Learn what NASA astronaut Nicole Stott learned from her time in outer space. Plus: whistled languages around the world. More from retired NASA astronaut Nicole Stott: Pick up "Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet — and Our Mission to Protect It" https://www.sealpress.com/titles/nicole-stott/back-to-earth/9781541675049/ Website: https://www.npsdiscovery.com/ Follow @Astro_Nicole on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Astro_Nicole Space for Art Foundation: https://www.spaceforartfoundation.org/ At least 80 cultures have developed whistled versions of their languages for long-distance communication by Grant Currin Holmes, B. (2021, August). Speaking in whistles. Knowable Magazine | Annual Reviews. https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2021/whistled-languages Robson, D. (2017). The beautiful languages of the people who talk like birds. Bbc.com. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170525-the-people-who-speak-in-whistles Environmental and Linguistic Typology of Whistled Languages. (2019). Annual Reviews. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011619-030444 Sounds of Whistled Speech in “The Relevance of Human Whistled Languages for Dolphin Communication.” (2021). SoundCloud; SoundCloud. https://soundcloud.com/user-28976943/sets/meyer-and-diaz-2021-sounds-of-whistled-speech Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn what NASA astronaut Nicole Stott learned from her time in outer space. Plus: whistled languages around the world.
More from retired NASA astronaut Nicole Stott:
At least 80 cultures have developed whistled versions of their languages for long-distance communication by Grant Currin
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-space-changed-nasa-astronaut-nicole-stotts-perspective-plus-whistled-languages
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how being in outer space changed our guest’s perspective about the world, in an inspiring story from NASA astronaut Nicole Stott. You’ll also learn how dozens of cultures have developed whistled versions of their languages. CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Nicole Stott, NASA (Ashley)
With the daily conflicts of politics, office disputes, and online trolls, it's easy to get bogged down in how different we all are. That's why today's guest will be a breath of fresh air: she's seen Earth from space, and she's here to remind us that we're all just humans living on the same tiny planet. Nicole Stott is a former NASA astronaut who's been on two missions to space, including a long-duration mission on the International Space Station. That experience changed the way she sees the world, and it inspired her to write a book about what she's learned about life on our home planet. That book is called "Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet — and Our Mission to Protect It." In our conversation, we asked her how being in space changed her perspective.
[CLIP 5:52]
Inspiring stuff, right? Again, that was Nicole Stott, former NASA astronaut and author of the new book "Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet — and Our Mission to Protect It." Nicole will be back tomorrow to talk about how art has helped her communicate her experience in space.
At least 80 cultures have developed whistled versions of their languages for long-distance communication by Grant Currin (Cody)
How do you communicate with someone who’s out of earshot? For people in the modern western world, the answer might be Walkie Talkies, cell phones, or empty soup cans connected by a string. But what about back before those inventions were possible? More than 80 cultures scattered across the world settled on the same remarkable solution: a whistled version of their local language.
Why whistles? Because a whistle carries a lot farther than normal speech. Talk at a loud volume at the goal end of a soccer field, and you can reach someone who’s almost to the midfield line. Shout at the top of your lungs, and you can reach someone at a distance of about two soccer fields placed end to end. But whistle, and your target could hear it from upwards of five soccer fields away. A very skilled whistler can send a message ten times farther than they can yell the same thing. It’s kind of a sonic superpower!
That’s probably why cultures have developed whistled languages again and again, from Siberia to the Amazon Rainforest to West Africa to the Himalayas to New Guinea. A lot of the time, what these cultures have in common comes down to the land. For instance, there are shepherds who live on La Gomera [go-MARE-uh], off the coast of West Africa, and they spend a lot of time tending to their flocks on very rugged terrain that’s painstaking and dangerous to cross. The valleys are too far to shout across, but they aren’t too far for whistling. A conversation in their whistled language can save shepherds hours of travel.
Linguist Julien Meyer recently published a review of whistled languages and he found that they have the same features of normal languages, minus the vocal cords. For languages like English that don’t rely on pitch for meaning, a skilled whistler can pretty easily imitate the most important aspects of the spoken version. That makes it simple enough to differentiate between a whistled long e and a long o, or between a “t” and a “k.” You don’t even have to have heard it before! Like, take a listen to these recordings of whistled English, which we’re using courtesy of Julien Meyer.
[whistledspeech.wav]
Of course, again, that’s a language where pitch doesn’t carry a lot of meaning. In tonal languages, like Mandarin, whistlers have to make tradeoffs. But it’s definitely doable. For instance, a language from Southern Mexico called Chinantec [chee-NAN-tek] has seven different tones, but the whistled version can still carry a ton of meaning.
Unfortunately, whistled languages have been in serious decline all over the world for decades. And it’s not just because of technological alternatives. Deforestation and other forms of resource extraction are harming whistling communities and changing their ways of life. But there is some good news. UNESCO has recognized two whistled languages as part of the world’s intangible cultural heritage, which comes with some resources for conservation. At least that’s something to whistle about.
RECAP
Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned today
1. ASHLEY: Life on Earth would be a lot better if we all acted like crewmates instead of passengers. That’s according to NASA astronaut Nicole Stott, who said that going to space changed her life — for the better. She also said that curiosity is core to what makes us human, and it’s important for humans to approach problems with a sense of curiosity so we can find solutions that work for everyone.
2. CODY: Nicole also told us about a thing called “Earthing,” where you basically just stand outside, feel the ground beneath your feet, and think about how we’re all hurtling through space at millions of miles an hour. You may not be able to go to outer space, but you can
take a moment to stand on the ground and think about the nature around you — and that can go a long way.
3. ASHLEY: More than 80 cultures worldwide have a whistled version of their language. They use it for long-distance communication, since whistles can travel up to 10 times farther than a shout. These languages are in decline, but UNESCO has recognized two as as part of the world’s intangible cultural heritage, and that comes with some resources to help conserve it.
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: The writer for today’s whistling story was Grant Currin.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also an audio editor on today’s episode. ASHLEY: Our producer and lead audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: [Patience riff whistle] Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!