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How Ventriloquism Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, Maine and Greater New England. We're coming to see
0:03
Speaker 1: you guys in Portland and we can't wait. We would
0:06
Speaker 1: love to see you there. Yep, we'll be at the
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Speaker 1: State Theater on August. If you're interested. You can get
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Speaker 1: tickets and information at s y s K live dot com.
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Speaker 1: There's some lobster at us. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
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Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey you,
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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:30
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry, which,
0:34
Speaker 1: by the way, we should say Jerry say hey to everybody.
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Speaker 1: That's right, Jerry's back. I think we scared everyone. I
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Speaker 1: like joked on a short stuff for one of the
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Speaker 1: recent episodes that she was gone. She's going from a
0:47
Speaker 1: couple of episodes She's but people took it to mean
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Speaker 1: like Jerry was just gone. Yeah, so some people were
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Speaker 1: a little freaked up by that. So Jerry is not
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Speaker 1: going anywhere anyone. She doesn't want to as far as
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Speaker 1: we know, and we're not gonna let or even if
1:00
Speaker 1: she does. Jerry's here, and you're here too. How are
1:03
Speaker 1: you doing. I'm great? Neither one of us removing our lips. No,
1:08
Speaker 1: that's how good we are. We've done this whole conversation
1:10
Speaker 1: without any I mean, it's astounding what we can do
1:13
Speaker 1: just a couple of events. We're basically like Edgar Bergen. Yeah,
1:20
Speaker 1: that's a deep cut vent by the way, everyone, we're
1:23
Speaker 1: probably gonna say a lot that is short for ventriloquist. Yes, uh,
1:28
Speaker 1: And ventriloquism can be a mouthful, so I'm not gonna
1:32
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try and say it as little as possible.
1:34
Speaker 1: Ventriloquism can be as it can a mouthful and bellyful
1:40
Speaker 1: and a mouthful. I had very mixed feelings about all
1:46
Speaker 1: of this. Why Well, first of all, I think it
1:51
Speaker 1: was it this that I talked about practicing ventriloquism when
1:55
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Well, I don't call that. I
1:57
Speaker 1: feel like it may have been movie crushed then, but
1:59
Speaker 1: I definitely at one point on one of the shows
2:02
Speaker 1: mentioned that at one point when I was a child,
2:04
Speaker 1: I had a record ventriloquism, record really Train Yourself, and
2:09
Speaker 1: for very briefly I thought it was something I wanted
2:12
Speaker 1: to do, and I practiced it. Did you have your
2:15
Speaker 1: little bow tie? No? I didn't have a yet didn't
2:18
Speaker 1: have a costume. But I had a dummy and I
2:21
Speaker 1: got a record. You had like a ventriloquist dummy. Yeah,
2:26
Speaker 1: not a you know, not an advanced one that looks
2:28
Speaker 1: like a cyborg when you turn it around. Sure, but
2:32
Speaker 1: I mean like you had a dummy you could sit
2:33
Speaker 1: on your knee and make the mouth. Yes, I always
2:36
Speaker 1: wanted one of those. You had my dummy and it
2:39
Speaker 1: didn't last long? Why not? No? I don't know. I
2:42
Speaker 1: think I have a history in my childhood of starting
2:44
Speaker 1: things like that and then being like man there that.
2:48
Speaker 1: Plus the instructor on the record was really mean. I
2:51
Speaker 1: can't even remember which one it was. I think it
2:53
Speaker 1: was from like the sixties or something. Probably means sixties
2:56
Speaker 1: record instructor. Yeah. But then I also, um, watch the movie,
3:00
Speaker 1: you know, dumb Struck. I love that movie, and it's
3:05
Speaker 1: just it just filled me with a lot of mixed feelings,
3:08
Speaker 1: so because it was sad but also uplifting but also sad, yeah,
3:13
Speaker 1: but also uplifting. Yeah. If you haven't seen the documentary
3:17
Speaker 1: dumb Struck, you were missing out. It is a it's good, nice,
3:21
Speaker 1: low fi h documentary that's really easy to to underestimate. Yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: And I think what I appreciated about it is they
3:31
Speaker 1: took five stories of five and triloquists, and each of
3:36
Speaker 1: them were at different points in their careers. From the
3:40
Speaker 1: kid just starting out to the lady who wants nothing
3:43
Speaker 1: more than to be on the cruise ship, to the
3:46
Speaker 1: guy who was actively on the cruise ship to the
3:48
Speaker 1: point where he killed his marriage. Yeah, well he's just
3:51
Speaker 1: spoiling to the lady, you know, the other lady who
3:56
Speaker 1: just she had all kinds of problems in life, Yeah,
3:59
Speaker 1: but was also very uplifting in that her community rallied
4:02
Speaker 1: around her, helped her out. To the big guy, Terry Fader.
4:07
Speaker 1: Terry Fader, who you know is because net Worth if
4:10
Speaker 1: you believe those sites of like a hundred and fifty
4:11
Speaker 1: million bucks, Well, he signed a hundred million dollar deal
4:16
Speaker 1: eight years ago with the Mirage that was for five years.
4:21
Speaker 1: So he's he's still there, right, Okay, he hopefully negotiated
4:24
Speaker 1: an even better deal four years ago. So I just
4:28
Speaker 1: want to make sure for people who aren't aware of
4:30
Speaker 1: Terry Fader in that deal. If you'll go back to
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Speaker 1: the beginning, we said we were talking about ventriloquists, ventriloquism.
4:37
Speaker 1: Terry Faders the ventriloquist, and he signed the largest dollar
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Speaker 1: deal in the history of Las Vegas as a ventriloquist
4:47
Speaker 1: at the time. But yeah, they captured that perfectly in
4:49
Speaker 1: that documentary Dumbstruck. Yeah, just all the various components. And
4:53
Speaker 1: then my whole I don't want to yuck someone's young,
4:58
Speaker 1: but like many times, I don't find them funny. You're crazy,
5:02
Speaker 1: And that's at the root of it, is like the
5:03
Speaker 1: jokes weren't funny to me. Well, it's it's really they
5:08
Speaker 1: kind of stick to that Volleyville tradition in a lot
5:10
Speaker 1: of ways. And then bad jokes, yes, But then you
5:14
Speaker 1: see the people in the audience just eating it up,
5:18
Speaker 1: these old cruise cruisers, just like it's the best thing
5:21
Speaker 1: in these old Vegas types that they've ever seen. So
5:24
Speaker 1: but far be it from me to yucky yum, But
5:27
Speaker 1: that was my emotions were all over the map ball Okay, Well,
5:31
Speaker 1: I half regret suggesting this article, but at the same
5:36
Speaker 1: time I find this delicious. So let's talk about ancient
5:39
Speaker 1: Greece in Egypt. So um, just to make sure everybody
5:43
Speaker 1: understands what we're talking about, Chuck Ventriloquism is where you
5:47
Speaker 1: make it appear like a dummy is sitting on your
5:50
Speaker 1: knee and that words are coming out of that dummy's mouth, right,
5:54
Speaker 1: But doesn't have to be on your knee, No, and
5:56
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily even have to be a dummy. In fact,
5:58
Speaker 1: the earliest ones in Greece, like you were saying, even
6:02
Speaker 1: before that, inco in Egypt Um around the Middle East,
6:06
Speaker 1: there was accounts of ventriloquism, but they didn't say you
6:10
Speaker 1: should have seen this ventriloquist I saw last night. He
6:12
Speaker 1: was great. They said, you need to go see this
6:15
Speaker 1: um medicine man or the soothsayer or the spiritualist, because
6:20
Speaker 1: this guy can talk to the spirits in the tree
6:23
Speaker 1: or in a rock or in his stomach. And that's
6:27
Speaker 1: how ventriloquism originally got its start. It was a spiritual
6:30
Speaker 1: practice that was essentially um scam artists. Yeah, I guess
6:35
Speaker 1: that's a way to put it. But I mean, like
6:37
Speaker 1: they were prophets and religious figures and this is one
6:40
Speaker 1: of the things they did. Yeah, And I don't even
6:43
Speaker 1: think we broke down really at its root. What we're
6:46
Speaker 1: talking about, in its simplest terms, is speaking without moving
6:50
Speaker 1: your lips basically, but there's there's a little more mustard
6:54
Speaker 1: to it, right, But it's if you're speaking while moving
6:58
Speaker 1: your lips, then you are a puppeteer. That's the distinction. Oh,
7:03
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. Yes, you're you're trying to
7:05
Speaker 1: make it appear as if something else is speaking instead
7:07
Speaker 1: of your whereas the puppeteer will just stand behind the curtain,
7:11
Speaker 1: sure they don't care, and move their mouth like like
7:14
Speaker 1: there's no tomorrow. Yeah, but the extra mustard I mentioned
7:17
Speaker 1: is that, and this is frequently the case when somebody's
7:20
Speaker 1: not using a dummy. A ventriloquist not only doesn't move
7:24
Speaker 1: their mouth, they can adjust their voice to make it
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Speaker 1: sound like their voices coming from some other place away
7:32
Speaker 1: from them. What's commonly called is throwing their voice. And
7:35
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that later, right, But didn't that just
7:38
Speaker 1: a I mean, they're really not throwing their voice. That's
7:42
Speaker 1: just a mental trick. Yes, okay, well yes, but it's
7:45
Speaker 1: not like they can do something with their voice to
7:46
Speaker 1: make it sound like it's coming from a different place. No,
7:49
Speaker 1: they can't. Well that's not the way the way I
7:51
Speaker 1: read it was. It was just a mental trick of
7:54
Speaker 1: believing that's happening. Like, you can't literally make your voice
7:57
Speaker 1: sound like it's coming from a different place. So this
8:00
Speaker 1: is this is it. Let's just talking about it now, Okay, fine, Um,
8:05
Speaker 1: If you are talking to a ventriloquist and they make
8:09
Speaker 1: it they throw their voice to make it sound like
8:12
Speaker 1: somebody is under the bridge that you two are standing on,
8:17
Speaker 1: if you went under the bridge, you would not hear
8:20
Speaker 1: that voice coming from under the bridge. They can't throw
8:23
Speaker 1: their voice, it's a terrible term for it. But they
8:27
Speaker 1: can adjust their voice. They can modulate the volume, they
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Speaker 1: can make it sound muffled, they can make it sound
8:32
Speaker 1: echoy they can make it sound like it's underwater. They
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Speaker 1: can make it sound like it's closer far away. So
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Speaker 1: that that's one component of the illusion of ventriloquism is
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Speaker 1: they can make it sound like you would expect it
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Speaker 1: to sound if there were a voice underwater, under a
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Speaker 1: bridge or something like I think I thought you were
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Speaker 1: talking about space and time, where it's really just a
8:54
Speaker 1: vocal quality it is. And then combined with some other
8:57
Speaker 1: magic that they do, some other slight of hand in
9:00
Speaker 1: misdirection and all that, which again we'll talk about later. Yeah,
9:05
Speaker 1: But it's the thing is too, the when you see
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Speaker 1: a ventriloquist, quote throwing their voice there generally throwing it
9:12
Speaker 1: to a dummy that's about nine inches from their own voice. Yeah, typically,
9:16
Speaker 1: so it's not something you know, no, but the original ventriloquists,
9:21
Speaker 1: we didn't use dummies, so they were they were much
9:24
Speaker 1: more adept at throwing their voice. Gotcha. See, So when
9:30
Speaker 1: you went to see one of these belly prophets or whatever,
9:35
Speaker 1: and they made it seem like they were speaking with
9:37
Speaker 1: a tree, they were talking to a tree and the
9:39
Speaker 1: tree was talking back. It sounded to the person standing
9:43
Speaker 1: by them that the tree was talking for a number
9:47
Speaker 1: of reasons, which we'll talk about later. That's very interesting,
9:50
Speaker 1: I think so too. So uh b C. You can
9:54
Speaker 1: keep talking about belly prophets. I guess we should explain
9:56
Speaker 1: what that is. Um. It was literally like sometimes they
10:00
Speaker 1: would talk to something inside their own stomach, and their
10:04
Speaker 1: stomach was talking back. And that's where the name actually
10:07
Speaker 1: comes from. If you talk about the Latin of the
10:09
Speaker 1: Greek words for belly prophet or belly talker, it's ventriloquism,
10:14
Speaker 1: ventus belly and l o q u I speak speaking
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Speaker 1: from the belly. That's where it comes from. Isn't that bizarre? Yeah,
10:23
Speaker 1: but it wasn't Obviously, it wasn't an act at this point,
10:27
Speaker 1: like an entertainment act. In fact, it was disparaged as
10:30
Speaker 1: of the devil. And of course, you know when Christianity
10:34
Speaker 1: came through town and the Spanish Inquisition, it was not
10:38
Speaker 1: a good time to be a voice thrower. No, even
10:41
Speaker 1: from like the earliest days of Christianity was considered a
10:44
Speaker 1: form of necromancy, which was fostered and enabled by the devil.
10:49
Speaker 1: So if you were a ventrilo quister, that kind of spiritualist,
10:52
Speaker 1: you were basically Satan's minion. That's how ventriloquism was originally seen.
10:57
Speaker 1: And there were probably a lot of people who were
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Speaker 1: killed over the centuries because in part they were ventriloquists,
11:04
Speaker 1: that's right. But it eventually would become entertainment. Uh, once
11:08
Speaker 1: everyone kind of got a little more rational and it
11:14
Speaker 1: was like, it's not the devil, it's not Satan, and
11:17
Speaker 1: it really transitioned to performance. But they still weren't using
11:21
Speaker 1: the dummies at this point. No, they weren't. But I
11:23
Speaker 1: want to I want to hit on that rational thing
11:25
Speaker 1: ventriloquism was kind of rooted out as something that could
11:31
Speaker 1: be explained through rationalism during the Enlightenment. That Enlightenment thinkers
11:36
Speaker 1: kind of pounced on and said, here's how this works.
11:39
Speaker 1: So remember that superstitious belief that you had that somebody
11:44
Speaker 1: could commune with the spirits. This is how they did that,
11:47
Speaker 1: so stop believing that. So that was a kind of
11:50
Speaker 1: a tool of Enlightenment thinkers explaining ventriloquism. It's given away
11:54
Speaker 1: all the magic tricks, basically, that's what they did. In fact,
11:57
Speaker 1: there was a guy named Um Johann Baptiste of Las
12:00
Speaker 1: Chapelle who wrote a five hundred and seventy two page
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Speaker 1: book exploring ventriloquism and explaining how it worked. Yeah, but
12:08
Speaker 1: as far as the entertainment aspect, pre dummy the kind
12:12
Speaker 1: of the first person named as a sixteenth century valet
12:17
Speaker 1: to French King Francis. The first name was Louis Brabant,
12:21
Speaker 1: and he would entertain the court there and Um, the
12:24
Speaker 1: way it sort of came across to me was much
12:26
Speaker 1: like a jester could poke fun at people that they
12:30
Speaker 1: normally wouldn't allowed to poke fun of. This is what
12:33
Speaker 1: this guy would do. But he would just do it
12:34
Speaker 1: without moving his lips, and everyone thought it was hysterical.
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Speaker 1: That's the whole comic tradition of ventriloquism, is the dummy
12:42
Speaker 1: or the imaginary character, if there wasn't a dummy, can
12:45
Speaker 1: say things that the ventriloquists himself for herself could never
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Speaker 1: get away with. But somehow society has been like, it's
12:53
Speaker 1: fine if this inanimate object says it, even though it's
12:56
Speaker 1: really this guy saying it. We've all decided it's line
13:00
Speaker 1: that they say it. Yeah, I haven't society. I wish
13:04
Speaker 1: you guys could see Chuck right now. He's just been
13:06
Speaker 1: scowling like this whole episode, that scowling. But if you know,
13:09
Speaker 1: like that guy with a big racist act, I'm not
13:12
Speaker 1: one of those people that's going it's really just the dummy.
13:15
Speaker 1: I'm going, No, that guy is a terrible comedian. Is
13:17
Speaker 1: that what all this is about? Jeff Dunham is a ventriloquist. No, no, no,
13:22
Speaker 1: But I'm certainly not a part of society thinking like
13:25
Speaker 1: that cute little dummy saying terrible things. Okay, but that
13:30
Speaker 1: is the long standing tradition, the comedy behind ventriloquism. Yeah,
13:34
Speaker 1: not necessarily like racist stuff or anything like that, but
13:38
Speaker 1: just zingers and in stinging comments that normally the ventrilo
13:43
Speaker 1: because we would not be able to get away with well.
13:46
Speaker 1: And not only that, I got the feeling from watching
13:48
Speaker 1: that documentary that it's a little bit of a therapy
13:50
Speaker 1: for people who don't feel like they can say the
13:53
Speaker 1: things they really want to say, so they'll say him
13:56
Speaker 1: through the dummy. Yeah, it was remarkable. In Dumbstruck they
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Speaker 1: say most ventrilo ust c atly the people who go
14:01
Speaker 1: to this convention, that that is covered in the documentary.
14:05
Speaker 1: Where are shy people? Yeah, that surprised me. And it's
14:08
Speaker 1: like they're the dummies, their alter ego get a little uh,
14:13
Speaker 1: it's interesting, a little deep for sure. For sure. That's
14:16
Speaker 1: just the kindest way I can say it. Again, I'm
14:18
Speaker 1: not yucking the um because people are getting a lot
14:20
Speaker 1: out of it. It looks like, um, anytime you have
14:24
Speaker 1: conventions like that, it's just as interesting slice of life.
14:28
Speaker 1: They're hanging out together. Yes, any and all conventions for sure. Yeah,
14:33
Speaker 1: Ventriloquist convention in particular. Yeah, and it always it's good
14:37
Speaker 1: because I feel like a lot of times these are
14:39
Speaker 1: people that may feel like they're outsiders and that they
14:41
Speaker 1: have a family when they hook up with these communities.
14:46
Speaker 1: I see there's something great about ventral equation. I mean, heck,
14:49
Speaker 1: I'm the one that tried it as a kid. I
14:51
Speaker 1: was certainly into it. Do you remember the name of
14:53
Speaker 1: your dummy m I don't think I named him, and
14:56
Speaker 1: I didn't go by them. I think it just happened
14:59
Speaker 1: upon my house at some point. Oh, he just showed
15:01
Speaker 1: up at your house. That didn't creep you out at all. Well,
15:04
Speaker 1: it must have been my brother that bought it, But
15:06
Speaker 1: hope it was enough for me to get a used
15:10
Speaker 1: record and give it a shot for two weeks. They're
15:15
Speaker 1: really seared into your memory too, that, Yeah it was
15:18
Speaker 1: you know, I tried pretty hard for a couple of
15:20
Speaker 1: weeks and just couldn't get you. I got it enough.
15:25
Speaker 1: I don't hate Vince at all. I'm just not someone
15:28
Speaker 1: going it's a dummy saying those things, not a person.
15:31
Speaker 1: I got you. Um. But this is how it went
15:35
Speaker 1: on for a while. In Europe at least people talked
15:38
Speaker 1: like that. Well, there were people in courts all over
15:41
Speaker 1: Europe basically transitioning from the gesture to ventriloquists right, because
15:46
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment said, look at this weird trick that all
15:49
Speaker 1: these spiritual like soothsayers have used over the centuries, over
15:53
Speaker 1: the millennia, you can do it too. Here's how they did.
15:57
Speaker 1: Let's all stop believing in it. And somehow astounding it
16:00
Speaker 1: ended up becoming a performance art. It went from a
16:03
Speaker 1: spiritual trick to performance art that people came to appreciate.
16:08
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until the seventeen fifties that the I
16:12
Speaker 1: guess they call them dummies. Uh, you could also call
16:15
Speaker 1: them puppets. I've seen other people call them dolls, but
16:18
Speaker 1: it seems like dummy is the is the proper term.
16:22
Speaker 1: But an Austrian dude named Baron Dominion started using a
16:27
Speaker 1: little doll with a little nutcracker mouth, and he could
16:30
Speaker 1: move that jaw, that lower jaw, and all of a
16:34
Speaker 1: sudden it started to catch on. At first though they
16:37
Speaker 1: were using tons and tons of these dolls lined up
16:39
Speaker 1: in a row. Yeah. They went from using none to
16:41
Speaker 1: tons of them, yeah, and it got pretty unwieldy. And
16:44
Speaker 1: then I think everyone sort of realized what you should
16:47
Speaker 1: really do is get a dummy, give that dummy a personality.
16:52
Speaker 1: And then let that be your act, right. And it
16:55
Speaker 1: was one guy in particular who kind of started that
16:57
Speaker 1: event named Fred Russell, who was British in the late
17:00
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. And I mean the fashion was to have
17:05
Speaker 1: like as many as thirty dummies on stage and you
17:09
Speaker 1: would act out like a scene, like a courtroom scene
17:11
Speaker 1: or something, and the event would use their their feet
17:14
Speaker 1: to control everything with pneumatics and they would jump from
17:18
Speaker 1: character to character. It must have been amazing to see.
17:21
Speaker 1: But Fred Russell was like, I don't feel like carding
17:23
Speaker 1: all these people around. I'm just gonna stick to one dummy,
17:26
Speaker 1: which was innovative. But even more innovative was that he
17:29
Speaker 1: created a character for that dummy. Rather than just like
17:34
Speaker 1: having the dummy say whatever was needed for the sketch,
17:38
Speaker 1: he would write sketches around the character his dummy, Coster Joe.
17:43
Speaker 1: And so he basically is known as the father of
17:45
Speaker 1: modern ventriloquism. Yeah, and that really established the uh, the
17:50
Speaker 1: thing where you you sell the audience and the fact
17:53
Speaker 1: that there are two people performing and it's a buddy
17:55
Speaker 1: comedy act, but one of them has his hand in
17:59
Speaker 1: the butt of an other. Yeah, and the guy who
18:01
Speaker 1: has his hand in the butt of the others the
18:03
Speaker 1: straight man, and the guy who um has the hand
18:07
Speaker 1: in his butt is the wise cracker. That's right. That's
18:10
Speaker 1: the way that I don't think any ventrilo quis has
18:13
Speaker 1: ever done at the opposite. Someone should try that, surely,
18:16
Speaker 1: I can't believe no one has. I'm sure someone has,
18:19
Speaker 1: I hope. So I want to hear about him. Should
18:21
Speaker 1: we take a break? I think we should. Man, all right,
18:23
Speaker 1: let's take a break and we'll talk about Murphy Brown
18:26
Speaker 1: right after this, Chuck, I wanna say from me and
18:51
Speaker 1: everybody who listens to stuff, you should know we're very
18:54
Speaker 1: proud of you for going through this experience of talking
18:57
Speaker 1: about ventrilo quism. And you're past that. The fact that
19:02
Speaker 1: I never got very far in my venture loquism career,
19:06
Speaker 1: that's right. And it's just a small painful moment in
19:09
Speaker 1: my child, right, But you're working it out, man, it's
19:11
Speaker 1: worth it. What you know. The other thing is I
19:13
Speaker 1: did was I got a record that taught my bird
19:15
Speaker 1: how to talk. Oh yeah, did it work? Yeah? She
19:20
Speaker 1: could go Hello, Dolly, no, and she could say hello obviously.
19:25
Speaker 1: And I taught her to do a jungle call. What
19:28
Speaker 1: is that? Co co co co car and then she
19:32
Speaker 1: would whistle, uh, do a wolf whistle like a cat call,
19:36
Speaker 1: so you'd walk into the room and go nice. Uh.
19:39
Speaker 1: And then one else I think it whistled Dixie. Maybe
19:41
Speaker 1: should have done a ventuloquism routine with your bird, Dolly.
19:45
Speaker 1: She was pretty great. Cockat deal nice not cockatoo. No,
19:49
Speaker 1: Coca teal is the one with the big head. Yeah,
19:52
Speaker 1: the little smaller things that fly around your house and
19:54
Speaker 1: poop on everything. Oh, Cockatoo is a big, bigger yeah. Okay,
19:58
Speaker 1: that's a big white guy that I think barretta head
20:00
Speaker 1: the fruit loops guy. No, that's a two can I
20:04
Speaker 1: got you so? Uh. Candice Bergen is Murphy Brown. She
20:10
Speaker 1: is also the daughter of Edgar Bergen, who was totally insane.
20:14
Speaker 1: He was not insane. He was a one of the
20:17
Speaker 1: most popular entertainers in the country. Yeah, for decades, for
20:20
Speaker 1: a long long time. Not just one of the most
20:22
Speaker 1: popular ventriloquist like you said, one of the most popular entertainers,
20:26
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. And he did something that one would
20:28
Speaker 1: think it's not even possible, which is to have a
20:31
Speaker 1: ventriloquism act on the radio. But that's I mean, that's
20:37
Speaker 1: a good point, Tom. She wrote this article for us,
20:40
Speaker 1: and he says, like that really points out like the
20:43
Speaker 1: sea change that Fred Russell brought about, where he was
20:46
Speaker 1: writing jokes based around this character that Edgar Bergen created,
20:50
Speaker 1: this character of UM, Charlie McCarthy and also Mortimer Snurred,
20:55
Speaker 1: and the characters and the jokes and the dialogue and
20:59
Speaker 1: the fact that he jumped back and forth between himself
21:02
Speaker 1: and these characters. That's what people cared about because, like
21:05
Speaker 1: you're Berkin was actually not very good at not moving
21:07
Speaker 1: his lips. Radio is perfect for him exactly. But he
21:11
Speaker 1: was huge on the radio for like twenty years from
21:14
Speaker 1: this ventriloquism routine. He was a ventriloquist on the radio
21:18
Speaker 1: for twenty years, that's right. And uh he I don't
21:21
Speaker 1: think he began the tradition, but he certainly reinforced the
21:24
Speaker 1: tradition of UM going deep with the fact that these
21:28
Speaker 1: are little people to them, like uh, he's he's certainly
21:32
Speaker 1: not the first or last two give them their own bedrooms,
21:36
Speaker 1: their own beds to um, you know, be sometimes they're
21:41
Speaker 1: buried with their dummy. He he left ten thousand dollars
21:45
Speaker 1: to Charlie McCarthy and his will, he left zero to Candice. Yeah,
21:48
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you do with that? She? Yeah,
21:50
Speaker 1: she did a lot with it. So what does the
21:53
Speaker 1: doll literally do with that? Oh? I see it? To me?
21:55
Speaker 1: I thought you meant, was Candice Bergin doing? Where's that
21:57
Speaker 1: den grand today? You? I don't know who is where
22:00
Speaker 1: that money went? I know Kennice Bergen didn't get it. Yeah, Um,
22:04
Speaker 1: but she grew up sitting on her father's knee and
22:07
Speaker 1: Charlie McCarthy would be on the other knee, and he'd
22:09
Speaker 1: make them talk to each other, like he'd squeeze the
22:12
Speaker 1: back of her neck when he wanted her to talk
22:14
Speaker 1: or whatever, or open her mouth because he would talk
22:16
Speaker 1: for her. She had a strange childhood for sure. Was
22:20
Speaker 1: there resentment and stuff? Do you know? I think a
22:22
Speaker 1: little yeah, if not a lot. Well, you were talking
22:26
Speaker 1: about the fact that the strength of the jokes so
22:28
Speaker 1: had to be why he was so popular on the radio,
22:31
Speaker 1: and that's what they point. One of them makes him
22:33
Speaker 1: that dumb struck videos like it's got to be funny.
22:36
Speaker 1: No matter how good you are with the lips, it's
22:38
Speaker 1: not funny. And I kept thinking, like, alright, when is
22:42
Speaker 1: one of these people gonna be funny. Even the big
22:44
Speaker 1: famous ones. Yeah, no, I mean like there's even the
22:50
Speaker 1: almost two eventula Quisted. Even the the blue ones, the
22:55
Speaker 1: not as family friendly ones are still pretty family friendly
22:59
Speaker 1: really yeah, except for a few people that really just
23:02
Speaker 1: want to shock. Really. One one just comes to mind,
23:05
Speaker 1: as far as I could tell, Otto and George Otto
23:08
Speaker 1: Peterson I believe is his name, Yeah, and his dummy.
23:10
Speaker 1: George had a just absolutely filthy ventilla quest routine and
23:15
Speaker 1: Otto was the straight man and George the dummy was
23:17
Speaker 1: the um just the total foul mouthed basically guy from
23:22
Speaker 1: Jersey is what he was doing. But he apparently those
23:25
Speaker 1: two hosted the Adult Video Awards two years in a row,
23:30
Speaker 1: and after the second year they're like, you can't come back.
23:33
Speaker 1: You've offended all of the porn actors and they don't
23:36
Speaker 1: want you to come back. Well, and then the Jeff
23:39
Speaker 1: Dunham gott you mentioned, Um, we might as well say
23:42
Speaker 1: that this guy sells out arenas doing h characters like
23:46
Speaker 1: Ahmed the Dead terrorist and a Mexican immigrants and all
23:51
Speaker 1: these stereotypes. But he does it through a puppet, so
23:54
Speaker 1: it's fine. So it's fine. So you know, he has
23:56
Speaker 1: the Guinness Record for the stand up comedian who sold
23:59
Speaker 1: the most tickets and ever and that just mind boggling. Yeah,
24:03
Speaker 1: and he should be reclassified though, because some real stand
24:06
Speaker 1: up comedian in second places probably deserves that award. I'm
24:10
Speaker 1: sure Kevin Hart's like, WTF, Yeah, it's probably him, right. Um,
24:14
Speaker 1: So you've got Jeff Duneham in the World Record Book.
24:17
Speaker 1: You got Terry Fader with a hundred million dollar um
24:21
Speaker 1: mirage deal selling out every single day. And then there's
24:24
Speaker 1: a show called America's Got Talent one to three including
24:28
Speaker 1: Terry Fader eventula Quist have won that show. Yeah, three
24:32
Speaker 1: eventulo quis. So there's like a weird ventrilo quism renaissance
24:37
Speaker 1: going on right now. Yeah, and Fader and Um, I
24:41
Speaker 1: think who was the other one? Darcy Yeah, Darcy Land
24:44
Speaker 1: Farmer are notable. She was just twelve years old. They
24:48
Speaker 1: are notable for um being good singers, and they will
24:52
Speaker 1: have their dummy sing songs. And I think that's generally
24:55
Speaker 1: what seems to knock people out is when this beautiful
24:57
Speaker 1: voice comes out of that felt mouth, you know, like
25:01
Speaker 1: Terry Fader's dummy does a rendition of Edda James that
25:05
Speaker 1: last it's really something to hear and see. It's amazing. Yeah. So, um,
25:12
Speaker 1: it's weird because you've got Edgar Bergen from the thirties
25:16
Speaker 1: to the late fifties it was a huge heyday of ventriloquism,
25:21
Speaker 1: and then you've got this kind of resurgence in the
25:23
Speaker 1: two thousand, two thousand tens. But in between, it's not
25:26
Speaker 1: like it ever really went away. Some of the most
25:29
Speaker 1: recognizable um ventriloquism dummies like Lamb chop Lester, the Dummy, Madam,
25:35
Speaker 1: Jerry Mahoney, Madam, all those came in between those two times. Yeah,
25:40
Speaker 1: and they existed on The Gong Show and the Sunny
25:43
Speaker 1: and Share Show, and they would make these appearances in
25:46
Speaker 1: the boom of the seventies variety show. Sure, so it's
25:49
Speaker 1: not like it ever went away. And it makes you
25:51
Speaker 1: wonder if ventriloquism ever really will go away because for one,
25:56
Speaker 1: as everyone to a person can agree, it's astoundingly hilarious
26:00
Speaker 1: us the jokes are. And then secondly, to see you
26:03
Speaker 1: truly good ventriloquists perform, it's it's something to see. It
26:09
Speaker 1: is thrilling, is it to an extent? Yes, I think
26:12
Speaker 1: that the one thing I can say that impresses me
26:15
Speaker 1: is when it's really fast back and forth between the two,
26:20
Speaker 1: because that is just physically impressive to me to be
26:23
Speaker 1: able to do that and to do the hand movements
26:25
Speaker 1: and sink it out in time. It out really right exactly.
26:28
Speaker 1: Or if you're like the great Lester, to drink while
26:31
Speaker 1: you're while you're vent dummy is talking. Yeah, I looked
26:34
Speaker 1: into that trick. It's really making a sound. He's not talking,
26:37
Speaker 1: the dummy isn't. But what the what they're doing is
26:39
Speaker 1: they're not drinking. They have tricked glasses. Yeah. Wow, they
26:43
Speaker 1: fooled me. So we talked about the Ventriloquism Museum because
26:51
Speaker 1: we were talking about dumb Struck. But there is a museum.
26:54
Speaker 1: It's a converted house in the suburbs in a subdivision
26:57
Speaker 1: I think in in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, right across Cincinnati,
27:01
Speaker 1: and there are I think a thousand dummies where this
27:07
Speaker 1: is like where they live now. It's a nightmare room,
27:09
Speaker 1: is what it is. Have you seen it. It's in
27:11
Speaker 1: that documentary right okay, and there's pictures of it all over.
27:14
Speaker 1: But it's a bit of a nightmare room. Um. But
27:17
Speaker 1: it's really cool, especially if you're a ventriloquist. Because as
27:21
Speaker 1: part of this saying like here, please, you know, take
27:23
Speaker 1: care of my dummy after I die. The dummies will
27:26
Speaker 1: be kept in good condition. They will be kept clean, washed,
27:30
Speaker 1: behind the ears, all that stuff. But no one, no
27:34
Speaker 1: one will animate them. It's just part of it. Not
27:37
Speaker 1: even the curator of the museum can touch these things.
27:40
Speaker 1: You can handle them, the curator can, but to to
27:44
Speaker 1: animate them make them talk is a gross violation of
27:48
Speaker 1: the dummy vent relationship that was created over the years. Yeah,
27:53
Speaker 1: no other hands shall be up the butt right except
27:56
Speaker 1: for its original owner. But I think that's fantastic. You
28:00
Speaker 1: don't want to disrespect someone's dummy like that now. And
28:03
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian article kind of put it in perspective. They said,
28:06
Speaker 1: like nobody's just gonna come along and pick up chuck
28:08
Speaker 1: berries guitar lucile and start strumming on it or whatever.
28:12
Speaker 1: Where was that from Smithsonian? Because BB King has Lucille.
28:16
Speaker 1: Oh well, they got it wrong. I got it wrong too.
28:19
Speaker 1: There was a Smithsonian magazine article. That's weird, that's Smithsonian.
28:23
Speaker 1: Thanks again, Smithsonian. Uh what was it wrong again? Gay
28:28
Speaker 1: guy to Springfield. When I said earlier that that room
28:32
Speaker 1: is a nightmare. Um, I wasn't disparaging dummies or event trilloquism.
28:36
Speaker 1: There is a um, a long standing sort of thing
28:40
Speaker 1: in pop culture that dummies are uh you know, will
28:44
Speaker 1: come alive at night and kill you. Decidedly creepy when
28:48
Speaker 1: they're just laying there on a couch or something. It
28:51
Speaker 1: doesn't help that when they're not being animated that they're
28:54
Speaker 1: referred to as dead. Yeah, that's laying there, floppy eyes, open,
28:59
Speaker 1: mouth ape, and it's just creepy looking. We gotta read
29:02
Speaker 1: this some quote from the writer um who wrote this,
29:08
Speaker 1: Oh Lauren Canter. That's here. When draped across the table
29:11
Speaker 1: or chair away from the performer, the dolls floppy limbs
29:15
Speaker 1: resembled out of a dead body, but the eyes remain
29:17
Speaker 1: open and the mouth is fixed with a terrifying smile,
29:20
Speaker 1: as if the body is a poorly embalmed child corpse. Yeah,
29:24
Speaker 1: it's decidedly creepy, so much so that it's been I mean,
29:28
Speaker 1: most recently in Toy Story four. Uh have you seen
29:31
Speaker 1: that yet? There's Benson. Benson is a is a dummy
29:34
Speaker 1: that's every time played up like it's every time he appears.
29:37
Speaker 1: It's like a horror movie, gives a horror movie staying
29:40
Speaker 1: and he's in the dramatic lighting and that movie magic.
29:43
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid with Anthony Hopkins
29:46
Speaker 1: in did You Ever See Dead Silence? No? But I
29:50
Speaker 1: just remember seeing that Magic trailer when I was seven
29:52
Speaker 1: and thinking it was the scariest looking thing I've ever seen.
29:54
Speaker 1: It was a pretty scary one, although I'll bet you
29:57
Speaker 1: dollars to doughnuts it's probably not scary all of it.
30:00
Speaker 1: I saw it recently. Fairly scary. Um. The scariest ventriloquism
30:06
Speaker 1: TV show or movie of all time is an Alfred
30:10
Speaker 1: Hitchcock Presents episode called The Glass Eye. Just go watch it.
30:16
Speaker 1: Go find it on Netflix, on Prime, on Hulu, I
30:20
Speaker 1: don't care. Just go find the Glass I think it's
30:22
Speaker 1: season three. If Alfred Hitchcock Presents and thank me later.
30:26
Speaker 1: It will give you chills. Is I'm getting chills right now?
30:29
Speaker 1: Is talking about? It was genuinely scary to check that out,
30:32
Speaker 1: Just beautifully done well and it sort of sets itself
30:35
Speaker 1: up that way, and that you have a inanimate thing
30:39
Speaker 1: that you bring to life and all you have to
30:41
Speaker 1: do in the story is cross it in some way.
30:44
Speaker 1: Either by forgetting about it, leaving it behind, or getting
30:48
Speaker 1: a new one. Right. Jealousy is a big thing. Jealousy,
30:51
Speaker 1: and then that thing comes to life and kills you
30:52
Speaker 1: in your sleep. It's just it's all waiting to be
30:54
Speaker 1: But first it starts by killing your friends and loved ones.
30:57
Speaker 1: Oh sure, you're right, exactly. You just wake up and
31:00
Speaker 1: your wife's gone, Your dummies in there smiling, the windows open,
31:05
Speaker 1: that's right. Oh man, I gotta see that now, the
31:08
Speaker 1: glass eye. I think I think we should take a
31:11
Speaker 1: break and then we'll come back and finally talk about
31:14
Speaker 1: throwing your voice. Are you okay with that? Yeah, let's
31:16
Speaker 1: do it, Okay, all right, we've kind of hinted at
31:40
Speaker 1: it a little bit, we've given a lot of it away,
31:42
Speaker 1: but we're gonna talk about throwing your voice and again
31:46
Speaker 1: to just come right out and say it. No matter
31:48
Speaker 1: what you read on the internet, no matter what you've
31:50
Speaker 1: heard from your friend, uh Jimmy, from the dummy that
31:55
Speaker 1: talks to you at night while you're trying to sleep,
31:57
Speaker 1: who cares. You cannot throw your voice. It's impossible to
32:01
Speaker 1: make your voice come from a different location, but you
32:06
Speaker 1: can make your voice sound like it's coming from a
32:08
Speaker 1: different location if you're really good at it, and that's
32:11
Speaker 1: growing your voice. Yeah, and part of the trick is
32:13
Speaker 1: a visual illusion that happens when someone is standing there
32:17
Speaker 1: watching a human being with a puppet and the puppets talking,
32:23
Speaker 1: and you see that with your eyeballs, you are your
32:27
Speaker 1: your brain is tricked into just believing. But again, that's
32:30
Speaker 1: when you know the dummy is only a foot away. Anyway,
32:33
Speaker 1: if you're an audience member two ft away, it's not
32:35
Speaker 1: much of a leap. So the it's actually your brain
32:38
Speaker 1: doing something. It's not you saying I'm going to decide
32:41
Speaker 1: I decided I'm going to just go all in with
32:43
Speaker 1: this Ventriloquist. Your brains actual it does. Your brain is
32:47
Speaker 1: actually being tricked because there's something appropriately called the Ventriloquist
32:51
Speaker 1: effect where if your eyes and your ears are telling
32:55
Speaker 1: you two slightly different things, your brain over right over
33:00
Speaker 1: rides your ears and goes with your eyes. So if
33:02
Speaker 1: your eyes are telling your brain, hey, I think that
33:05
Speaker 1: voice is coming from that dummy, because the dummies lips
33:07
Speaker 1: are moving in time with the sound, the brain is
33:11
Speaker 1: gonna be like, okay, it's coming out of the dummy,
33:13
Speaker 1: even though your ears are like, no, it's coming a
33:15
Speaker 1: little to the right of the dummy. Your brain says,
33:17
Speaker 1: shut up, ears and actually overrides what your ears are
33:22
Speaker 1: sending it and merges it with what your eyes are
33:25
Speaker 1: sending it, so that you subjectively experience the sound coming
33:30
Speaker 1: out of the dummy. And it sounds bizarre. But if
33:33
Speaker 1: you stop and think about it, if you're watching TV
33:36
Speaker 1: and you've just got that little speaker built into the
33:38
Speaker 1: bottom of the TV, it's not like the sound of
33:41
Speaker 1: people talking appears to be coming out of the speaker
33:43
Speaker 1: in the bottom of the TV. It seems like it's
33:45
Speaker 1: coming out of the people's lips. Same exact thing. That's
33:48
Speaker 1: the ventriloquist effect. Yeah, slightly different with movies because they
33:52
Speaker 1: actually put speakers behind the movie screen to help with
33:55
Speaker 1: that effect. Well, the movie screen so large. But even
33:59
Speaker 1: if you just s some jangkee TV that just has
34:01
Speaker 1: that terrible speaker built into the bottom or the right
34:04
Speaker 1: side or something, it's not like you're like, I can't
34:07
Speaker 1: even follow this? What other TVs? What? What else is
34:09
Speaker 1: out there that I don't know about? Don't the eldest
34:12
Speaker 1: have speakers? Uh? No, you could have home speakers connected
34:16
Speaker 1: to your TV, right some speakers might have the some
34:19
Speaker 1: TV might have the speaker in the top left, right
34:21
Speaker 1: in the bottom right. It's all over the place. It's
34:22
Speaker 1: a free for all, gotcha. Another thing that really helps
34:26
Speaker 1: us effect too, And this is what you want to
34:28
Speaker 1: do anyway, if you want to get act as, you
34:29
Speaker 1: want to really give that dummy a distinct personality from
34:34
Speaker 1: your own. Uh, it should sound very different. Um, a
34:38
Speaker 1: lot of times it's a different accent. You just really
34:40
Speaker 1: want to put a distance between who you are and
34:43
Speaker 1: how you talk and who that dummy is and how
34:45
Speaker 1: they talk. Yeah, because when you when you talk like
34:49
Speaker 1: that the first couple of times the dummy speaks, not
34:52
Speaker 1: only is it delivering some of the funniest jokes you'll
34:55
Speaker 1: ever hear in your life, it's also simultaneously training the
34:58
Speaker 1: audience that this is what the dummy sounds like. So
35:02
Speaker 1: when you combine the Ventriloquist effect, that your brain is
35:05
Speaker 1: overriding what your ears are telling it with the ventriloquist
35:09
Speaker 1: looking at the dummy while the dummies talking like, look, everybody,
35:13
Speaker 1: this is where our attention should be focused because this
35:15
Speaker 1: is who's talking. And then the dummy has its own personality.
35:20
Speaker 1: Those things together are the magic of ventriloquism. That's what
35:24
Speaker 1: makes ventriloquism work. That's how we come to see an
35:28
Speaker 1: inanimate object like a dummy, speaking like a hilarious yokel.
35:34
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what the deal is with why they're not
35:38
Speaker 1: funny to me? I don't know, man, I think that
35:40
Speaker 1: dummy may have killed like your family dog or something,
35:42
Speaker 1: and you just block that out. I think I'm a
35:45
Speaker 1: discerning uh comedy fan. What the deal is is? They're
35:50
Speaker 1: not There's never been some a great comedian. It was like, man,
35:55
Speaker 1: I am a smoking hot comedian, so let me get
35:57
Speaker 1: a dummy up here. It's it's sort of like prop comedy,
36:01
Speaker 1: I guess, and it's the most basic form. Speaking of
36:04
Speaker 1: prop comedy, shout out to Carrot Top, who is still around.
36:08
Speaker 1: He's got his own Vegas residences. Do you know that
36:11
Speaker 1: didn't but doesn't surprise me. I saw him one day
36:13
Speaker 1: on the street in Vegas, uh no, down in Florida,
36:17
Speaker 1: just walking around. I shouted, Carrot Top. Now he's on
36:19
Speaker 1: his mopad. I shouted Carrot Top, and he turned around
36:22
Speaker 1: and sped off. Of course he did, because he threw
36:25
Speaker 1: a rubber chicken at him. No, I just shouted carrot
36:27
Speaker 1: and said, what could you do with this? So um,
36:31
Speaker 1: I kind of take offense to that because I like
36:33
Speaker 1: to consider myself pretty discerning comedy wise. You are, and
36:38
Speaker 1: that's why I'm shocked that you do. You sit around
36:40
Speaker 1: and watch this and you're legitimately laughing at how funny
36:44
Speaker 1: it is. No, never, but I am impressed with the
36:48
Speaker 1: skill and the the stagecraft. Been saying it's very funny. No,
36:56
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever had an Eventil Chris
36:58
Speaker 1: Dummy make me laugh? Okay, I guess I see what
37:01
Speaker 1: you're saying now. I'm just trying to get to the
37:03
Speaker 1: bottom of how you really feel about the jokes. You know.
37:06
Speaker 1: Also shade out. Shout out to shade out, shout yeah
37:12
Speaker 1: it is, and if it works, shout out to what
37:15
Speaker 1: is it? Nate Burghassy, Oh, I finally saw that guy Special.
37:18
Speaker 1: You've been talking him up because he lived up to
37:21
Speaker 1: the hype man. He is hilarious. He's coming to Atlanta
37:25
Speaker 1: in uh December again. Let's go. You want to go,
37:28
Speaker 1: Let's go, all right, we can go backstage. Maybe, Oh
37:31
Speaker 1: that'd be great. You might remember me. That'd be really cool.
37:34
Speaker 1: Give me backstage. I'll try. We'll both bring our ventula
37:36
Speaker 1: because dummies, and we'll heckle him with the dummies. Yeah, well,
37:41
Speaker 1: we would never say. Here's the thing, I love puppets
37:44
Speaker 1: and puppeteering. I'm like a kid in a in a
37:46
Speaker 1: candy store when it comes to stuff like that. Have
37:48
Speaker 1: you been to the Center for Puppet Tree Yards? Remember? Oh? Yeah,
37:52
Speaker 1: we had our TV show premiere there. Yeah, I love it.
37:55
Speaker 1: So there there's I don't know, something happens between puppets
37:59
Speaker 1: comedy and the weird Venn diagram that is ventriloquism where
38:04
Speaker 1: I just I can't go there. Maybe do you not
38:06
Speaker 1: like singers and one liners Henny Youngman type stuff, because
38:10
Speaker 1: that's what a lot of events, A lot of it
38:12
Speaker 1: is very old school. Yeah, they're not. I'd like to
38:15
Speaker 1: maybe see something a little more modern, like a Jeff Dunn.
38:18
Speaker 1: I'm like an evening with type of comedy. I see
38:21
Speaker 1: you want a storytelling. Oh what's the guy's name? Oh
38:25
Speaker 1: my god, what is his name? This is not making
38:29
Speaker 1: for good podcast? Is it a comedian? Oh? You want
38:32
Speaker 1: to see Neil Hamburger doing ventrilo That would be pretty great,
38:36
Speaker 1: that would be astounding. Is he still around. I don't know.
38:41
Speaker 1: I mean, they had that movie a couple of years back.
38:43
Speaker 1: I'm sure he's still around, all right, So let's talk
38:46
Speaker 1: about how to do this, because this is the stuff
38:48
Speaker 1: that really as a kid, I would sit around in
38:50
Speaker 1: the mirror with that dumb record on practicing my bs f's, ms, ps,
38:58
Speaker 1: vs and w's because you can't really say those letters
39:02
Speaker 1: with your mouth closed, because when you're when you're talking
39:05
Speaker 1: as eventual, because your mouth closed, your teeth are shut
39:08
Speaker 1: and it's just the tip of your tongue moving back
39:11
Speaker 1: and forth. Your tongue is actually retracted to the back
39:13
Speaker 1: of your mouth. So it's an astounding that just that
39:16
Speaker 1: small handful of letters are the ones that are hard
39:19
Speaker 1: to pronounce. It is, But if you look at that
39:21
Speaker 1: other long list, I mean, anyone with no training whatsoever,
39:26
Speaker 1: you can probably get in front of a mirror and
39:28
Speaker 1: not move their lips and go a C, D, E, G, H, I,
39:32
Speaker 1: j K, L H O q R S t U
39:37
Speaker 1: x z. So you're training paid off. This was the
39:40
Speaker 1: moment you were training for it. But when it comes
39:43
Speaker 1: to those other ones, and the one I really remember
39:46
Speaker 1: was bees and ends, So you swap out d s
39:51
Speaker 1: for bees. So instead of saying the word boy b
39:54
Speaker 1: o y, you say doy, right, but you don't say doy,
39:57
Speaker 1: you say yeah you try to and girls. Yeah, exactly.
40:02
Speaker 1: And that's the trick, is his context. When you hear
40:05
Speaker 1: doys and girls, your brain wants to hear boys and girls,
40:09
Speaker 1: and uh, your brain wants to hear uh, what's another
40:14
Speaker 1: one here? I don't wonder that one part when the
40:18
Speaker 1: guy did Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
40:20
Speaker 1: he did it really like, these are the ones that
40:23
Speaker 1: are really good at it. You just can't see right.
40:25
Speaker 1: And that's the thing you and I are, well, I
40:28
Speaker 1: should say I'm not very good at it. I'm not either,
40:30
Speaker 1: but um ventillo Christs are. And if this sounds really weird,
40:34
Speaker 1: all you have to do is say, well, i've seemed
40:36
Speaker 1: ventilo christ before, I've never noticed, and they would say exactly, yeah,
40:40
Speaker 1: that's how good we are. Start listening a little bit
40:42
Speaker 1: for peas and teas. Instead of saying the repeater, you
40:45
Speaker 1: would say, teeter, take the tech of tickled tech teppers,
40:49
Speaker 1: which sounds ridiculous. But the practice, practice, practice part, you know,
40:54
Speaker 1: and even in that documentary, you know, some of them
40:57
Speaker 1: were better than others even within that movie. So you
41:01
Speaker 1: could see a master at work like Dan Horn or
41:04
Speaker 1: the Vegas guy Terry Fader and Dan Horn. I do
41:09
Speaker 1: need to shout out that everyone remarked about his articulation.
41:13
Speaker 1: What do they call it though, just like how you
41:15
Speaker 1: move the puppet basically not even the mouth stuff. Handwork. Yeah,
41:19
Speaker 1: the handwork and um, the manipulation is just off the
41:23
Speaker 1: charts for him. He really brings it to life. But yeah, yeah,
41:28
Speaker 1: he was really really good. But then you would see
41:30
Speaker 1: someone else, um, like the beauty contestant who Kimberly he
41:35
Speaker 1: really wanted to be on the cruise ship performing and
41:38
Speaker 1: she was okay, but you could you know she you
41:41
Speaker 1: could hear those teas sometimes and you could hear those
41:44
Speaker 1: bees or d's for bees. I didn't notice, well, I
41:50
Speaker 1: was really had the headphones in and that was really
41:53
Speaker 1: picking it apart. I was studying, and I think that,
41:55
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like a magician. Some people go there
41:58
Speaker 1: and watch the magic act and some people we'll see
42:00
Speaker 1: there and try and figure out what they're doing. I
42:02
Speaker 1: think some people go and they just check out and
42:04
Speaker 1: they're like, this is the funniest dang thing I've ever seen,
42:06
Speaker 1: and other people just stare at the lips with their
42:08
Speaker 1: arms cross waiting to catch them. Right, it's a weird thing.
42:12
Speaker 1: There's actually a scene like that in Dead Silence, that
42:15
Speaker 1: horror movie where boys like I could see your lips
42:17
Speaker 1: move and that boy who is who's in? That's the
42:23
Speaker 1: lead knowing you've heard of? Okay, so although what's Donnie Wahlberg,
42:28
Speaker 1: isn't it? He plays a cop, almost a hapless cop
42:32
Speaker 1: who kind of alternates between like a tough guy and
42:34
Speaker 1: a guy who can get pushed the floor easily by
42:37
Speaker 1: a man who's fifty pounds lighter than him. I thought
42:40
Speaker 1: this is an old movie, so this is he doesn't seven? Okay,
42:43
Speaker 1: semi recently worth seeing. It actually is super scary in
42:46
Speaker 1: a few parts Dead Silence, Dead Silence. It's a little hokey,
42:50
Speaker 1: but it's a cult I want to say, a cult classic.
42:54
Speaker 1: Not yet, it's a cult favorite. Give it a few years.
42:57
Speaker 1: It's got a cold already, it's got a cold following,
42:59
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if it's a cult classic.
43:01
Speaker 1: We should read the rest of these though, just in
43:03
Speaker 1: case people do want to practice DS for bees for
43:07
Speaker 1: f you use E T H as your substitution, u
43:13
Speaker 1: ms become ends like I said, nothings instead of muffins,
43:17
Speaker 1: tease like we said, become pas vs, become th h
43:22
Speaker 1: E liked for victory. Yeah. Again, sounds ridiculous coming out
43:28
Speaker 1: of our mouths, right, but we're talking like imagine if
43:30
Speaker 1: you played up like an accent or it's a little
43:33
Speaker 1: kid who has like buck teeth or something like that,
43:36
Speaker 1: then it's explained. It makes all tricks of the trade exactly.
43:39
Speaker 1: And another trick of the trade is to uh not
43:42
Speaker 1: use those words much, right. Rewrite the sentence, yeah, rewrite
43:45
Speaker 1: it so instead of d for boy doy just a kid. Sure,
43:51
Speaker 1: like the Elmer Fudd rule, which was well, remember Elmer
43:55
Speaker 1: Fudd could like he I guess, stuttered, I guess, and
43:58
Speaker 1: then we just abandoned whatever we're we're trying to say, Oh,
44:01
Speaker 1: it was porky pig, your porky pig. There's another thing
44:04
Speaker 1: about porky pig. Remember when we were talking about Donald Duck.
44:07
Speaker 1: How Donald Duck wore a shirt with no pants that's
44:11
Speaker 1: actually called porky pig in it? A shirt with no pants. Yeah,
44:15
Speaker 1: somebody walking around with just a shirt on, which I've
44:18
Speaker 1: said before, I know this because I've mentioned in an
44:20
Speaker 1: episode before I was it's the most horrific look a
44:23
Speaker 1: man ever Donald, and somebody wrote in and so that's
44:26
Speaker 1: actually called porky pig in it, and I'm like, that's
44:28
Speaker 1: classic and disturbed people that well. I mean, it's like
44:32
Speaker 1: if you're getting dressed, but who puts on their shirt
44:35
Speaker 1: before their underwear. There's some weirdos out there who do,
44:39
Speaker 1: or I guess a lot of people don't wear underwear.
44:42
Speaker 1: There you go, you just figured it out. I just
44:44
Speaker 1: remember the scene an Animal House when Donald Sutherland has
44:46
Speaker 1: on that cardigan sweater and he goes and gets like
44:49
Speaker 1: a box of cereal off the shelf, porky pigging it
44:52
Speaker 1: and his sweater races up and you see his butt. Yeah,
44:55
Speaker 1: it's disturbing. Oh man, not a good look. There's one
44:59
Speaker 1: other thing on to say, we we need to get
45:01
Speaker 1: technically here because we've been real silly. But ventriloquists when
45:04
Speaker 1: they are speaking, they talk in a resonant voice, so
45:07
Speaker 1: it's got a real hump to it, and there's a
45:09
Speaker 1: lot of air involved that they pushed through their nose
45:12
Speaker 1: and their closed teeth. At the same time, breathing is
45:16
Speaker 1: very important, so they get a real resonant voice, which
45:18
Speaker 1: is one way that they can project it. They can
45:20
Speaker 1: make it sound like it's further away by modulating their voice.
45:25
Speaker 1: And there's a ventriloquist called Paul's Arden. He won America's
45:28
Speaker 1: Got Talent too, and he's taken it old school where
45:31
Speaker 1: he goes out like some of the old ventriloquists who
45:34
Speaker 1: um worked before dummies did uh and fools um hapless
45:40
Speaker 1: bystanders into thinking somebody's crying out from a dumpster and
45:44
Speaker 1: needs help or something like that. He's also the guy,
45:47
Speaker 1: I think that it's on America's Got Talent that does
45:51
Speaker 1: a mask on a real human. He got Howie Mandel
45:54
Speaker 1: up there, and the lady came out and would put
45:57
Speaker 1: a mask on Howie Mandel. And knowing how how We
46:00
Speaker 1: Mandel is about germs, I could see him just like, yeah,
46:02
Speaker 1: this person is putting a mask on his face with
46:05
Speaker 1: their hands, and he was kind of like okay. But
46:08
Speaker 1: then there's either a remote control or something behind him
46:11
Speaker 1: where he moves the mouth, So Howie Mandel just has
46:14
Speaker 1: to sit there right. He does the eventually quizit with
46:17
Speaker 1: Howowie Mandel's moving mouth, Ye has the dummy. It's pretty hilarious.
46:22
Speaker 1: It is. Well, if you want to know more about
46:24
Speaker 1: ventula quis M, go practice, go figure it out. You
46:27
Speaker 1: can do it. We know you can't. And since I
46:30
Speaker 1: said you can do it, it's time for a listener mail.
46:36
Speaker 1: Hey guys, my name is Nathan. I'm twenty eight years old.
46:38
Speaker 1: I'm a systems engineer and Waka Shaw Wisconsin. Here's how
46:43
Speaker 1: you pronounced Did you see that? Uh? He has a
46:47
Speaker 1: fancy named Abby. You get married Nick August. He's been
46:51
Speaker 1: listening to us for six months and he's hooked, so
46:54
Speaker 1: he says this. I just finished the eyewitness testimony episode
46:57
Speaker 1: and I finally have something to write in about the
46:59
Speaker 1: movie The Twelve Angry Men. Yeah. It was made in
47:02
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties about a jury comprised of twelve angry men.
47:06
Speaker 1: The movie covers a lot about prejudice, prejudice, morality, and
47:10
Speaker 1: everything else that goes along with courtroom dramas. But one
47:12
Speaker 1: of the penultimate scenes regarding eyewitness test is regarding eyewitness testimony.
47:16
Speaker 1: I don't want to give it anything away, but it
47:18
Speaker 1: really shows how someone can be completely confident in something
47:21
Speaker 1: they've seen, but what might not be really what happened
47:24
Speaker 1: when you look at the details without knowing it. The
47:27
Speaker 1: movie challenges memory versus reality and how we're all victims
47:30
Speaker 1: to emotion. Pretty good for a movie about a bunch
47:33
Speaker 1: of white dudes uh in the nineteen fifties, I totally
47:36
Speaker 1: suggested as a much must watch, especially with the current
47:39
Speaker 1: climate of political affairs. To that, keep up the good work, guys.
47:45
Speaker 1: Welcome back Jerry. II. How that guy I know? And
47:48
Speaker 1: that's from Nathan? Did you add that? No? Wow? Well,
47:51
Speaker 1: welcome back Jerry. Guys. Good he's heard this episode before. Well,
47:57
Speaker 1: she'd been back before this, so you're late, Nathan. Okay,
48:01
Speaker 1: it was Nathan, Nathan. Thanks a lot, and thank you
48:04
Speaker 1: for um teaching us how to pronounce with KESHI and
48:08
Speaker 1: hello to Abby. Good luck on that wedding. Yeah, mozle,
48:10
Speaker 1: tough guys. UM send us the extra breadmaker or whatever
48:15
Speaker 1: you get that you don't want, Okay, I'll take a breadmaker,
48:18
Speaker 1: all right, let's do it. We'll split custody, all right.
48:21
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with Chuck me
48:23
Speaker 1: or Jerry or Frank the chair too, even um, you
48:26
Speaker 1: can go to stuff you Should Know dot com and
48:28
Speaker 1: follow our social links. Onto the social media's and find
48:31
Speaker 1: us there um. You can also send us a good
48:33
Speaker 1: old fashioned email to Stuff Podcast at i heeart radio
48:38
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeart Radios.
48:44
Speaker 1: How stuff works for more podcasts for my heart Radio
48:46
Speaker 1: because at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
48:49
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows