Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
not because.
Speaker 2: I put my hand on a book and made a.
Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2: Today is going to be a show about fun science.
We're going to learn things and take a much needed
break from religion and politics. I need a break. I
logged on this morning just to stay informed. You know
what sucks about being alive, staying informed? The world is crazy.
I need a break. You need a break. Let's do
some fun science. This is the kind of thing that
our school teachers might have done when we were kids.
You walk in, you sit down in your desk, and
the teacher says, all right, we're gonna do some fun
experiments today. Get ready to have a good time and
expand your mind. I like that kind of stuff, so
let's do it today. It has to do with a
term that I had not heard until recently. I was
talking to a friend of mine, Adrian Hill. She's part
of the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. You may have seen
Adrian with Richard Saunders on the Skeptic Zone podcast. She's
worked a lot with Kenny Biddle, who is an investigator
Slash Deep Bunker. He does a lot of work talking
about our desire to believe, the pattern seeking brain, the
voices that we hear in white noise that sound like
ghosts communicating to us. People who look at photographs and oh,
look there's a face in the window where somebody's in
the graveyard walking. It must be a spirit. Maybe it's Grandma.
She does a lot of that kind of thing. And
she was doing a speech in Canada at Calgary's We
Can Reason conference, and I'm going to release the video
of that. I begged for permission. I said, your ghost
speech is amazing. Can I put it on my channel?
So it's coming up in a few days. But she
brought up a term called monday green. Now, Monday green
wasn't actually a word until it was It was made
up by an American writer named Sylvia Wright, and she
was publishing a piece in Harper's magazine back in nineteen
fifty four, and she was talking about her childhood and
a specific instance when she had heard the lyric to
a poem, but she had heard something different than the
words on the page. Her mom used to read her
from the Releaks of Ancient English Poetry. This was a
compilation of poems from the seventeen hundreds, and so her
mother was reading, ye Highlands and ye Lowland, So where
have ye been? They have slain the Earl A Murray
and lady MONDE Green. Except that's not what the lyric
actually said. The lyric was laid him on the green.
Yet Sylvia carried monda Green in her brain for decades
of her life, and when she wrote about it, that
term kind of stuck. So now when you and I
miss here a lyric and we learn it wrong and
our brains are connecting dots in that incorrect way, we
call that a Manda Green. And we're going to get
into some science about why our brains connect dots in
this way. We're going to talk more about mind and
memory and mondagree. But first I brought so many examples
that you are just gonna love. And you may hear
or mishear some of the a certain way. Everybody's difference.
I would be curious to survey this audience as to
what they hear when I play the clips. We're gonna
begin with Taylor Swift. Twelve years ago, Taylor Swift releases
her fifth studio album, which includes the song blank Space.
An often misheard lyric in that song exists in this
short clip see what you hear?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: I have to keep these musical clips really short, or
else YouTube's gonna sting me with a bunch of copyright bullshits.
So roll with me as best you can. Let me
play Taylor Swift from blank Space again. What do you hear?
A lot of Swifties have been singing these words. Got
a long list of Starbucks lovers? See if you hear it?
So many people got this one wrong. That Taylor Swift
has actually spoken about it in interviews. She's totally in
on it and thinks it's kind of awesome. But the
lyric itself has not got a long list of Starbucks lovers.
It is got a long list of ex lovers. Okay,
let's go back to nineteen seventy two with the legendary
British musician Elton John and his classic Tiny Dancer, Except
according to a great many people, he's not saying tiny Dancer,
He's saying somebody's name. Try this.
Speaker 4: Son something of dance?
Speaker 2: Did your brain here? Hold me closer? Tony Danza.
Speaker 4: Sun Dance?
Speaker 2: Okay, Tony Danza was an actor. He's still around, but
he was an actor that was most famous in the seventies.
In the eighties, he was on taxi and he was
on Who's the Boss? Do you hear hold me closer?
Tony Danza.
Speaker 4: Sun Dance?
Speaker 2: Of course the song says hold me closer, Tiny Dancer.
Still in the seventies, Jimmy Hendrick's Purple Hayz. Do you
know this when you can hear it coming?
Speaker 4: Excuse me while kiss the sky.
Speaker 2: I don't know what your brain hears. My brain heres.
Excuse me why I kiss this guy?
Speaker 4: Excuse me while kiss the scuf.
Speaker 2: And of course he's saying, excuse me while I kiss
the sky. Let's back up to before the nineteen seventies.
This was Bad Moon Rising, written by John Fogerty, performed
by Creeden's clear Water Revival. This is from the Green
River album released in April of nineteen sixty nine, with
one of the most famous misheard lyrics or Monda Green's
in history, from the song bad Moon Rising. What do
you hear in this clip? Is there indeed a bathroom
on the right? There's a bathroom on the right. I
hear it in my head? Do you hear it? Of course,
the correct lyric is there's a bad moon on the rise,
hence the title of the song bad Moon Rising. Apparently
John Fogerty enjoys this Manda Green so much that in
concerts sometimes he would say there's a bathroom on the right,
and he would sing it that way on purpose, and
the audience loved it. One of my favorite records Toto
four with the song Rosanna on it, and probably equally
famous the tune Africa but do we really bless the
grains down in Africa?
Speaker 4: And then the rain.
Speaker 2: I'm working it out in my head, I bless the
grains down in Africa? Do you hear it that way?
Speaker 4: And then the ray.
Speaker 2: Of course, the actual lyrics, It's going to take me
a lot to drag me away from you. There's nothing
more than one hundred men or more could ever do?
I bless the rains down in Africa. Now, if it
sounds like a lot of the Manda Green examples are
older tunes, it's pretty obvious that we have been singing
something on the order of decades right came classics, which
is why they've stuck in our minds and in the culture.
So it would make sense that we would go back
to nineteen seventy and talk about Stevie Wonder in his
hit single Signed Sealed Delivered, I'm yours. People have not
been hearing signed Sealed Delivered, I'm yours. They're hearing something else.
Try again. I don't get this one. People are insisting
Stevie Wonder has been singing down to the River Onions, Onions,
down to the River Onions. That one's a stretch for me.
Everybody's brain is different, That one's a stretch for me.
Dancing Queen, by Abba, you are the dancing Queen, young
and sweet, only seventeen. Dancing Queen. Feel the beat from
the tambourine. Oh yeah, oh no. The Manda Green here
is See that girl, Watch her scream kicking the dancing Queen.
See that girl, watch her scream kicking the Dancing Queen. Okay, yeah,
I mean it's close. It's close. And another one from
the eighties from the Rocky three classic soundtrack Survive I
of the Tiger and the last known survivor stalks his
prey in the night, except he's not stalking prey. Did
you hear it? Let me play it again for you,
and the last known survivor stalks his bread in the night. No,
I'm serious. Let me play it one more time. The
last known survivor stalks his bread in the night, and
see if you hear it. I wonder if the lead
singer of Survivor sometimes sings the Manda Green version to
his audience. You know, is he in on the joke?
Is the band enjoying the Manda Green along with the
rest of us? Okay? How can we talk about misheard
lyrics and not talk about the Begs? You know, the
beg Staying Alive Saturday Night Fever. This iconic seventies group
the Begs from their song Jibe Talking. The lyric actually
says jive Talking. Tell me why but people have been
singing child Swallow? Tell me why that's creepy? How deep
is your love has been? Miss? Sung? I'm a beaver
in love from Night Fever. I get higher in my walking. No, no,
people have been singing I get higher in Milwaukee. Not
I get higher in my walking. And here's a clip
from the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever nineteen seventy seven,
the song more than a Woman. What do you hear?
Does that sound like bald headed woman? I mean, I'm
sure people know this is bogus. They're not thinking. Marry
Robin and Maurice Gibb wrote bald headed Woman as a lyric,
but that's what many brains have been hearing.
Speaker 5: Do you.
Speaker 2: Bald headed woman? The beg's And maybe the big question is,
the next time you hear this, for the rest of
your life, every time you hear this, are you going
to hear bald headed woman? You're welcome, You are welcome. Okay.
I'm going to talk about patterns seeking and how our
brains operate to try to make sense or nonsense of
our natural world. We're going to get into that in
just a second. I was reading an article about mon
greens in The New Yorker, published several years ago by
Maria Konik Koba. The piece was titled Excuse Me while
I kiss this guy, And of course we played that
classic Hendrix clip a few minutes ago. In the article
she says this, She says hearing is a two step process. First,
there is the auditory perception itself, the physics of sound
waves making their way through your ear and into the
auditory cortex of your brain. And then there is the
meaning making, the part where your brain takes the noise
and imbues it with significance. That was a car alarm,
that's a bird Manda Greens occur when somewhere between the
sound and the meaning communication breaks down. You hear the
same acoustic information as everyone else, but your brain doesn't
interpret it the same way. What's less immediately clear is
why precisely that happens. The simplest cases occur when we
just mishear something it's noisy, and we lack the visual
cues to help us out. This can happen on the phone,
on the radio, across cubicles, basically anytime we can't see
the mouth of the speaker. One of the reasons we
often miss here song lyrics is that there's a lot
of noise to get through, and we usually can't see
the musician's faces. Other times, the misperceptions come from the
nature of the speech itself, for example, when someone speaks
in an unfamiliar accent, or when the usual structure of
stresses and inflections changes, as it does in a poem
or a song, what should be clear becomes ambiguous, and
our brain must do its best to resolve the ambiguity.
Human speech occurs without breaks. When one word ends and
another begins, we don't actually pause to signal the transition.
When you listen to a recording of a language that
you don't speak, can you hear a continuous stream of
sounds that's more a warblink than a string of discernible words.
We only learn when one word stops and the next
one starts over time, by virtue of certain verbal cues.
For instance, different languages have different general principles of inflection,
the rise and fall of a voice within a word
or sentence, and syllabification the stress patterns of syllables. Combined
with actual semantic knowledge, very young children can make mistakes
that shed light on how the process actually develops in
the language instinct Stephen, Pinker, don't get hung up on Pinker,
all right, don't get hung This is a twelve year
old article talk about Pinker in the Language Instinct, Stephen
Pinker points out a few near missus I am have
as a response to behave, I don't want to go
to your Amy replied to going to my Ami. People
immersed in an environment with a new language often initially
experienced the same thing, a lack of clear ability to
tell what words exactly should properly emerge from the sounds
that are being spoken. Most likely, my sister's unconventional talent
stems partly from the fact that English is not our
first language. For us, on a basic level, word processing
will always be just a bit different from that of
native English speakers. A common cause of manda greens in
particular is the oranym word strings in which the sounds
can be logically divided multiple ways. One version that Pinker
describes goes like this, Eugene O'Neill won a pullet Surprise.
The string of phonetic sounds can be plausibly broken up
in multiple ways, and if you're not familiar with the
requisite proper noun, you may find yourself taking an error.
In similar fashion, Bohemian Rhapsody becomes Bohemian rap. City Children
might wonder why Olive the other reindeer was so mean
to Rootolph Olive the other reindeer, And a foreigner might
become confused as to why in this country we entrust
weather reports to meety urologists, or why so many people
are black toast intolerant, or and m's result in not
so much a mangling as an incorrect parsing of sounds
when context or prior knowledge is lacking. In other times,
the culprit is the perception of the sound itself. Some
letters and letter combinations sound remarkably alike, and we need
further cues, whether visual or contextual, to help us out.
In their absence, one sound can be mistaken for another.
For example, in a phenomenon known as the McGirk effect,
people can be made to hear one consonant when a
similar one is being spoken. There's a bathroom on the right,
standing in for there's a bad moon on the rise
is a succession of such similarities, adding up to two
equally coherent alternatives. What usually prevents us from being tripped
up by phonetics is the context and our own knowledge.
When we hear a word or phrase, our brain's first
cue is the actual sounds in the order in which
they are produced. According to the Cohort model, one of
the leading theories of auditory word processing, when we hear sounds,
a number of related words are activated all at once
in our heads, words that either sound the same or
have component parts that are the same. Our brain then
chooses the one that makes the most sense. For instance,
if I'm talking about the role of the syllable and
language comprehension, also, on some level, thinking about a silly
looking ball rolling away a silly ball, you're also considering
the smaller snippets that form each word's makeup row along
with roll, sill, along with silly and sill a bowl.
Only after I say the whole phrase, do you understand
what I'm saying. Songs and poems, in some sense, lie
between conventional speech and a foreign language. We hear the
sounds but don't have the normal contextual clues. It's not
as if we were mid conversation, where the parameters have
already been set. Along with knowledge, we are governed by familiarity.
We're more likely to select a word or phrase we're
familiar with, a phenomenon known as Zip's law zip F
zips law according to which the actual frequency of a
word can affect how seamlessly it is processed. If you're
a member of the crew team, you are far more
likely to select row row instead of row r oe
from an ambiguous sentence. If you are a chef, the
opposite is likely, you would choose roe the food roe.
One of the reasons that excuse me while I kiss
this guy, substituted for Jimmy Hendrix's excuse me while I
kiss the sky remains one of the most widely reported
Monda greens of all time can be explained in part
by frequency. It's much more common to hear people kissing
guys than skies. Expectations to play a role. You're much
more likely to miss here cry me a river as
crime mean river. If you've recently been discussing the situation
in Ukraine. Manda greens are funny, of course, but they
also give us insight into the underlying nature of linguistic
processing and how our minds make meaning out of sound.
In fractions of seconds, we translate a boundless blur of
sound into sense. It comes naturally easily. Effortlessly. We sift
through sounds, activate and reject countless alternatives and select one
single meaning out of a myriad homonyms, near matches, and
possible parsings. Even those speakers may have different accents, pronunciations, intonations,
or inflections, and in the overwhelming majority of instances we
get it right. To gain a better appreciation of how
complex that constant, instantaneous interpretive dance is, consider the problems
of speech recognition software, which, despite recent improvements, still usually
generate a mix and muddle of whatever a user was
trying to say. And if I can jump out, I'm
thinking of speech to text, which it really has improved.
I mean, I use it all the time because it's
easier than typing with these big meat hooks of mind.
But how many times have we been doing speech to
text and it just gets it wrong? Back to the article,
Our brains are exceptional creators of logical meaning, even when
it's not quite the intended one. Some Manda greens are
so plausible that they can become the real thing. The
term spitting image was once a Manda green, a mishearing
and improper syllabic split of spit and image. Spit is
another term for likeness, so spit and image was likeness
and image today it is spitting image. When you eat
an orange, you're actually consuming a nourange from the Persian
and Sanskrit. Your nickname is historically speaking, an Ecan name
E K E, N A M E, or an additional name.
Who knows. Maybe someday, when you do something for all
intensive purposes, no one will blink an eye, and maybe
in the future some avant garde poet will finally pan
averse to that most lovely of women, Lady Monda Green.
I'll link the article in the description box of the show.
That's some fun science. Then I've got a lot more
examples of fun Monday greens for us to decipher and decode.
This next example is a little more recent. This released
from Outcast in the album speaker Box two thousand and three.
The song you Know It's called Hey Yeah. The line
has written says, shake it like a polaroid picture. But
that's not what people have been hearing it. Okay, I
don't know, do you. It is alleged that people have
been singing shake it, shake it like a horny white preacher.
I may have to I might sing it this way forever,
shake it, shake it like a horny white preacher. I mean,
is there any other kind? Shake it like a horny
white preacher. It r e M Losing My Religion, Released
in nineteen ninety one from the Out of Time album.
The lyrics actually say this, that's me in the corner,
that's me in the spotlights, losing my religion. Oh no,
that's me in the corner.
Speaker 4: That's in the.
Speaker 2: Spot Lie, are they really peeing in the corner. Let's
pee in the corner. Let's pee in the spotlight.
Speaker 6: That's me in the corner, that's the in the spot Live.
Speaker 2: Nineteen seventy six saw the Manfred Mann album release the
Roaring Silence big hit, and of course we still sing
blinded by the light, wrapped up like a deuce, another
runner in the night. But are we really singing it correctly?
Red dems in the night? And you know where I'm
going with this one, right because you've sang it. Don't
tell me, you don't tell me you haven't sung wrapped
up like a douche, not a deuce. No no, no,
we've been wrapping it up like a douche, a doms
in the night. This lyric, of course, brings logistical challenges.
How exactly does one wrap up a doucheh, how do
you rap a douche? I mean, we critical thinkers have
to work this out in our brains. Do we not?
Jump forward twelve years the year nineteen eighty four, the
extremely talented and sorely missed George Michael still the lead
singer for Wham, and the hugely popular album by Wham
Make It Big, featured the single Careless Whisper, and you
know the lyrics I'm never gonna dance again. Guilty feat
have got no rhythm. Though it's easy to pretend. I
know you're not a fool, but that is not what
many people have been singing. Guilty feat have got no rhythm?
Speaker 4: Or guilty.
Speaker 2: Do you hear the word penis in that? Guilty penis
got no rhythm? Guilty Guilty penis got no rhythm? Guilty penis,
I got a I don't know, my brain is starting
the short circuit. And guilty feet have got no rhythm,
Guilty penis. I guess it works either way. I mean,
who hasn't had a guilty penis? Right, the jury has
rendered a verdict and your penis has been found guilty guilty.
Another late great talent, Prince, released his Paisley Park Record
in nineteen eighty five with a hit single Kiss, where
he sang the entire freaking song in falsetto. And this
might explain why some people have had a hard time
understanding all the words. Let me play. I just want
your extra time and your kiss and see what you hear.
Speaker 4: Extra.
Speaker 2: I think the Manda Green is just better. I wish
Prince had actually written the words I just want to
extradite your kids.
Speaker 4: Extra.
Speaker 2: I just want to extradite your kids. I just want
to extradite your no, no, no, no, no, no, no kids.
That's awesome. Still to come, I have Shanaiah Twain, Selena Gomez,
Beach Boys, Nirvana, Metallica, the Beatles, and more so tune
thine ears and return to me in just a moment.
We are just a few days away from the July
eleventh events. Noah Illusions, the scathing atheist and co host
of God Awful Movies, among other broadcast He and I
we've done a lot of conventions where we were in
the same space, but we've never had a chance to
take the stage together. This is a first. I am
so excited and so we're going to be at the
Anderson Theater in Cincinnati, Saturday, July the eleventh, there are
still a few tickets left, and then the free event
the following day, We're going to segue about twenty minutes
down the pipe to Williamstown, Kentucky for a big Heathen
protest at the entrance of Kenham's Arc Encounter. If you
can come out, make a sign, bring a sign, print
a sign, or just bring your sarcastic ethan self and
let's stand out there next to the highway and hope
that maybe ken has to drive by to go to
a business meeting and he sees us all waving as
he goes into his already rotting one hundred and ten
million dollar boat replica Thinging details on all of that
Thethinkingatheist dot com, slash events more Monda Green examples in
our final segment, I'm just going to read to you
a few before I play the next audio clip, Starship.
We built this city on rock and roll. Many people here.
We built this city on sausage rolls. We built this
city on sausage rolls. The Beatles I want to hold
your hand has been sung I want to hold your
ham Celine Dion. I believe that the heart does go
on from the Titanic soundtrack, right, I believe that the
heart does go on. You might have sung I Believe
the hot Dogs go on from the soundtrack to the
movie Grease, John Travolta, Olivia Newton, John, I got chills,
They're multiplying has often been sung I've got heels, They're
made of plywood. And then there is Adele and her
lovely voice singing the lyrics. Or should I just keep
chasing pavements It's not penguins, it's not Or should I
just keep chasing penguins It's supposed to be pavements? And
before I get to my next actual audio clip from
Shanaia Twain, there are other versions of Manda Green's Michael Caine,
the legendary actor. He was on the Graham Norton Show
a while back and he was telling a personal anecdote
about Amanda Green in his own life. Check it out.
Speaker 7: I was making a picture in the Philippines. No, I'm
in Manila and we were invited to this very very posh,
expensive house to a party, and I'm being introduced to
people and staying and getting a drink and all that,
and the hostess is standing over there and she's looking
at me rather nastily, considering I'm a guests, you know.
And there was a moment when I was a bit
free and she went so I went over her and
she said, are you a drug dealer? I said no,
why do you are? She said, why is everybody calling
you Mike Cocaine? You know that story is true because
you couldn't make up.
Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety seven, country music superstarshan Ayah Twain released the
song You're Still the One with the lyrics looks like
we made it, But that's not what many of her
fans have been hearing.
Speaker 3: Looks black, we made it, look kafa, we've.
Speaker 8: Come up there.
Speaker 2: So it is alleged that it sounds like looks like
we made it. Looks like we made it.
Speaker 5: Do you hear that?
Speaker 4: Looks slack? We made it?
Speaker 5: Look kafa, we've.
Speaker 8: Come up there.
Speaker 2: Looks like we made it. Looks like we made ted
looks back when mating nineteen seventy seven, it was Crystal
Gaale who hit the top of the charts with Don't
It Make My Brown Eyes Blue? But many people have
a Manda Green for this one as well.
Speaker 3: And Magma Bana.
Speaker 2: So apparently it sounds like donuts make my brown eyes blue,
not don't it but donuts.
Speaker 3: And Magma Bana.
Speaker 2: I'll let you argue about that one. Nineteen eighty six,
Bonjobi released one of the biggest albums of that year
and of the entire decade. The song Livin' on a
Prayer still played all over the radio and beloved and songs,
sometimes incorrectly even now. The lyric in question. It doesn't
make a difference if we make it or not. Apparently
people have been singing it doesn't make a difference if
we are naked or not. Do you hear it? That
may work both ways too. It doesn't make a difference
if we make it or not, or if we are
naked or not. I don't know why there's a problem.
Bohemian Rhapsody. This was a song that was mentioned in
that New Yorker article just a few minutes ago, from
The Night at the Opera album nineteen seventy five. Now,
I will admit I don't understand, and I love this song.
It is one of the most iconic pieces of music
I have ever heard. I don't have the first clue
what this song means. I see a little silhouetto of
a man, scaremoush scaamush, Will you do the fandango? Thunderbol
and lightning? Very very frightening me galileo And it doesn't
matter that I don't know what it means. It doesn't
have to mean anything to be epic. But there is
a Manda Green within this song. I'll play the clip
and we'll talk about it. Okay. The line in question
here is spare him his life from this monstrosity. Spare
him his life from this monstrosity. Apparently some people have
been singing saving his life from this Warm sausage tea. Oh,
we got to hear this again, Warm sausage tea coming up?
This next one. Well, I will never be able to unhear. Now.
I don't follow the work of Selena Gomez, not really
my demographic, but this is from an album that released
eleven years ago called Revival. The tune is called I'm
fourteen Carrot, right, fourteen carrot? But will you be able
to hear this lyric again without thinking of farting carrots?
Speaker 5: I'm a fourteen carrots, I'm fourteen.
Speaker 8: Cart It sounds like it she's farting carrots.
Speaker 5: I'm a fourteen carrots. I'm fourteen cart.
Speaker 2: Back to the nineteen eighties, and I'll admit that I'm
a little biased. There's something magical about the music of
that decade. Plus it was part of my upbringing. I
was in high school, becoming a young twenty something, and
you know, just the tunes hit different back then, nineteen
eighty three, the earrhythmic singing. Sweet dreams are made of what?
Speaker 4: Sweet jeams are madea things to deserve?
Speaker 2: Sweet dreams are made of this? Who am I to disagree?
I traveled the world in the seven sees. Everybody's looking
for something except apparently, sweet dreams are made of cheese.
Speaker 4: Sweet jeams are made things.
Speaker 2: I don't hear this one as much. Maybe people are
driving really fast engine noise makes the these sound like cheese.
I'm not really getting that one.
Speaker 4: Sweet jeems a madea thing.
Speaker 2: Still in the nineteen eighties, the Beach Boys, who of
course defined the nineteen sixties well, they came out with
an album called Kokomo. That single went to the top
of the charts, and about halfway through of the song
you hear Martinique that monserrat mistique. No, I don't really
know what that means Martinique, that monserrat mystique. That's not
what we have been singing, Jnique, the Manda green for Martinique,
That monserrat mystique has been the Martinique, that Mom's a
rotten stink, that mom is just a rotten stinkique. The
Beach Boys had quite a few of these. Nineteen seventy
one song, the song the Cork on the Ocean. Of course,
people with dirty minds aren't hearing the word cork. Do
you hear cock on the ocean? You? You are so bass,
so based cock on the ocean. Let's do a few
more before we call it a show. I'm going to
play a clip here from Nirvana nineteen ninety one. Smells
like teen spirits. There's a section where the lyrics say
this an albino, a mulatto, a libido a mosquito. I
don't know how you've been singing it. I have never
known what this section even said. My brain couldn't decipher
an albino, a mulatto, a libido a mosquito. Let's play
the clip.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: This takes us back to how our brain works with
the familiar, as it connects its dots. We probably don't
have any reason in this context to be thinking about
a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, or a libido. As such,
it might make a lot of sense that people have
been singing I'm a lion, I'm a vinyl, I'm a skittle,
I'm a beatle. Once again, I'm a lion, I'm a vinyl,
I'm a skittle, I'm a beatle. What's the song you
think of? If I say Metallica, I don't know if
they love this or hate this. The fact that there's
one tune that just seems to define the whole band
nineteen ninety one. Enter Sandman lyrics from that song, Dreams
of war, dreams of liars, dream of dragons, fire, and
of things that will bite. Yeah, but what does your
brain here want? In the Last in the Wagons file five,
The Manda Green for this one is interesting. Dreams of war,
dreams of lies, dreams of dragons, fire, and of baked
apple Pie.
Speaker 4: The want in the last in the Wagons file.
Speaker 2: Fe Okay, let's play just the little section again of
Baked apple Pie, and let's finish our show today with
the Beatles nineteen sixty seven. Lucy in the sky with diamonds,
and you gotta know where I'm going with this one.
Speaker 6: A girl with clydees gooofer.
Speaker 2: Picture yourself on a train in a station with plasticine
porters and looking glass ties. Suddenly someone is there with
the turnstill. The girl with kaleitiscope eyes.
Speaker 6: A girl with collideas gooop.
Speaker 2: Now, this is one of my favorite Manda Grains of
the entire list that we've done today, which is why
I saved it for last. People have been singing, apparently
since nineteen sixty seven, people have been singing A girl
with colitis goes by.
Speaker 6: A girl with collideas gooop.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yes, colitis the inflammatory bowel disease where the body's immune
system attacks its own intestines. So a girl roll with
colitis goes by a girl.
Speaker 6: With callda's gooop.
Speaker 2: Maybe the colitis is the reason she's got colitis scope eyes.
I don't know. I hope you have enjoyed this little
journey in a nice distraction and fun science this week,
learning new things and having some laughs along the way.
And now that you feel validated that you're not the
only one who has been hearing these lyrics in a
strange way, you also might have some of these tunes
stuck in your head for the rest of the day,
and you'll be humming them whether you realize it or not.
You are welcome. I will see you back here next time.
Have a wonderful week.
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