarms. And, you know, just other, other like a klaxon, maybe?

• 23:18Josh Clark?

  What is that? Is that the bad guys in Doctor Who?

• 23:21Speaker 02

  I think a klaxon is the

• 23:24Josh Clark?

  Oh, those are terrible. Like pull your credit card out of the card terminal?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Does it actually do that?

• 23:29Josh Clark?

  Yes. So they, they did originally. I think they've kind of stopped, but it used to be really jarring.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, because that's the sound that happens when a nuclear facility is melting down.

• 23:41Josh Clark?

  Right. Forget your credit card, meltdown in a nuclear facility, basically the same thing.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah. So thanks NYU for that, right?

• 23:48Josh Clark?

  Well, okay, that was just part one of this study. This is a really robust study. 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? 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, we want you to speak normally, we want you to scream, speak."

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:17Josh Clark?

  And make a bunch of meaningless vocalizations like yips, yammers, yelps, that whole thing, right?

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 24:23Josh Clark?

  And then they analyzed those, just like they analyzed the recorded sounds, 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. So they're really zeroing in, and yet there's more to this study. This is how robust it was.

• 24:44Speaker 02

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

• 25:05Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  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."

• 25:14Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  And the sounds that were rated the scariest were the ones that were highest on the roughness scale. All makes sense.

• 25:20Josh Clark?

  Right. So they're really drilling down here. It keeps going, everybody. 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, and not just screams, but also artificial alarms too, and probably some of the nonsense sounds and musical sounds. And as they were listening, the screams and the alarms- Were the only ones that caused spikes in the amygdala. Remember, the amygdala has is where that that set aside pathway for screams is. 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.

• 26:02Josh Clark?

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

• 26:22Speaker 02

  So the upshot, to borrow a term from Josh, is that it seems like humans are specifically attuned 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 to kick into high gear. They found that this works if you're awake or asleep.

• 26:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  The the rough vocalizations and that rough domain that we were talking about penetrate human sleep cycles more than neutral vocalizations. 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. Like, I think what they're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that is that a scream that might be the same decibel level is like a really loud talk will penetrate that sleep cycle, unlike that really loud talk.

• 27:16Josh Clark?

  Yes, and they think it's because the amygdala is tuned to that 30 to 150 hertz roughness band. So the amygdala has its own route for getting you aroused, and not necessarily in the best way, when you hear a scream. And it's also listening out to a specific band of modulation to that that screams exist in. So clearly, thanks to our NYU researchers back in 2015, screams are a really important and kind of overlooked part of human speech, right? And

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 27:51Josh Clark?

  And they think also Chuck that not only has like have we evolved to develop this alarm system, which clearly is what it is, because not only you're saying help, you're also depending on how nice or altruistic the people listening are, you're also saying, 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. Like, we don't scream just out of an alarm system anymore. There's actually at least six other screams that they discovered that correlate or correspond to six other separate emotions.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, anger, of course, is going to be one. You can scream at somebody in traffic.

• 28:35Josh Clark?

  There's a Europe song called Scream of Anger.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Really?

• 28:39Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. And Europe, of course, is known for a different song.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, but you know what? I heard, uh, oh, what was it? That other Europe song I forgot about the other day on Hair Nation on Sirius XM.

• 28:52Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Uh, 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.

• 28:59Josh Clark?

  That's awesome.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Um, what was it? Keep on walking that road and I'll follow. Uh, yeah. And if a mirror should break, uh, superstitious.

• 29:11Josh Clark?

  That was Europe?

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was Europe. That was other big song besides Final Countdown.

• 29:16Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, so Scream of Ang-

• 29:17Speaker 02

  It's a great song.

• 29:18Josh Clark?

  Okay. Scream of Anger is even better. It's like actual metal tinged.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You just made me think of Europe. Um, they're, they're definitely not screamers. They had voices of angels.

• 29:30Josh Clark?

  They did.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Uh, obviously, scream and fear, which is kind of one of the things we've been talking about. Uh, screaming and pain.

• 29:36Josh Clark?

  Yikes.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  That's something that I have never experienced. I've been, I've felt great deals of physical pain, but I'm very internal. I kind of go inward. Um, but I've been to emergency rooms and a screamer in an emergency room is a very unsettling situation.

• 29:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Um, the one I always associate with that is Tom Berenger telling that guy who got shot in the gut in Platoon to eat the pain.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, that's right.

• 30:04Josh Clark?

  That guy was definitely screaming in pain.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, he put his hand over his mouth.

• 30:08Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Was that Junior? Yeah.

• 30:11Josh Clark?

  So, uh, there's also, this one's great, uh, scream of extreme joy.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, like at a concert, maybe?

• 30:18Josh Clark?

  Sure, that's one. Or if you, uh, 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. It's great. Just go look it up. It's like a 10-second clip.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Uh, I guess, you know, we're not gonna dance around this. We're adults here. Uh, obviously, during intercourse, an orgasm can produce, uh, quite a scream, I'm told.

• 30:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, next to that, I just have an ellipse.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Uh, intense pleasure. So, you know, that extreme joy and intense pleasure probably encapsulates both of those, if you're doing it right. Uh, and then a scream of sadness. Um, and I guess this is just, uh, like wailing plus.

• 31:09Josh Clark?

  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.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Well, that's what sadness is, right?

• 31:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess so. So, sure. I mean, maybe it's just me that was like, no, that's wrong. Um, a really good example of it as far as movies go is Toni Collette in Hereditary.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 31:33Josh Clark?

  She finds out that her daughter has died. It's gut-wrenching, the work she does. Like, like, oh my God, it's really tough to watch. And of course, it's all over the internet.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  I am about to say something I thought I would never say. I think I would like to see that movie again.

• 31:51Josh Clark?

  Oh, why? Did you not like it the first time?

• 31:53Speaker 02

  I loved it, but it was, it's a tough movie.

• 31:55Josh Clark?

  Oh, it is.

• 31:56Speaker 02

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

• 32:03Josh Clark?

  I've seen people here or there describe it as potentially the darkest dark comedy around.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 32:09Josh Clark?

  And there's, there's this one part that I think kind of supports it. Do you remember the part where, um, Steven is in the classroom and he messes himself up pretty good?

• 32:18Speaker 02

  Hmm, it's been a while, but yeah, sorta.

• 32:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's, I mean, it's really good. I've seen it, I think just a couple of times, but the second time I saw it was not too long ago. But Chuck, please, please, watch Saint Maud. As far as 824 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.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Uh, why haven't I heard of that? Is that?

• 32:45Josh Clark?

  I've told you to watch this before. Yeah, and I don't think you watched it because you would have definitely come back and been like, dude.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  Saint Maud.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  That's all I need to say.

• 32:53Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 32:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  Well, it's a British horror film. I'm all, I'm all about those.

• 32:58Josh Clark?

  It's good. There's, it's rough, though. Like, this is not for kids and there's, you know, really upsetting stuff throughout, so just FYI.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  All right, so back to screaming. Obviously rage, fear, pain, these are alarm screams. The non-alarm screams, like we talked about, the, the joy, intense pleasure. 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. It is a distinctly, uniquely human instinct to signal something positive with a scream. Animals don't scream out in joy.

• 33:32Josh Clark?

  No, but we do think that some non-human primates scream out in grief, though. Isn't that awful?

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Oh, man, yeah.

• 33:38Josh Clark?

  Gah. I think that's a great way to end this section and start with the ad break. What do you think?

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 34:02Josh Clark?

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• 34:25Josh Clark?

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• 34:41Speaker 02

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• 35:05Josh Clark?

  World Mental Health Day takes place in October, and it's really meant to be more than just awareness. It's about actually taking the next step and getting support if you need it.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  But a lot of people still talk themselves out of therapy. They think it's too expensive. They're not sure if it'll actually work. They don't know how to find the right therapist, or they just get overwhelmed trying to navigate the whole system.

• 35:24Josh Clark?

  And that's exactly what Rula is built to fix. Rula makes therapy feel a lot more approachable, a lot more human. You can find a therapist who actually fits your needs, not just whoever's available. And with insurance, sessions average around $15 copay.

• 35:38Speaker 02

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• 35:44Josh Clark?

  And it's not just about starting. Rula helps you stay consistent and actually make progress, because taking care of your mental health isn't a one-time thing. So if you've been thinking about therapy, don't talk yourself out of it. This is a really easy way to take that first step.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  So turn off the talk track that's keeping you from progress and head to rula.com, that is R-U-L-A dot com, to find a therapist the easy way.

• 36:11Josh Clark?

  We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong?

• 36:29Speaker 02

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• 36:47Josh Clark?

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• 37:24Speaker 02

  All right, so back to screaming. I was afraid you were going to scream at one point.

• 37:28Josh Clark?

  No, I wouldn't do that.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Not something we're gonna do. I can't remember the last time I tried to scream.

• 37:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, me either.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Like as a, like, hey, what's your scream sound like at a party or something?

• 37:38Josh Clark?

  Who does that?

• 37:40Speaker 02

  You know, that old party trick. And I wonder, like, I always think of, like, the best scream I've ever heard is probably from American movie, the documentary. You saw that, right?

• 37:53Josh Clark?

  No.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  The American movie, it was about the guys in Wisconsin making the low budget horror movie. That's why I always say Coven, because he pronounced it Coven.

• 38:02Josh Clark?

  I never saw that. I know what you're talking about. Is it worth seeing?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, 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, where the main guy is, uh, is trying to record screams for his low-budget horror film he's making in the studio. And Mike Schenck was this very, very low-key friend of his.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  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.

• 38:41Josh Clark?

  I've definitely.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  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.

• 38:49Josh Clark?

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

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Oh, it's, yeah, I guess that is a little bit spoiler, but it's a 20-year-old documentary, so, you know.

• 38:59Josh Clark?

  All right, I'll watch it, though, okay? If you watch same one.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  E.T. goes home, too, everybody.

• 39:04Josh Clark?

  Okay, so there's a, a, a name that's been kind of bestowed on some actresses over the years, which is scream queen.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:14Josh Clark?

  I always associate that with Jamie Lee Curtis, who got that from Halloween and prom night. It actually dates back like 50-plus years before Halloween with Fay Ray, when she was in King Kong in 1933. 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. And then they mixed them together to just make them as disturbing as possible. But Fay Ray, the 1930s actress, was the original scream queen.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  That's right. It's a pretty good scream, uh, not nearly as chilling as Mike Schenck's. But it was 1933. They did a pretty good job. Um, you usually associate it with, uh, like a scream queen, like, you know, 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 Caan, certainly, I mentioned earlier, from Misery. But another that was done in post-production, but is so great, uh, you should just check out this clip on YouTube. It's the chilling, uh, ending of Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1978 with Donald Sutherland. 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.

• 40:30Josh Clark?

  Oh.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Who was hitting that high-tension wire with a wrench. Ben Burton.

• 40:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was just a legend, wasn't he?

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, apparently this was layering pig squeals on top of each other.

• 40:42Josh Clark?

  Damn.

• 40:43Speaker 02

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

• 41:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so keep an eye on Donald Sutherland when you watch that movie for the first time.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 41:10Josh Clark?

  There's a couple others. Thomas Jane gives a really terrible scream at the end of The Mist. Which has one of the most unsettling.

• 41:22Josh Clark?

  Endings, I think, of any movie ever, maybe tied with It Comes in the Night.

• 41:28Josh Clark?

  Which is another really unsettling 824 movie. Bruce Campbell, he's a great man screamer, I guess scream king.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  He does everything great.

• 41:37Josh Clark?

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

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Great movie.

• 41:47Josh Clark?

  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. And it just so happens that my niece Mila Harris is in that movie too. She plays his and Kate Bosworth's daughter.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Oh, that's great. I love that.

• 42:05Josh Clark?

  It's out now.

• 42:07Speaker 02

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

• 42:13Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  When I was out in New York 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.

• 42:21Josh Clark?

  Oh, weird.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  And 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. And he said, well, Mila, Josh's future niece is right behind me.

• 42:32Josh Clark?

  That's awesome.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  It was very funny.

• 42:34Josh Clark?

  Thanks for circling back like that. That was really kind.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Of course. And then, you know, we have to also give due to the couple of more Scream queens, very famously Janet Leigh and Psycho. And you gotta talk about Neve Campbell in the movie Scream.

• 42:49Josh Clark?

  Yes, and I would make an assertion that Mia Goth is the current Scream queen from the Maxine trilogy.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Yo, for sure.

• 42:55Josh Clark?

  I think she's the one killing it right now.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's awesome. And speaking of Scream, and I'm only plugging an old movie crush because guest Nate Bargatze is now the biggest comedian on planet Earth.

• 43:08Josh Clark?

  I know, it's so great.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  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.

• 43:20Josh Clark?

  Did he know you were coming?

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I cornered him in a studio, and he's like, who's this guy?

• 43:25Josh Clark?

  He's such a good guy, too, man. It's like, his comedy's perfect. Like, I'm just really happy that he's so huge now.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  He's a great guy, and super, super nice in person. 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, so if you wanna, if you're a big fan of Nate's now and you wanna hear him talk to me, you can check out that old movie crush.

• 43:47Josh Clark?

  Don't just check out that old movie crush, check out all the movie crushes because they are all priceless gems.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I definitely miss that show, but, you know, some things just have to be retired eventually.

• 43:58Josh Clark?

  Exactly, Chuck.

• 44:01Josh Clark?

  So, did you mention death metal? I thought you did.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  I don't think so, but that's obviously a place where screaming can be a profession in a way.

• 44:11Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, so the University of Utah conducted these tests where they took dynamic MRI. 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 deathcore singer for a band called Lorna Shore. And he is extraordinarily talented. Whether you like deathcore or can't stand deathcore, go look up To the Hellfire, the Lorna Shore video, and his range of the work he does with screaming, like deathcore screaming, is 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, deathcore-wise or death metal-wise.

• 44:57Josh Clark?

  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. So these University of Utah researchers are like, what are you doing? Can we take MRIs of you singing? And they did. And it's really cool because the one of him just singing normally, you can barely see any movement in, inside the neck. Right?

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 45:23Josh Clark?

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

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 45:42Josh Clark?

  I thought so too.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, it sounds like he has something special going on in his neck junk. Because screaming can, can definitely like, it's very hard on your, on your throat. So good for him. He found his, his calling.

• 45:57Josh Clark?

  He found his niche. He got in where he fought in.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  That's right. 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 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, 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. The problem is, is that adults and doctors and nurses can't take it.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  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. 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.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  My god.

• 47:02Josh Clark?

  I know, sad.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  It's awful.

• 47:05Josh Clark?

  Uh, the, the reason why they think that it does, um, help with pain relief is because one of the, the hormones or one of the chemicals released in the fight or flight response is our endorphins, which can dull pain. So it does make sense that screaming could help you with pain. There's another clever use of screaming, if you ask me, than screaming in the emergency room, which is, um, replacing the current paradigm for creating anxiety inside a lab to study anxiety for research, um, which is to threaten people with a shock. And they've actually found that you can threaten people that with a scream and, and generate anxiety just as reliably. So people are like, we should stop threatening people

• 47:48Josh Clark?

  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. And that can generate anxiety as well.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  But, you know, we're so soft. Before long, they're gonna be like, you can't scream at people either.

• 48:03Josh Clark?

  Right. They'll be like, we, we want you to, to feel anxiety right now, please.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Would you, would you do that for me?

• 48:10Josh Clark?

  I'm sure the participant would be like, I feel anxiety all the time. Can do.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Right. Uh, then I guess finally we should at least mention, uh, scream therapy or primal scream therapy. I feel like we talked about this at a certain point, uh, but this has been around since the sixties. I felt like it was probably biggest maybe in the late sixties and seventies. Um, the original primal scream therapy psychologist was, um, Arthur Janoff. And this was based on the idea that like, we all have this repressed trauma from childhood. It's stored as primal pain. And, um, Arthur Janoff said, well, you know what? A good old fashioned screaming session can release that stuff and get it out there. Uh, the

• 48:53Speaker 02

  bad news is it turns out there's not a lot of evidence that supports it as, as being a credible form of, uh, therapy.

• 49:01Josh Clark?

  No. And actually I think it's possible it can hurt in trauma, um, therapy because screaming can arouse anxiety in the person screaming even too. So not necessarily the best thing to do.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  No, but very 60s, 70s. I could see that being a thing.

• 49:18Josh Clark?

  Super. There's like one of those wicker chairs that people used to take prom pictures in.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:24Josh Clark?

  One of the wicker throne. There's definitely one of those in the office.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think Black Moses album cover, wasn't Isaac Hayes in one of those?

• 49:32Josh Clark?

  I believe so, yeah. Was there like a panther laying at his feet, too?

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Probably, there should have been.

• 49:38Josh Clark?

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

• 49:46Speaker 02

  That's right, and I'm wrong, actually, because, of course, the Black Moses album cover was just that great picture of Isaac Hayes with his shades on and wearing that sort of striped colored hood, but maybe it was on the back. I definitely have seen Isaac Hayes in a wicker throne.

• 50:01Josh Clark?

  There you go.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe it was Escape from New York. All right, guys, 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. I often wished I was in the studio during a recording so I could comment or applaud, hey, like I did today.

• 50:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  It was sad, I was sad to learn that you weren't doing San Francisco Sketch Fest this year, but I'm hoping you come back next year. My friend Christine and I will be there. 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.

• 50:40Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  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, 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. 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. 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.

• 51:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  And then there's a PPS. I've often thought a good drinking game could be to drink every time Chuck says, "That's right," roll off the tongue.

• 51:26Josh Clark?

  Or for sure.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 51:28Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  But I don't drink alcohol, so if I were to play, I'd probably just get really well hydrated. It's very funny, Leslie S. in the San Francisco Bay area. And yeah, Leslie, we'd love to see you at our show next year, because hopefully we'll be there.

• 51:43Josh Clark?

  That was really, really sweet. Went a very nice email, Leslie. Thank you for taking the time to write all that. And thank you for sharing our Sesame Street episode. It's a pretty good one to share, if you ask me. 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 [email protected].

• 52:05Speaker 00

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

• 52:21Josh Clark?

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• 53:24Josh Clark?

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• 53:57Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.