Ologies with Alie Ward - Screamology (LOUD VOCALIZATIONS) with Harold Gouzoules

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

I scream, you scream, we all scream for… a brand new, screaming hot episode of Ologies. Be warned *slaps the top of this ep* you can fit so many screams in this bad boy. (Seriously though, there’s a lot of screaming in this episode, it’s probably not the one to gently fall asleep to.) What kinds of screams you ask? We got birds, foxes, caterpillars, movie stars, children, James Bond? YES. What is a scream? Is it the same as yelling? How far can you hear a scream? Why do we scream at concerts? What’s up with primal scream therapy? Join us as we hoot and holler with internationally acclaimed Emory professor of psychology Dr. Harold Gouzoules for the answers to these and so many more of your questions as we learn about the study of that most animal of vocalizations: screaming.Dr. Gouzoules’s Emory University Bioacoustics LabA donation was made to American Diabetes AssociationMore episode sources and linksSponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media

Oh hey, it's your sister's high school friend who is eating frozen custard in the background of a hometown date on The Bachelor. Not really. Ally Ward, back with an episode you're gonna hate. Maybe. I dare you to listen. It is packed with bananas information about the human mind and psyche and about fear and power and social contagions and delightful squeals, but it is absolutely not soothing whatsoever. Don't fall asleep to this. Don't play this with your grandpa recovering from surgery on the couch next to you. Don't turn to me if you're having anxiety about your colonoscopy prep. Not the episode. Not the episode for that at all. This one is gonna tear at the fabric of your sanity and thisologist offers so much cocktail party

trivia. Oh boy. So he did his undergrad in animal behavior and got a master's in psychology and a PhD in zoology, a postdoc with primates at Rockefeller University and is now a professor in the Department of Psychology at Emory, where he has been since 1984. And if you have seen an article about the study of human screams, it is likely that this person has been quoted. So here we go. But first, thank you to all the patrons who submitted wonderful questions for this. You can join the Patreon at patreon.com slash allergies for a buck a month and submit questions. Also, thanks for spreading the word about the show, telling friends and leaving reviews, which helps so much. This one this week, holy shit. So worth it. I'm gonna put the review at the end of the

episode as the secret. I want to read the whole thing. Anyway, on to scrimmology. So the word scream, it's said to come from a Scandinavian term, meaning to terrify or cry aloud. So vocalization via forced air and the term scrimmology was coined in the press years ago about this guy. So I reached out. Luckily, we had some help in booking him. We talked before the holidays on a day when Emory was having some giant fundraising drive on campus. But luckily, his office appeared to be soundproofed. So we warmed up our voices and chatted about movie screams, which animals scream the difference between yelling versus screaming, happy screaming, scream queens, scream kings, the decibels and distance of screams, screaming in your nightmares, boy bands, dictators, death

metal and more with plenty of examples in here that we try to keep quiet, but they're in there. So get ready with primatologist, research psychologist, and one of the world very few professional dedicated scrimologists, Dr. Harold Gazoulis. Once again, that name is Harold Gazoulis. Gazoulis, it's a Greek name, three syllables, so pretty simple for a Greek name. And he him kind of like someone who's been a victim of a kazoo theft and is now kazoulis. Hi, Ali. Hi, you sound great. Well, let's let's hope. I was almost at heart attack coming down here. Atlanta traffic is notorious and Friday afternoon is the worst. And it just turned out to be one of those worst case scenarios. Oh, no. And I was

rushing to get down here and managed. And then I discovered that the campus is a very noisy place today because Emory, my university is kicking off their big capital campaign. And so there's music playing everywhere. Now, fortunately, my office seems to be tucked away just sufficiently well. So it's not really noticeable. I don't know if you can hear anything in the background. No, I can't at all. Okay, good. Good. Now, is does your office have to be well insulated in case there are screams? Or is it just? Well, well, my my lab is more isolated. And yet the story goes that people walk by and will hear some of the screams that we're listening to and and talking about within the lab and with my students and wondering what's going on. And so they have to hear, oh,

that's just just Dr. Gazoulis's scream research. Don't don't worry about it. Don't panic. Don't run for the hills. How long have people been calling you a scrimologist? Only quite recently. Really? Okay. Within the context ofologies, I would be first be a biologist. That's where my degree is in. And it's actually in zoology, my PhD. And I'm working in a psychology department and have been for 37 years, if that can actually be the true. Wow. Here at Emory, and my training is in ethology, which is the study of animal behavior. And the animals I work with mostly are non human primates. So technically, I'm a primatologist as well. You're so many allergies under one roof. I am a lot of allergies. But that I was talking to a reporter. Oh, I don't

know. A year and a half ago, he said, well, is it okay if I refer to you as a scrimologist? And at the time, I thought, hmm, that's a little off. But go ahead, if you'd like. If it's something that would enhance your peace, please, scrimology would be fine. Well, it's lucky for me because after that came out, I had a lot of people screen capping it and saying, there's a scrimologist. You have to find him. Please ask him everything. Please find him right now. So yeah, I've had my sights on you for a while. Oh, well, that's cool. And I must say that my daughter-in-law is one of your biggest fans. When I mentioned the possibility of this interview, she was so excited. So that's really cute. So yes, thank you for vouching for a Sam. We absolutely owe you one.

And I know that you would expect this episode in October, everyone, but right now it's January and it's cold and the snow is dirty and slushy. My roof is leaking. Is it a good time to bellow your throat raw? What would you say, time of year, as a culture, people scream the most? Do you think it's in the summer when people are getting squirted with water guns? Is it during haunted house season? Is it when they get their bills after the holidays? When do we scream the most? That is very interesting. I don't think I've ever had that question. But I would say people in general, you probably hear more screams outside in the summer and they come mostly from children because they're at swimming pools and playgrounds and just a lot of social interaction. And as any

parent and most adults can appreciate and know, children just scream all the time when they get them together. So I would say summer, I think probably that's what I would think. Yeah, that was my hypothesis. I'm glad that it holds a little bit of water. But what is a scream and who does it? What animals can we classify as screaming? What's the difference between a call and a behavior and a scream? Screams are a particular category of vocalization in the repertoire of many different species and we can come back to that in a bit. But there isn't a precise and absolutely formal and totally accepted definition of a scream. But there are key features of screams. So in terms of the length of a particular utterance, it would be from half a

second to about a second and a quarter, maybe stretching it to two seconds. But anything beyond that begins to sound unnatural. Screams are high pitched and there are often harmonics around the fundamental frequency. But screams also break into chaotic noise as well. So they're not pure tones, although some people tend to produce screams that are more tonal and frequency modulated and others have more noisy harsh sounding screams. So there's some individual variation as well. There's an acoustic parameter that's referred to as roughness. It's rapid variation and modulation of amplitude. Fluctuation in a particular range is characteristic of screams. And there's one group of researchers, Luke Arnall, has claimed that in fact it is definitive. That

is what inherently categorizes a scream. But subsequent research has shown that other kinds of human vocalizations also have this characteristic of roughness. And so it can't be exclusive to screams. You know what? Let's go through a few quick vocal basics here, shall we? So frequency of the sound waves determines their pitch and that is measured in something called Hertz. But the amplitude is the height of the sound wave and that determines the volume. And amplitude is measured in decibels, which you've probably heard of. So the roughness, what does the roughness mean? That is the rate of change in volume. And the more the volume fluctuates in a scream, even though it seems imperceptible to you, it'll land as more shrill. And it'll probably freak

you out more. Infants crying exhibit roughness as does a human whistling, just in case you've ever heard either of those and just wanted to put on earmuffs and then just descend into a sewer hole in the middle of the city street when you hear it. That's normal. So coming back to your question, we all recognize screams. One of the projects that we did was to play screams and other kinds of vocalizations, including yells and moans and laughter and even sounds like sneezes. And it sounds like a simple, silly little project. But what we were looking to see is whether participants agree as to what constitutes a scream. And with humans, of course, we scream in a variety of different contexts. I'm literally screaming right now.

And that we can come back to later, perhaps, because that distinguishes us from other species. I know that was part of your question. What other species scream? So we were interested to see whether people agree as to what constitutes a scream. So that's independent of formal scientific definitions. Do we know a scream when we hear it? And the answer is very clearly yes. Species that scream very considerably, even some species of frogs scream. You pick up the frog and it produces a vocalization that is clearly scream like. Wow. Rabbit scream. They're very popular and you can probably find it. There are videos of rabbits screaming. Somebody picks the rabbit out of the hutch out of the cage. And it just belts out a scream that is so human-like. And I

think it gets a lot of hits, it gets a lot of clicks, because people just find it so funny that a rabbit sounds so human-like and goats as well. Yes, I was going to say, I've seen videos of goats screaming and it seems like someone's dubbing over. I know. Yes, it is very deep. That's a perfect imitation of a goat scream, by the way. But yes, indeed, they're all human-like and sound-like. And what that says is that as a vocalization type, screams are evolutionarily conserved. So they don't vary all that much. But people find it surprising that animal screams sound as much like human screams as they do. Do they, though? Well, yes. According to the Google search that I started with, what animal sounds like that then auto-filled a woman screaming?

So apparently a lot of people hear a red fox and then call the cops. Bar now, walls. Sound like your ancestor, coming back from the grave to haunt you for taking such bad care of your skin. Even caterpillars apparently will yell their heads off, as evidenced in this YouTube clip uploaded by Matt C, whom's fingers, I'm assuming, are the ones in frame gently squeezing the butt of a neon green moth larva. But that air I learned is likely coming out of spiracles, so scientifically not a scream. A scream itself is when air is passed through the vocal cords, with greater than usual force. My friend, Workapedia, says this can be performed by any

creature possessing lungs, including humans. So larva and spiracles, I'm sorry. You're just doing some kind of respiratory fart at anyone who squeezes your butt. I don't blame you, but yes, according to Dr. Harris, caesules screams require a lot of vocal force and cause the vocal folds to vibrate in a chaotic, inconsistent way. So that is some of the what, but onto the why. And of course, if we want to dive into some of the sort of evolutionary questions, the original screams in species like frogs and rabbits probably served as a way to elude capture by a predator. So if a predator has you in its grasp, and it's the last ditch effort in essence to escape, a loud, sudden vocalization could sometimes, at least occasionally,

startle the predator and give the prey, the victim, some small chance of escape. And there's also suggestions in the literature that screams could attract other predators, and thus thwart the efforts of the first predator that's got the prey. So by screaming, it attracts attention. That's another characteristic of screams. They definitely attract attention from by listeners. So that's how screams probably started, as one way to defend against predators and predation. Okay, but frogs don't gather at the pond, giggle, screeching during water fights, or turn trees into money, and then give that money to other frogs who have created a haunted

pond for them. So what's happening in primate brains like mine? But then in the evolution of sociality in species like monkeys and apes, where complex social interactions are dictated and governed by vocalizations, screams come to serve another purpose, and that is to solicit support from your friends, your allies, your relatives, and especially in the context of dominance interactions. Because as you might know, in monkeys and apes, it's not how big, how strong, how tough you are, it's who you know. And so you have your allies. And in the monkeys that I've studied in the past, and continue to be interested in, the social relationships are primarily among females and

female matrilineal groups. They're the lifelong residents of the social group, whereas the males hightail it out of the group at sexual maturity and find their way into another group for mating and to live the rest of their lives. But the females stay together for their entire social lives, and they help one another develop and maintain their dominance positions in the social group. And of course, if you're going to have an ally, you need a way to recruit that ally. And so screams, again, acoustically similar to what you see in frogs and rabbits and goats and so forth, evolved in a more complex way and diversified acoustically so that the monkeys can communicate more subtle details about the fights that they're in. Is the opponent dominant?

Is the opponent subordinate? Is the aggression intense? Or is it modest and mild? So what we think happened is that at least within the context of fights and what the scientific literature refers to as agonistic interactions, there has been diversification to send more subtle and nuanced messages about what kind of fight and who the opponent is. And that's information that's pertinent to an ally, a relative, for example, the mom of the victim or the sister who might be out of sight foraging in dense vegetation or something, but adheres the vocalization. And of course, that implies that it has to recognize who the screamer is. And it's very clear that that's the case. It's my daughter. It's my cousin. It's my aunt.

And they come to the rescue and intervene in a way that is consistent and appropriate for the fight that is taking place. That's information that they get through the screams. I'm learning a lot. And is there something about the frequency or the amplitude of the sound that hits our brains differently because of instinct and genetics? Or is that something that really has to be learned by primates from a young age through social connections and responses? They scream naturally and even human babies in their first vocal efforts. Crying is, of course, distinct and separate from screaming.

But screams can be part of the vocal output that very young babies produce. Any new parents out there? Maybe you're up nursing at 4 a.m. or whatever. Just think of your baby as emitting vocal output, not screaming. Maybe that'll help you not want to stuff it back into your womb for another year. I don't know. I have a very old quiet dog, so I'm not sure how it works. But when it's a happy child and it's shrieking into light, just know that in Dr. Kazula's speculation, it's doing that so that if a large raptor swoops down and tries to pick up your small child out of a group of many small children and your back is turned, you think, wait, that sounds like the spine-tingling yell of my offspring. So thanks,

Evolution. Also, do we learn this or is it just hardwired in our jiggly, goopy, complex brains? I don't think you have to learn to scream. The interesting question is whether or not humans have to learn to distinguish different kinds of screams that we produce in different contexts. Because, of course, unlike other species, we, as everybody knows, when you point this out, they all nod and say, sure, humans will scream in fear, pain, aggression, frustration, excitement, particular forms of excitement like sex. I'll have what she's having. And in startle situations, lots of people, including my wife, will produce a startle scream when she sees a cockroach or some people with a mouse or that kind of situation.

So the core of a scrimologist's job is to figure out if humans can distinguish screams in different contexts and to notice what the hell is up. Man, I hope they collect some kind of huge catalog of screams. That would be amazing. And one of the ways that we've done that is to collect a huge catalog of screams. So we've got literally a scream library that has been harvested from the internet and YouTube. Because, of course, as we know, everybody posts their entire life history on the internet these days. And so you can see there are many examples of naturally occurring real screams that we can use in the research. And then, of course, there's the opportunity to take screams from TV shows

or movies and those acted renditions of screams. And how has your research changed over 37 years as people have more access to recording devices and platforms to share them? Oh, gosh, yes, it makes a huge, huge difference to how the research is done and what is possible. Back when we started, and with my wife and I, that began studying screams when we were postdocs at the Rockefeller University in New York. Wait, is this scrimologist married to another scrimologist? I'm screaming. So Dr. Sally Gazoulis spent time as a behavioral biologist working with non-human primates and also worked with some human primates, namely Harold. And we were working with a very prominent, primarily he was

a bird researcher. Professor Peter Marlar was his name, very well known animal behaviorist. And he kind of dabbled in primate vocalizations as well. Again, his prime research was in bird song and bird song acquisition. But he always wanted to have some graduate students and postdocs working on primate vocalizations. And the pair of researchers who had preceded us in his lab had studied alarm calls in a species of African monkey called the vervet monkey. And that work revealed that this species of monkey had evolved different kinds of alarm calls, acoustically different alarm calls that they gave in response to different kinds of predators. And the primary predators were leopards, marshal eagles, and pythons. Now, those predators

hunt and attack in different ways. They have different strategies. And thus, the response to the presence of one of those different kinds of predators will be different. So you can't make do, if you're a vervet monkey, with one kind of alarm call. They had to come up with a system that had different vocalizations, in essence, associated with those predators. So you waltzed into this episode casual, maybe leaned against a wall and thought, this is just going to be about horror films. But now you know that monkeys can straight up talk. Well, if you ask me, but is it talking? Is it language? So Harold and Ape uses language to make speech about the history of the perception of communication.

Dating back to Darwin in 1872, he published Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. And Expression of the Emotions is the key part of that title, because that is what everybody believed animals communicate about, their emotions. And that remained true. And that's what was the conventional wisdom about animal communication, that while we humans can with language talk about the external world and anything we can imagine, animals were restricted to communicating about their emotions, aggression, fear, sex. But that vervet monkey work that came out in the late 1970s and early 1980s revealed that there were some animals that could use vocalizations to index, to refer to particular occurrences in the external world, namely the presence of different kinds of

predators. Wait, so what is screaming and what is a warning? Is screaming emotional, but alarm calls are informational? Alarm calls, people sometimes confuse alarm calls because screams can be alarming. But in the animal behavior literature, when they talk about an alarm call, it's a specific kind of vocalization that refers to the presence of a predator. Whereas a scream, you can scream when a predator has you in its jaws, but that's not alerting others about the presence of that predator. That's, again, a different kind of evolutionary adaptation to avoid being the dinner or the lunch of that predator. So as a postdoc working with monkey screams for science, Harold was listening for vocalizations that might convey information about external events.

So were they screaming for help until by playing tapes of their alarm calls, they could learn who showed up for whom. And hopefully that did not cause a lot of monkey risks from just sowing distrust like a monkey who cried leopard. Anyway, we've pursued it in different ways with different species of monkeys, looked at the difference between males and females, because as I mentioned earlier, the males end up leaving the group that they're born into and they enter a group and they don't have allies. Maybe they might have a brother or a cousin who also migrated to that same group, but it's the females that have these persistent, long-lasting social relationships and they tend to scream, whereas males drop screaming from their repertoires as they reach sexual maturity.

Really? Yes, in these monkeys. And is that a learned social behavior then to not scream so as to differentiate yourself from the females? Well, it does indeed seem to be learned, but it's learned because when a male screams, he gets attention, unwanted attention, from the dominant males. You talking to me? And sometimes even high-ranking females. And so what we think and what has been suggested in the literature is that because they get attacked when they scream, because they draw attention when they

scream, they just stop screaming. So males stifling their emotions? I think so. In other species as well. Dudes, out there. Let it out. You're human. Scream it into a jar. Release it on a mountaintop like Yosemite Sam or those people who sell their farts on Etsy. What about in humans? Is there a biologic sex difference or a learned gender difference in terms of who screams when?

Well, just in terms of your experience, what would you think? What would you say? I would say we think people who identify as women would scream more than those who do not. That's a very well-stated hypothesis. Yes, and I agree. And I think if you look on YouTube again, in particular contexts, there's some interesting contexts such as opening a present. And of course, everybody again records Christmas and birthdays and then it's up on. And you can see when somebody opens a present and it turns out to be unexpected and just terribly exciting, often there's a lot of screaming. But who does that screaming? It's young girls. It's women. I've never seen a boy or a male.

And adult males scream in that kind of context. So there are, at the very least, contexts in which there are gender differences in terms of the production of screams. Think about the movies. I mean, we've been watching James Bond since the 1960s, right? And all the different actors. Have you ever heard James Bond scream? No, of course not. I don't think so. Yeah, that's so probably cultural too. Oh, I agree. Absolutely.

One notable exception, though, is Daniel Craig and Casino Royale being tortured. Okay, so to set this up, he's getting whipped in the nards with a ship rope and being told that he won't be recognized as a man when this guy's done with him. But since emasculation is apparently illegal in the Bond universe, his screams turn into kind of a sexualized joy. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And then victory. Sorry, spoiler. No, it's not that men cannot scream. They certainly can. And again, those aggressive

screams, just to go back to the movies, have you ever seen the movie Brave Heart with Mel Gibson? Yes. Yes, of course. Yes. Yeah, the fights between the Scots and the English, they're prefaced with these loud aggressive screams on the part of the Scots. It screams are used as a way to intimidate opponents as well. It's not that males don't scream, but they don't scream in the kinds of contexts that women tend to scream in. Another interesting difference is rock concerts. And I've thought about this a lot. It's not anything that could be easily tested in a formal scientific way. But again,

we've all seen footage of the early shows Ed Sullivan and the Beatles and so forth. Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles. And who is it that's doing the screaming? Well, it's the young female fans. And that's true before the Beatles. When it was Elvis Presley, it's true when it was before Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra. And after the Beatles, One Direction and Justin Bieber. And it goes on and on. And even with a concert with somebody like Katy Perry, Megastar Attractive, but you don't get that kind of screaming reaction that you do with the boy bands. And so it's an interesting question. Why is it that there tends to be this difference in certain kinds of contexts? I've kind of playfully suggested,

and I hope no one finds it offensive. Okay, this dude is a literal scrimmologist, and he's got an idea. But it seems to me that the screaming in that context is almost competitive. It's not conscious. I don't believe it's conscious. But I think there's emotional contagion. And the sort of arousal level tends to be expressed, not in yelling, but in screaming. And it's, it might be in a sort of evolutionary sense, a way to say, look at me, again, screams always attract attention. And by screaming, perhaps these megastars are what is prompting the screaming. Just a little less fun example of that, there are historical descriptions of the Nazi rallies with Hitler in attendance,

and young women screaming. And again, so it's not just culture and the presentation of rock stars and so forth and the tradition of screaming. I wonder if when Caesar went down the streets of Rome, whether there was screaming as well. But again, it was the women who screamed at Hitler, for Hitler. It's a really interesting phenomenon, something that would be challenging to test or to explore in a more formal scientific way. But just as an observation, I think it's really quite strikingly interesting. Yeah, you know, it's funny, my mom and her sister saw the Beatles in the 60s, and somehow their picture got on the front page of the Chronicle, just in a picture of screaming girls. And my mom and her sister still assert that they each made

eye contact with a different Beatle that night. And I think it's interesting to think if I scream loud enough, maybe they'll look my direction. Indeed. Well, you know, I think it's an interesting hypothesis. There was a student, of course, my students, I teach animal behavior here at Emory, and most of them know that I'm also interested in screams and human screams. And one of the students came up to me after class one day and said, I've got a story for you, Dr. Gazoulis, and I think you might find it interesting. He said, a year or so ago, my parents asked me, no, they told me that I would have to go to a Justin Bieber concert with my younger sister. And she said, I hate Justin Bieber. I'm not a fan. I did not want to go. I knew I would be embarrassed.

But as a good older sister, she went to the concert. And but here's the funny part. She said, despite my best efforts, I found myself screaming. Oh, no. Yeah. It was hilarious. But it again suggests that there's something infectious, emotional contagion, if you will. And so, many unanswered questions, especially in that arena. What about the catharsis of a scream? Why does screaming sometimes feel so good or relieve pain or feel like an outlet? It does. You know, years ago, and I think it was in the 60s, and it's now discredited and no longer talked about. But there was something called the primal scream. I don't know if you've heard. Yeah. Yeah. And the idea was you could feel better if you just let it all hang out through

screaming. Now, again, not just yelling, but screaming in particular. And so, screaming is, remember, a nonverbal vocal expression. And to shout generally means saying something at the top of your volume. And yelling is supposed to mean unarticulated wailing, no words, just sound. But I feel like we use yelling to mean shouting. Like, let's say that you broke curfew, right? And your mom yelled at you. But it was actual yelling, just like gibberish shrieking. You would probably get home earlier next time. Although, Harold makes the point that sometimes when we know what we're getting into, the spike of an alarm can feel good. So, we toss money toward roller coaster terror and pay to get chased around Knott's Berry Farm by actors carrying chainsaws.

And why is it that we do that? Why do we like to be scared? Again, we can speculate. I think that screaming has been so important in the evolutionary past that, in essence, practicing is something that is advantageous. And our brains treat it as rewarding. So, you could look on YouTube and search for scream contests. And they involve people, often a pair of people. Young girls tend to do this more often again. But they'll scream, and they scream in a competitive way. One screams, the other screams. Who screams louder? Who screams longer? Little kids will do that. It's something that is done socially. And I think what it does is expose the people that you're close to, your friends,

your relatives, to the particular renditions of a scream that an individual produces. In terms of a vocalization for permitting individual recognition, screams are not ideal. And that's because the air is forcefully projected through the larynx and through the vocal folds in a way that produces chaotic vibrations, chaotic in the sense that they're not as predictable as normal speeches. So, very quickly, we can get familiar with someone's voice and recognize it when we pick up the phone. But the theoretical literature would suggest that, for screams, that's not the case, because there's that lack of predictability. A quote I like from Jurassic Park, nature finds a way. So, from the origin of screams, again, to deal with the imminent death

due to a predator, you have to, in essence, expose your friends and relatives to the kind of scream that you produce. That's maybe why kids scream as much as they do. In essence, they're driving their parents nuts and the neighbors nuts. But through that effort, again, evolutionarily, it's nothing conscious, needless to say, but that exposure to screams allows for more ready identification. Oh, that's my kid. So, maybe that's one of the reasons that we tend to scream and enjoy screaming and actually seek out experiences that prompt us to scream. Okay, but what if you're on the other side of the chainsaw and you've been paid to scream? Does a scream have to be an utterance that is

kind of unintentional? It just has to come out of you? Or does it still count as a scream if you are consciously going, ah, is that a scream or not? Sure. And of course, actors, good actors, do that all the time. And they convey an emotion through a scream. And presumably, they're not experiencing that precise emotion. I'm not an expert in acting techniques, but I understand that sometimes they will try to generate or create the internal state, the emotional state that would allow for the production of a scream or other kinds of emotional expression. But some people are really good at producing, let's say, convincing screams. And that's one of the studies that we did. We presented participants with real screams

and active screams and asked them to judge which were active and which were real. They were terrible. They couldn't do it. Really? Really? Yeah. What kind of movies did you pull from? Was this Meryl Streep or was this a horror movie on the homework channel? A range, dating all the way back to one of my favorites because I'm a primatologist and interested in screams, the original King Kong, 1933 with Faye Ray. And as you probably know, they coined the term scream queen back then. And so these are people like Faye Ray, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kate Capshaw, Kim Basinger, Phyllis Coates, probably not a name that you would recognize or many people. But she played Lois Lane in the 1950s Superman TV show,

had a very distinctive scream. I'd recognize it anywhere. Hello? Hello, Ms. Lane? Of course, she was always screaming for Superman to come aid her. I'm so familiar with people who scream in movies, actors and actresses and so forth. And I had a subscription to Netflix for a while where I was getting DVDs. And I'm sure the algorithm pegged me as just the biggest horror film fan out there. But actually, I was again, harvesting for screams for the research. Work related. That's right. Can I ask you questions from patrons, listeners? Oh, of course. Okay, good. I told them you're coming on. I sent them a link to your research gate and they have

a bunch of questions. So let's just lightning around. Let's see how many we can answer. Okay. Before we dive in, let's take some cash. We're going to toss it at a cause. And Dr. Gazoulis would like to point that money toward the American Diabetes Association, which educates the public about diabetes and helps those affected by it through funding research to manage, cure and prevent diabetes. So that is the American Diabetes Association. So Cha-ching, team pancreas. So that money toss was made possible by sponsors of the show, whom I like. Okay, let's get to your blood curdling curiosities. A bunch of you. I have Elise Sanchez, Jody Pierce, Gerald Thompson, Elora Smith, Paige McLaughlin, and Alicia Rae Bell asked Harold to simply play favorites. Nathan,

Andrew Leigh Flight. You're going to like this. I ran to your question. Madison Stewart and a bunch of other listeners want to know who has the best movie scream? Well, I would just out of sentimentality, go for Faye Rae. Okay. And that is because it combines primatology and screaming. So I would say Faye Rae. Faye Rae, a classic starlet in an era full of helpless heroines, she shrieked her way into forever fame via King Kong. And if you're thinking, wow, a classic 1933 Hollywood picture show for me to watch, well, some undertones of the film can be pretty socially jarring nowadays. How so? Well, for more on that, you can see the work of Argentinian sociologist of culture and the arts, someone named Juan Antonio Roche Carcel, who wrote

a whole paper about the intersection of the 1929 financial collapse and the Great Depression, and then the subsequent xenophobia that started to appear in horror films, and essentially the fear of the other. We could do a whole side episode just on this side, but I'm going to link his work at my website. But did the Angeneux Faye Rae, did she gasp and scream in her final breaths? Nope. No. Lucky for her. She lived a long 96 years and she just died peacefully in her sleep. But what scream queens took over for her? But I'm trying to think which of the Harrison Ford movies Kate Capshaw was in. Oh, Indiana Jones? Indiana is one of the Indiana Jones, and it's the one with Kate Capshaw. And she just gives

up just a stellar performance in terms of screams in different contexts. It's really quite amazing. And another example is Kim Beesinger in the original Batman with Jack Nicholson. She produces screams in a wide range of contexts, and she's great too. So I've got a number of favorites. There's no such thing as a scream king. Yeah, I was going to say, who scream, what men scream? There are some. Yeah, there's gotta be some, right? Do you know that the TV show New Girl, it was on a few, yeah, five or six years, I'm blanking on the Nick who played Nick, the actor. Oh, he has, it starts with a J, but yes. Yeah, yeah. I'm blanking on it. It'll come to me in a bit, but. If you watch New Girl,

you've been screaming. Jake Johnson, his name is Jake Johnson. He played Nick Miller on New Girl, and my ex-boyfriend Michael used to wait tables at a Vietnamese place in LA and said when Jake came in, he was really nice. So I just wanted to tell people that. A few other scream kings, just to name check them, they deserve it. The film critic Rachel Roth says that their rise is really the result of female characters being more than just monster bait, so that people who identify as males could start to be the screamers. And Roth says that Bruce Campbell of the Evil Dead Movies is a total scream king. So is Evan Peters, an American horror story, and Daniel Kaluya, of Get Out is also worthy of this scream king scepter. But yes, Jake Johnson, a certified

top-notch man of hollers, as deemed by this professional screamologist. He's got an interesting scream. And he uses it to great effect in that show on multiple occasions. Startle screams. I mean, he gets startled, I think. What about Homer Simpson? I think he's a scream king. Thank you. You know, I'm not, I'm not a huge fan of The Simpsons. I have to admit something, and I don't think I've ever watched an entire episode of The Simpsons. If you just look up Homer screams, he has a very iconic, it's a little bit like this. Yeah. Okay. Oh, no, I've heard that. I've heard that. And of course, there's the classic Wilhelm scream. Yes. How do you feel about that? Well, it is something that obviously we've been aware of.

I've been aware of from the start of our human scream research. And it's something that you have to, to take in consideration when you use screams from movies and TV. You know, I recognize it all the time. So the Wilhelm scream, just a little background, it's a stock sound effect that was originally recorded in the 1950s for a swamp scene. And it was labeled on an old reel, man being eaten by alligator, and the man being actor Sheb Woolley. And decades later, the sound designer for Star Wars tucked this scream into a scene of Luke Skywalker shooting a stormtrooper off a ledge. And folks were like, nice. So then they kept using it. And once you know the scream, you'll hear it over and over again in movies. It's kind of like a little sonic

treasure embedded just for you. It's been in Transformers and Lord of the Rings and Toy Story, Wonder Woman 1984 also used it. So did Tron, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, popped it in there. And it sounds like this. Of course, there's super imposition of a scream for some individuals, but they tend to be not the main stars. So the way I describe it, remember the original Star Trek? And the people that always got bumped off in the first few minutes were what I referred to as the red shirts. And I think that that's actually a term that is used by the fans of the show. That they're just the crew members that get bumped off by the alien or the whatever evil is out there. And they're not going to be

producing screams. If they scream, it's going to be a Wilhelm scream like. But you'd look at somebody like Kim Basinger over her career in the different movies, and you get screams from different movies. Is she who's screaming? There's just no doubt about that. So again, it is something, it's a fascinating question. And the classic Wilhelm scream is so recognizable and inserted by Spielberg and George Lucas and other, you know, it's just an in-joke for them to sneak it in again in the a lot of the Harrison Ford movies. And it's become a meme almost. It is, it is absolutely. And correct me, but did your research find that actors tended to scream longer or the less believable screams were the ones that were longer? If they extend again in that domain close

approximating three seconds, then that tends to be deemed less believable. That makes sense. For more on this, you can feel free to cozy up in your little reading nook with Harold's 2021 paper, The Emotional Canvas of Human Screams, Patterns and Acoustic Cues and the Perceptual Categorization of a Basic Call Type. And that research was conducted at Emery's Bioacoustics Lab, and they used screams collected from movies and TV and ads and YouTube videos and some commercial sound banks. And I read the details of the study and it said that, you know, for experiments like this where they're hooking volunteers up to what sounds like people dying, there is an institutional review board that has to sign off on it. But the volunteers gave informed

written consent. They got class credit for completing the study. No word on what happens if they bounced after 2.12 seconds, which is the average duration of an angry scream. Those are the longest. The study also showed that happy screams clock in around one and a half seconds, fear and pain screams, both about 1.3 seconds in length, and the shortest type of scream, quick and easy ones, frustration and surprise. So gasps and grunts each at about a third of a second, just in case you have to fake it for anything. Now, you know, now the loudest of all of those also anger, which was the longest. So take some deep breaths, maybe go lock yourself in your car, go rip out a few more on that in a minute. But while we're here, some patrons,

including very quiet first time question asker, Brixton Moss, as well as Breckin Heart and Boreal Becca, had volume inquiries. First time at question asker, Tony Vessels, and a ton of other listeners want to know how far can a scream travel and still be heard, and essentially how loud can a human scream? Right. That's a great question. We first noticed studying monkeys that you could be hundreds of yards away and hear screams. And that's certainly true with the screams from children at the swimming pool next near our house. I'm just amazed always. You can't hear the conversations. But you can hear the screams. So I would say, and of course, it would depend upon the acoustic features of the particular environment.

If you're in a concrete canyon, the sound will be transmitted further than in a forest, for example. But hundreds of yards at the very least, I would say. So given that screams are defense against predation, this brings to mind one of the most chilling opens to a book I've ever read, the book Helter Skelter. And I think it may have been the only page of the book I read having picked it up in middle school because my future crime reporter, Sister Celeste, was reading it. But it was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon. The canyons above Hollywood and Beverly Hills play tricks with sounds. A noise clearly

audible a mile away may be indistinguishable at a few hundred feet. And that imagery always stuck with me. And as an Angelino, I could say it is not comforting. But let's say that your life isn't in peril. And maybe you're just screaming for clout. If you're a middle-aged, blonde woman named Jill Drake, you could set the world record for the loudness of a human scream. She practically blisters paint at 129 decibels, somewhere between a chainsaw and a nearby gunshot. But what if you can't do it? Asked patrons Rahala, Daniel Burrs, Rachel Kendrick, Nina Evesie, Jessica Kleist, Leah, Alia Myers, M.B. Felix-Wolf, Robin Kuhn, Janelle McIntyre, and first-time question submitters August Seafrit, Lisa Mercier, Frank Hendricks, and Kim Hamlin. And as someone

who has had strangers point kitchen knives toward her throat, not on a movie set, but just on Beverly Boulevard in LA, I can tell you that screaming loud is harder than it looks or sounds. Okay, I'm a person who has been mugged. I survived. But for myself and for a lot of other listeners, including Sonny Brizmi, Marin Ellis, and Bridget Lawrence, Francesca Huggins, a lot of people wanted to know in Marin Ellis' words, why can't my screams come out loud when I'm distressed? Yelling for one of my munchkins who's in danger, my scream comes out hoarse and almost muffled when I need it to be loud and alarming. And Sonny wants to know why is it sometimes when someone goes to scream, nothing comes out? I had somebody contact me. It was a young woman

in Australia. And she emailed me and said, you know, have you ever heard of this situation? I cannot scream. She said, I've never screamed in my life. And so it wasn't restricted to, you know, a particular dangerous situation or an attack or anything. She said she was incapable of screaming. And I had never heard of this. And I don't know that it has been defined or characterized in the psychological literature. And again, she said, it's not that I don't feel emotions and it's not that I can't express emotions in other contexts, but I can't scream. So people vary just a lot. Some people are more expressive and have more control over the vocalizations and so can consciously produce a scream, whereas other people can't. I don't think

I could scream. You know, I think some people's thought process, especially in the context of imminent danger, might proceed rapidly enough that they assess whether or not the screaming will make the situation worse. But you know, I don't know, I'll be thinking about that some more. Yo, good. Good. Let me know if you ever need to do some research on someone who couldn't scream when she was in grave danger, because I'm one of those people. If you're like, what if a demon tries to kill me in my sleep and I can't scream? It seems like the perfect time for a demon to kill you. But I looked into it. And the reason you can't scream in a dream is because of a fancy little feature you have called REM sleep muscle paralysis or muscle

atonia, which is your brain's way of keeping you in bed and not really swinging at a tea ball with a guy from maroon five or whatever you're dreaming about. So your motor neurons are like gone fish and bitch, and they are not going to do your bidding or your fairings screaming, even if you're doing it in a dream. So that one's for you, patrons, Taylor, Hannah Vaughn, Alicia Penny, Lily Honey, Kelly Shaver, Katherine PG, Ariana Madsen, Jade Pollard. However, bonus round, in my I drank coffee too late problems I had this week, I did find myself pouring through a vintage 1998 study out of Japan, and it was translated to screaming during sleep in patients with Parkinson's disease. And it analyzed the really high rates of sleep

shouting and screaming in Parkinson's patients who because of lesions in the mid and lower brain stem don't have that muscle suppression during REM sleep, so they do scream in their sleep. But in the hardest part of the day, the waking hours, J.K., I'm fine. Why does screaming seem to be the BFF of anger and stress? Asked vulnerable but relatable patrons, Sophie Tranacti, B, Stephanie and K, who drives around alone shrieking to blow off steam and is one of us, all of us. Is there something cathartic about raising your voice in a situation where you're angry or you feel like you need to be aggressive to be listened to? I don't know how cathartic it is, but it certainly is more effective. I don't think parents want to scream or should scream in front of their

kids. And I don't mean just raise your voice. There's a distinction when we say, I scream to him, stop it. That's language. We can talk about screaming, meaning raising the voice, loud, maybe harsh sounding, but that's still language. When we talk about screams, we're talking about that non-vocal utterance that rabbits and goats and monkeys and apes and we are capable of producing. Oh, that's a good distinction to make. And just a backtrack to the catharsis of a scream. So many of you, honestly, like 50 of you, you know who you are, I love you, wanted to know why screaming feels good. And the short answer may lie in the long answer, beta endorphin neuropeptides. There you go. So that's some wonderful juice that your

hypothalamus and pituitary glands squirt out in response to food and sex and apparently screaming. But let's say that the gelato's gone. No one will become naked with you anytime soon and your walls are very thin so you can't scream. You can milk those endorphins by exercising for 30 minutes. So do you want to do that when you're stressed or angry? Of course not. But your brain's like, please, please, please, please make me so happy though. And you're like, oh. Now screaming can be cathartic. That is what one headline said about David Arquette, who said, filming screen five with Courtney Cox, his ex-wife, was cathartic. I guess they met during scream one. And yesterday, I emailed Harold to see if he's seen screen five yet. And he said, I have not seen screen five.

I have not been to a movie or a sit-down restaurant for that matter since the pandemic hit dreadful, he wrote. But despite the last few years being its own kind of horror show, Dr. Gazoulas is still doing his amazing work as an Emory professor. And someone, a listener wrote and said about you, no way. I took an animal behavior class with him and it changed my life. All caps. Screaming. Yeah, Olivia Malloway. Oh, I know that name. Yes, I do. Well, Olivia, that's that's such a sweet and kind thing to say. Really adored your class and had a question. How can babies tell the difference between happy and angry screams or can they? Like, when is this something that we do figure out? I don't think babies could. I think now, and this is an interesting

question. We haven't talked about this much, but why is it that humans have screams in these different contexts, pain, fear, aggression, frustration, excitement, startle, when other species don't? Yeah. And I think, and again, this is speculation, but I think it's fun speculation that and it's kind of ironic that language gives us the capacity to use nonverbal communication in more elaborate ways than animals can. Cognitively, the brain and cognitive underpinnings for language, I suspect, give us greater capacity to use nonverbal communication in more elaborate ways than other species. And I think supporting that contention is laughter, an entirely different category of vocalization. So you can tickle the chimpanzee, which is a fun thing to do, by the

way, or an orang, and when they're young, and they will produce a laugh. And it's not a very sophisticated laugh. It's a kind of, and there's a play face associated with it. And the production of that vocalization is limited to that tickle and play context. Whereas humans, again, we use laughter in a variety of sometimes pretty nuanced situations. We've got genuine laughter, we've got fake laughter, we've got derisive laughter. And I think that too is probably a reflection of our capacity for language and how our brains work to draw inferences. That's so interesting to think that we're doing that subconsciously without even recognizing it. So is laughter the best medicine? I want to know if a scrimologist can take a prescription pad and

write down, go yell your fucking guts out. Yuka, Iowa wants to know what's up with colleges having primal scream sessions before finals. I'm wondering if Emery does that. And Justin so wants to know, does screaming into a pillow have the same effect as screaming out loud? Those are great questions. As I mentioned earlier, the primal scream phenomenon in psychology, as something that would be recommended and prescribed, fell out of favor in the 1960s or early 1970s. So I don't think there's been much empirical support for that contention. Now that, despite the fact that we sometimes feel good after screaming, there is something pleasurable about screaming in particular contexts like roller coasters and haunted houses.

So to my knowledge, there is no strong scientific support for this primal scream therapy approach to mental health. And screaming can release some endorphins, but most psychologists say it's as good a release as exercise or just laughing, the latter of which is probably the most convenient of the three. But the real work is actually just untangling whatever clot of trauma you have that's bottling up all of your feelings in the first place. And Harold says that no, they don't gather on the Emery Quad for any scream days, but during finals, they do have therapy dogs on campus. And hearing that was the most comfort I have felt for the youth in quite some time. The social context is something that's really important in all of this, really. Again,

it wouldn't be fun to be on a roller coaster by yourself. Would you even scream? I'm not sure. Probably not. I probably wouldn't. I would probably just experience it. But it does feel like I am definitely allowed to make very loud vocalizations on this roller coaster and no one will accuse me of crying wolf or trying to get attention. It does feel like very cathartic. Yeah. And who would go to a haunted house by themselves? You always would go with somebody and experience the fear and the startle experiences. And the screaming, again, is a social interactive phenomenon. By the by is a listener who wrote in and asked, am I stronger when I scream? I also want you to know that I told people that when they

submitted questions, they could do so in all caps just because it's a screaming episode. So by the by asked, am I stronger when I scream? There are weight lifters who scream when they are making the effort to lift their their weights and competitive weight lift lifters. So maybe for some people, I don't know that it would be universally true, but I suspect some people do get some strength out of vocal production like that. Right. You know, a lot of people wanted to know in Kelsey's story's words, is it possible for metal vocalists to damage their anatomy by screaming improperly? Or is that a myth? No, it definitely you can damage your vocal chords. And we haven't talked about screaming and rock and roll. I mean, what? Yes. I'm sure some

of your listeners at least know the who's won't get fooled again. And what would the end of that song be without Roger Daltrey's, you know, classic scream? Yes. So many people asked about that. Looking at you, patrons, Kelsey's story, Spencer Parks, Chelsea Ravel, Jeffrey Bredshaw, Dane Schuchman, Rachel, that Rylan guy, Nixia Vale, Ashley Serderiva, Samantha Barnes, Mary Libby, Eric Pahanka, Bruce Wayne, Jordan Wainwright, Evan Davis, Carol Wolfram, Maria Giroleva, and first time askers, Heaven Clinger, Thomas Wallace, Zoe, Deathcore music fan, Alina and Catherine PG, who wrote in, is there a safe way to scream for music? Looking at you black metal, they say. So I'm so glad you're mentioning this. And my brother-in-law is in a death metal band

and seeing them live, it is really, I'm like so worried about the vocalist. Well, there are less, you can search on YouTube and there are lessons for vocalists in these kinds of bands. How to scream without damaging your vocal cords. Wow. How are, what do you find when you listen to that kind of screaming? Like Alina, first time question asker says, Deathcore music fan here, how do the vocalists do it? They go to one concert and sing my heart out, but they'll lose their voice the next two days. So explain this sorcery, but are they doing a completely performative type of vocalization? Or do you think that they also, like an actor, have to get into the emotion for it to have an effect on the audience? I think they have to acquire that ability and

scream in a particular way that doesn't damage their vocal cords. But again, if you go to some of those YouTube videos, there are clearly techniques that are advocated to minimize and reduce the possibility, the likelihood of damage. Of course, I researched this for too long with absolutely no intention of joining my brother-in-law's thrash metal band, which by the way, Exodus, he then shout out, scream out. But some guy named David on YouTube uploads via a channel called Riff Shop, and he seems to have you covered for your death metal brutal guttural vocals. Or you can also just search about false cord screaming, which is where you keep your vocal cords open, but you learn to flap the skin above them to spare the wear and tear on the actual

cords, false cord screams. Just don't call it cookie monster screaming. Important! The death ground community, not into that. Speaking of death, Lisa Muschinski wants to know, can you die from screaming? Can you tell you? Well, I don't think so. Okay. I'm sure some people have died screaming. Lots of people have died screaming. Right. But I don't think screaming would be the cause of death. You literally scream from the cradle to the grave, perhaps, depending on the way that you go out, I think. Well, again, it's just one of these extremely important and interesting vocalizations, and it's just so prominent in popular culture. Again, the horror movies, the rock and roll, and even art. Munch's famous painting, it's just iconic. And as I understand it, it's the second

most readily recognized paintings in the world, second only to the Mona Lisa. And why is that? I've thought about this. If we could hear that scream, if we could hear the scream of that, it probably wouldn't be as interesting. Oh, that's such a good point. Yeah, but instead, we're left to come to our own conclusions, and that's the essence of good art, isn't it? I mean, does it portray internal psychological disarray, fear, angst, alienation, personal dread, or is it more a general comment about the state of the world? Who knows? But that's what makes it really interesting. Yeah. Well, I guess I always ask two questions at the end, but really quick before that, you mentioned that there were so many questions still unanswered,

and I saw on your website that you might be looking for a graduate student. Are you still? I am. Should people apply? Sure. That'd be great. Absolutely. And I never have trouble recruiting participants for the research. You always have to provide a description, of course, of the study, and people are interested. They're curious. They want to be able to be challenged. Can they tell one scream from another? And there's so many unanswered questions, and eventually, we'd like to do some brain imaging studies. Exactly how does the brain process these different kinds of screams? There's been some preliminary exploration in a lab in Europe, researched by the name of Fruhols, who has begun to explore that set of

questions, but we'd like to jump in with that as well. So there might be some future scrimologists out there they should reach out. I think so. That'd be great. And in all of this, last questions I always ask, there must be something difficult about being a scrimologist. Is it listening to screams all day, or is it paperwork, or is it recruiting people for studies? I think it just translates to being a faculty member doing research. You're faced with the kinds of challenges. There are so many interesting questions that in a different world or in a different era, you might be able to pursue, but there are constraints. There are financial constraints. There are ethical constraints as to what one can do. And so, again, it's not unique

to this kind of research, but there are always limitations to the scientific method and how we can apply it to understand questions. So to have the curiosity and to wonder about the answers to these questions is what is rewarding and reinforcing about doing the research. But there are always the frustrations. I'd like to answer this particular question. They just can't get there at this point. Yeah. So I can imagine how frustrated that must be because there's so much exciting research to do. But what is your favorite part about being the world's most recognized scrimologist? Having to accept the term scrimology, I suppose. I'm so glad someone coined you that. But yeah, is there a part of your work that just really

gets you out of bed in the morning? I love to teach students about animal behavior. And I also teach a seminar on animal communication. And I take great pleasure in that as well, revealing and discussing the literature with them and having them explore new ideas. And like Olivia, some of them just say, wow, I look at the world differently as a result of understanding animal behavior and evolutionary principles and how they might apply to us and other living creatures. And that's just enormously rewarding to invite people to think about things in ways that they perhaps haven't done so before. I love how you are changing what we know about ourselves. Things that we don't even think we can study. It's great to know that there's someone out there. When it

comes to human communication and screams and vocations, there's someone out there who is on it. And that's amazing. I'm on the job. You're on the job. Oh my god, thank you so, so much for being on this. It was my great pleasure. My great pleasure. So ask smart people loud questions, if you want, because it'll help you understand yourself and the world a lot better. And Dr. Harold Gazoulas is out there and looking for researchers. So hit him up, future scrimologists. Here's the world's just screaming opportunities at you. You can find more links to everything we talked about at alleyward.com slash oligies slash scrimology. We are on Twitter and Instagram at oligies. I'm at alleyward with one L on both. Smologies are the shorter condensed and kid

friendly episodes that come out about every two weeks. You can find more of those to download for your children or just yourselves at alleyward.com slash smologies. Thank you, Zeke Rodriguez, Thomas of Mind Gen Media for editing those and Stephen Ray Morris for the assist on that. Thank you, Aaron Talbert for admitting the Facebook group and Shannon and Bonnie for helping with that. Thank you to Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling. Susan Hale for so much, behind the scenes stuff. Emily White of the Orderie makes the professional transcripts. Caleb Patton bleeps them and those are available for free at alleyward.com slash oligies extras. And Nick Thorburn made the theme song. He is in a very good band called Islands.

The lead editor is Mind Gen Media's Jared Sleeper, who as part of his job is forced to sleep in a bed with me and tell me that I'm pretty from time to time. And when I'm tired and crying and worried everyone is going to be mad at me if this is up on a Wednesday, because I couldn't stop researching, he reminds me it's not the end of the world. So thank you, Sleeper. And if you listen to the end of the podcast, I do tell you a secret. So, you know, here's another one, the last few weeks, they've been really bad with anxiety around work. And maybe that's just my bruised brain's way of trying to incapacitate me, but I don't like it. Zero stars on that. But I'm going to end this on an up note,

and that is this really wonderful review someone left this week. I'm going to read it to you because it deserves it. They wrote, When I discovered this podcast, I was working a dead-end job that I hated. I imagined what life might one day be like if I was half as interested in my work as I was in alleyward's take on the Natural History Museum. And that particular episode where she mentions volunteering to scoop closer to meaningful work landed squarely in my lap when I needed it and inspired me to imagine a new future for myself. I began to volunteer for a youth empowerment organization and finally acknowledged how much I loved working with students. Three years later, after a few new roles and lots of luck, I landed my dream job directing a college STEM scholarship

program funded by the National Science Foundation. Yes, I help baby scientists hatch, they say, and it is indeed as incredible as it sounds. I've been waiting all these years. Oh, man, to post this review in hopes that this one may be read aloud so that other listeners can hear the changes possible. Thank you for reminding us all how important it is to celebrate buffoonery, to spend each day learning, and to ask smart people not always smart questions, signed your SC advisor. So thanks for that review. I'm glad I left it at the end. That would have been weird to start the episode crying and then go into screaming. But so everyone who leaves reviews, it helps the show stay up in the charts. But it really,

it always helps me on the days that are more tough. So thank you for letting me know that it's always worth it to keep going. Also, one more secret that that review actually said to ask smart people stupid questions. But I always get a tweet or two whenever I say stupid questions, even if it's an ironic reclaiming of the term, but just covering bases there. Okay, next week, plant stuff. Plants are very quiet last I checked. So that one should be more mellow. So everyone go get some rest and thank you for all the pep talks and the reviews and for listening. It really matters to me a lot. All right, we got this. Bye bye.