Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie
Speaker 1: was starting this one off. I understand you want to
Speaker 1: call somebody out. You want to call out an individual
Speaker 1: by the name of j Alfred Proof Rock on something.
Speaker 1: He said, it doesn't exactly line up with science, that's right.
Speaker 1: And um, my friend Tated s Elliott had this idea
Speaker 1: about the silent sees, right, I think we all have
Speaker 1: to do. Right. We think about the ocean, the vastness
Speaker 1: of it, just being this quiescent ocean of nothingness. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're waves and storms and crashing, but when
Speaker 1: you put your head underwater, suddenly all or most of
Speaker 1: these surface sounds just disappear, right, Right, it's really nice
Speaker 1: and quiet. And I was thinking about that quote from
Speaker 1: the love song of j Alfred Proof franc Case. He said,
Speaker 1: some of you may have heard it before. I should
Speaker 1: have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the
Speaker 1: floors of silent seas. There's that silent part. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: gotta call you out. It turns out that there's kind
Speaker 1: of a disco going on underneath the water there. I
Speaker 1: don't think proof Rock is gonna take this well because
Speaker 1: he's kind of a he's kind of a gloomy dude.
Speaker 1: He's kind of feeling down here. He's gonna take rough
Speaker 1: huge in those silent seas. Yeah, and you just took
Speaker 1: that away from him. So sorry. Yeah. Yeah, Well let's
Speaker 1: talk about these seas and what happens when we eaves
Speaker 1: drop on the ocean. Yeah, this episode is going to
Speaker 1: be all about sounds underwater, sounds under the sea, sounds
Speaker 1: in your swimming pool, but not in your bathtub, but
Speaker 1: not in your well, it could be in your bathtub,
Speaker 1: I guess all. The bathtub is kind of a small
Speaker 1: environment for Yeah, I was making a part joke. I
Speaker 1: apologize about that. Okay, Well, you know we don't throw
Speaker 1: them in there often, No, we don't, you sparingly alright, alright,
Speaker 1: let's get back to the whole eaves dropping on the
Speaker 1: sea thing. Yes, so sound underwater, Yes, it does exist.
Speaker 1: If anyone out there was not sure on this sound
Speaker 1: does travel through water. In fact, it's travels four times
Speaker 1: as fast. Where we get this weird idea of that
Speaker 1: of course is that as humans, we have evolved, for
Speaker 1: the most part to live on the surface. We have
Speaker 1: evolved to hear on the surface. So when we put
Speaker 1: our head underwater and water fills our earn, it cuts
Speaker 1: down on our ability to hear and the way that
Speaker 1: the vibrations are actually picked up by our inner ear.
Speaker 1: We end up having to hear for the most part
Speaker 1: with bone connectivity hearing, it means we're actually hearing with
Speaker 1: the bones in our skull rather than with the inner
Speaker 1: ear itself. So it's a muffled sound to us, right,
Speaker 1: it's not really representative of what's going on. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: even bone connectivity hearing is less effective than air conductivity
Speaker 1: hearing for humans. So yeah, we're often going to hear
Speaker 1: something kind of muddy, where they're going to be ranges
Speaker 1: that we're not going to even be able to pick
Speaker 1: up on at all, or we're not going to hear
Speaker 1: them as clearly as we would hear them on the surface.
Speaker 1: Though if we were a dolphin or a whale, we
Speaker 1: would have echolocation on our side and we'd be able
Speaker 1: to hear much differently. In fact, sonar and radar systems
Speaker 1: are based on this idea of echolocation. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about this a little bit later, but certainly during the
Speaker 1: Cold War, this idea of echo location and sonar was employed,
Speaker 1: and the U. S. Navy set up a series of
Speaker 1: massive arrays of hydrophones planted on the ocean floor to
Speaker 1: detect submarine sounds. Now that data was transmitted to store
Speaker 1: stations where the sounds were analyzed to direct a ship
Speaker 1: or an aircraft to the site. And it was a
Speaker 1: way to listen in on Soviet submarines, right, because in
Speaker 1: sound travels really far underwater, So submarines, even when they're
Speaker 1: trying to run silent, there's a lot of machinery in there.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of noise to be made. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could pick up on that. With some microphones, we could
Speaker 1: consuvably know what the enemy is doing. Yeah, And apparently
Speaker 1: there is a phenomenon known as the deep sound channel,
Speaker 1: and that's an ocean layer where low frequency sound waves
Speaker 1: that enter the channel can become trapped and bounced around
Speaker 1: in this layer for thousands of miles. So this allowed
Speaker 1: the Navy to detect even relatively weak sounds from hundreds
Speaker 1: of miles away. But then they began to pick up
Speaker 1: on things that work really not submarines. It seemed organic,
Speaker 1: but based on the sounds they were picking up, they
Speaker 1: seemed enormous, like something larger than any known sea creature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if we should note that. Um, you know, after Cold
Speaker 1: War ended that they were like, okay, what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do with all these hydrophones? And they began to
Speaker 1: just sort of listen to everything they turn in an
Speaker 1: open mic night. They're like, alright, alright, ocean, what have
Speaker 1: you got If you're squid with some sort of slam
Speaker 1: style poetry stuff, we'll hear it. Got some stand up comedy.
Speaker 1: Whale shark, bring it whar Yeah, born to run? Here
Speaker 1: you go watch the monitor sing it. But no, I
Speaker 1: mean it was sort of like open Mi night. I
Speaker 1: like that analogy. They were gathering data on earthquakes, tremor ships, whales,
Speaker 1: and unidentified sounds. And this is where it gets really interesting.
Speaker 1: The grandaddy of all these, of course, is the bloop sound.
Speaker 1: And we have an article on this on how stuff works.
Speaker 1: If you'll go to the House Stuff Work webpage and
Speaker 1: you type in bloop into the search bar, you will
Speaker 1: find this article and they'll be and in the discussion.
Speaker 1: But there's nothing like hearing it. So I suppose we
Speaker 1: should we should actually play the blue. Well, I think
Speaker 1: we should save the blue. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason
Speaker 1: why I'm not trying to, you know, withhold the Blue.
Speaker 1: We're gonna hold the blue for you because I want
Speaker 1: to tell everybody that just a little bit about ocean
Speaker 1: sounds and how researchers identify them. I mean, for the
Speaker 1: most part, it's really not very hard to identify them
Speaker 1: because you have whales that have very low frequency and
Speaker 1: you can record those and they have sort of a
Speaker 1: sound print. Same thing if you've heard sounds of whale
Speaker 1: songs and nothing else sounds quite like it, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of the New Age call anyway, Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure if someone has heard the whale
Speaker 1: call in a song before, right, it's something that again, Okay,
Speaker 1: you got your tool reference and so other markers sound
Speaker 1: prints are volcanic activity, iceberg movement. But there are these
Speaker 1: sounds that defy explanation, and they remain a mystery as
Speaker 1: to whether they are man made or from some mysterious creature. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we talked about the blue, we will talk about
Speaker 1: the boop. There's something called the up sweep. And this
Speaker 1: is a sound that is seated somewhere deep in the
Speaker 1: South Pacific near Antarctica. It's one of the few mystery
Speaker 1: sounds that repeats itself in the spring in the fall.
Speaker 1: And it's thought that it's due to an unusual acoustic
Speaker 1: phenomenon linked to volcanic activity in this region, perhaps the
Speaker 1: result of seawater and volcanic gas interacting and creating a
Speaker 1: resonance pattern. Okay, So there's this idea that there's an
Speaker 1: underlying cost for that. So let's listen to that actually
Speaker 1: for a second, which is this is the up sweet Okay,
Speaker 1: that's serious, right right now, There's something called the train
Speaker 1: and again there's a theory behind this that says moving
Speaker 1: fluids generate vibrations in the ocean, right, just like blowing
Speaker 1: air through a clarinet. That's why we get this train sound.
Speaker 1: So if you have moving ocean water in the right
Speaker 1: conditions coming around a seamount or some other thing, that
Speaker 1: could generate sound. Okay, So going to do some thinking. Clarinet,
Speaker 1: train okay, Okay, And here's the third one. It's whistle
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons, and it was picked up by a
Speaker 1: single hydrophone located about miles west of Costa Rica. And
Speaker 1: again no explanation here, and the full clip is something
Speaker 1: like a minute long. But here's a nice little sample
Speaker 1: for you. All right, Well that one was pretty mysterious
Speaker 1: as well. Okay, so let's talk about this bloop. The
Speaker 1: bloop is the best one of all because it's not
Speaker 1: playing around trying to sound like a train or whistle
Speaker 1: or clarinet or anything of that sort. It's just a deep,
Speaker 1: resonating tone here that makes you think of dark and
Speaker 1: secret things beneath the sea. I like that, and people
Speaker 1: do think of dark and secret things. And I mean
Speaker 1: bluop itself, I mean just the referring to it as
Speaker 1: the blue. It sounds like something that would emanate from
Speaker 1: some vast amorphous horror at the bottom of the sea.
Speaker 1: Some people like to throws name around. Okay, well that's
Speaker 1: because talk about for a second. Okay, Well, Cultul lose
Speaker 1: one of the gods from HP Lovecraft's mythos. All these
Speaker 1: various deities such as as is off and are left
Speaker 1: the tap, both of which in my opinion, are much
Speaker 1: better because I think Cotulo is a little played out
Speaker 1: in the public spectrum. He's kind of the Tesla of
Speaker 1: the love Crafty and Gods. But giant sea creature, slight
Speaker 1: creature with wings. I mean he's awesome, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: Prominently featured in the short story to call Qulu. There's
Speaker 1: a cult that's really concerned with the fact that at
Speaker 1: the beep, the bottom of the sea, you have this
Speaker 1: elder creature, this vast power that's slumbering and will one
Speaker 1: day wake and bring all this terror and horror to
Speaker 1: the world. Interestingly enough, if you're a fan of the
Speaker 1: Georgia R. Martin books or TV show Game of Thrones,
Speaker 1: the Vikings in that, but the Viking light characters, the
Speaker 1: Great Joys, their sickle is the crack, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of love Craft I and cthulhu s aspects of
Speaker 1: their story. Okay, so now you know this is the
Speaker 1: Smithis Ofthulu. If you want more, Jonathan Strickland wrote a
Speaker 1: really cool article about it, and you can go to
Speaker 1: house Stuff Works type Cathulu into the bar, or just
Speaker 1: type Lovecraft into the search bar and you'll find that article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is a great article. So this bluep sound
Speaker 1: it was recorded in originated from a point about fift
Speaker 1: miles west of the southern Chilean coast, and it was
Speaker 1: powerful enough to be picked up on sensors located up
Speaker 1: to three thousand miles away, making it one of the
Speaker 1: most powerful noises ever to be recorded underwater. And the
Speaker 1: sound lasted for just over a minute, has never repeated itself,
Speaker 1: and n O a A has checked with the Navy
Speaker 1: and other groups to rule up human made sounds or sources,
Speaker 1: I should say, and this and the rest of the
Speaker 1: other cases to you that we talked about. So what
Speaker 1: does this blue sound. Let's take a quick listen and
Speaker 1: then we'll talk about what it could be or could
Speaker 1: not be. Okay, so ice calving has been thrown around
Speaker 1: as a possible explanation because it isn't a southerly location,
Speaker 1: and then do just kind of make it decently possible.
Speaker 1: But the profile of the sound is much closer to
Speaker 1: that of an animal. And so that's what gets people's
Speaker 1: minds really going. Because it was made by an animal,
Speaker 1: that it must be larger than any other known organism
Speaker 1: in the sea. Right, even the blue whale, whose record
Speaker 1: length is about hundred and ten feet, would not be
Speaker 1: nearly big enough to account for that sound that was
Speaker 1: made by the bloop. But there's no evidence to support
Speaker 1: the existence of what we call a super giant whale, right,
Speaker 1: because if it were a whale, we'd have to come
Speaker 1: to the surface eventually it would be spotted, right. It
Speaker 1: would have to be something that resided underwater for long
Speaker 1: periods of time. The other possibility is a massive squid. Again,
Speaker 1: here comes this Cthulhu idea. But squids don't have the
Speaker 1: organs necessary to create loud noises like whales do. That
Speaker 1: kind of kicks that idea out of there. But ultimately
Speaker 1: we just don't know what CAUSI sounds. But that's less
Speaker 1: that it's like some sort of mysteriously creature which could be,
Speaker 1: and more that we don't quite have the data right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, the Pacific Ocean is vast, So what I'm
Speaker 1: getting is that less likely that it's Cathulu or a
Speaker 1: crack and more likely that it's got Zilla because remember
Speaker 1: gott Zilla emerged from the deep. Yes, that was exactly
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. You were picking up when I'm putting down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break and when we
Speaker 1: get back, we're going to talk about an underwater performance
Speaker 1: artists that makes Lady Gaga like milk toast. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. I recently was assigned an article for how
Speaker 1: stuff Work dot com titled how Underwater Sound Systems. We
Speaker 1: write a lot of articles here at how Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: and you go into it knowing that not every article
Speaker 1: is going to be your favorite, and sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to find what's fascinating about a topic and bring it out.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to sort of create something fascinating about
Speaker 1: a topic and use that as the jam to go
Speaker 1: with the medicine. You know, what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: you use some magic here. No, no, no, Actually this
Speaker 1: was a topic where I was expecting to have to
Speaker 1: use some magic, but instead the more I looked into it,
Speaker 1: the more fascinating the science was. Because I really had
Speaker 1: to look at how to sound travel through the water
Speaker 1: versus traveling through the air, how do we perceive sound
Speaker 1: on the surface versus underwater, and getting into issues of
Speaker 1: bone connectivity hearing, and then also got into the not
Speaker 1: only the technology of it, the technology of creating a
Speaker 1: speaker that works underwater, in a speaker system that works underwater,
Speaker 1: but also the sort of subculture of listening to music underwater,
Speaker 1: which I have not tried it myself yet, but I'm
Speaker 1: convinced from what I've seen that listening to music underwater,
Speaker 1: especially music that has been created for submarine listening purposes,
Speaker 1: is kind of addictive. It's kind of like, once you've
Speaker 1: used a really awesome pair of headphones, you can't go
Speaker 1: back to the cheap ones. I think to some people
Speaker 1: listening while completely submerged in a swimming pool, like that
Speaker 1: is their killer headphone. That is the preferred method, the
Speaker 1: ultimate method of listening to music. I can understand that, right,
Speaker 1: because that would be a mind blowing way for your
Speaker 1: brain to perceive something that it already delights in. Okay,
Speaker 1: so before we start talking about underwater performance artists, let's
Speaker 1: talk about underwater acoustic systems. Yes, there are a number
Speaker 1: of things to take into account when you're talking about
Speaker 1: an underwater sound system. I mean, the big one is
Speaker 1: gonna be priced. You're gonna pay more sound system generally
Speaker 1: for a typical system that you can actually go out
Speaker 1: and buy and and have within the week. You're spending
Speaker 1: between three and two thousand dollars on it. And this
Speaker 1: is something you're gonna put in your pool, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: they're they're basically two uses for an underwater sound system.
Speaker 1: One is I want music in my pool, and you're
Speaker 1: probably we're thinking, well, that's great. I guess music in
Speaker 1: my pool would be great maybe if I'm swimming a
Speaker 1: lot of laps or something, or I just have money
Speaker 1: to burn. But actually one of the areas you see
Speaker 1: this used a lot synchronize swimming. Because synchronize swimmers. It
Speaker 1: sounds obvious now that we bring it out in the open.
Speaker 1: They have to hear the music that they are performing too,
Speaker 1: and so they need to be able to hear it
Speaker 1: underwater as well as above the water, so they need
Speaker 1: speakers that operate underwater. Also, sometimes with diving, you will
Speaker 1: see this on the bottom of dive boats will have
Speaker 1: a speaker system. If you need an alarm to sound
Speaker 1: so everyone knows they need to get back to the surface,
Speaker 1: you would have an acoustic system set up to send
Speaker 1: out that signal. They're also cases where you'll have music
Speaker 1: pipe down into underwater environments for people that are diving.
Speaker 1: When it comes to designing such a speaker, on one hand,
Speaker 1: you need a speaker that can actually go into the
Speaker 1: water without dissolving. It doesn't have any cardboard parts, and
Speaker 1: it's not going to short out speaker wires aren't raw
Speaker 1: and naked in the water that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: then also they have to take into account the way
Speaker 1: that sound actually moves around down there. One of the
Speaker 1: things that was really fascinating this when you have a
Speaker 1: speaker in a swimming pool, for instance, I mean, the
Speaker 1: sound waves are bouncing off of everything. They're bouncing off
Speaker 1: the surface of the water, they're bouncing off the bottom
Speaker 1: of the pool, they're bouncing off the walls, and sound
Speaker 1: is traveling so fast that you can't really tell like
Speaker 1: where it's coming from. It ends up coming at you
Speaker 1: from all directions, which is especially interesting when you consider
Speaker 1: that stereophonic hearing stereo sound is not possible for humans underwater,
Speaker 1: because not only is the sound traveling so fast, but
Speaker 1: we're hearing with our skull bones. We're using that bone
Speaker 1: connectivity hearing rather than our actual acoustic hearing. So we're
Speaker 1: not getting like this year and this year, we're getting
Speaker 1: full skull sound, which is an entirely different sensation and
Speaker 1: way to perceive it. Right. Yes, in fact, I've heard
Speaker 1: it described as omniphonic sound as opposed to stereophonic or
Speaker 1: monophonic sound. So I don't think that's a technical terminology,
Speaker 1: but that actually comes from Stanford University music researcher John
Speaker 1: are the fourth. All Right, so let's say that you
Speaker 1: are that person who has had the experience of listening
Speaker 1: to music underwater, and you are for ever changed by
Speaker 1: this experience. What do we expect here, Well, this is
Speaker 1: the area that I found perhaps the most amazing for starters.
Speaker 1: If you go down to Florida's Low Key Reef every
Speaker 1: year they have something called the Underwater Music Festival, in
Speaker 1: which they have boat mounted speakers systems cranking tunes for
Speaker 1: hundreds of divers and snorkelers. They actually dubbed at an
Speaker 1: underwater concert. I say, it's like an underwater rave kind
Speaker 1: of except they're playing a lot of like Yellow Submarine
Speaker 1: and get the impression that it's a lot of like
Speaker 1: old classics rob So that's one level. But where it
Speaker 1: really starts getting fascinating, that a probably too much research
Speaker 1: on this dude. There's a French composer by the name
Speaker 1: of Michael Ridolphi, and this guy is amazing his music,
Speaker 1: not even looking at the underwater aspects of it, I
Speaker 1: guess you would say he tends to focus on sort
Speaker 1: of a new age ambient electronics sound, which in another
Speaker 1: stuff I'm totally into that. But from early on, like
Speaker 1: back beginning of his album Sonic Waters, he really got
Speaker 1: into the use of not only recorded soundscorded with hydrophen phones.
Speaker 1: So these are sounds in the ocean. Are we're in
Speaker 1: a swing pool or yeah, He's he's interested in just
Speaker 1: the sound of sort of the bubbly sound of an
Speaker 1: underwater environment. He's interested in the sound of sea life,
Speaker 1: the sound of an ocean environment, and so he's using
Speaker 1: those in his music. But then he's also crafting music
Speaker 1: that he intends for an audience to hear while their
Speaker 1: head is submerged in water. He keeps coming back to this.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a one off thing where he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did that Sonic Underwater album. No, it's like his
Speaker 1: career has I mean, he's on some other stuff as well,
Speaker 1: but but his career has been defined by his interest
Speaker 1: in underwater sound. Not only these recordings that use a
Speaker 1: mix of electronic and ocean noises, but he's also explored
Speaker 1: the area of underwater opera. One production involved in casing
Speaker 1: that the piece of soprano singer inside this giant plastic
Speaker 1: bubble and having them float around in this pool. So
Speaker 1: my question is, if you are a concert goer, are
Speaker 1: you submerged in the water and listening underwater or are
Speaker 1: you listening to the water that submerged and then pipe
Speaker 1: out both? Really? I mean, because some of these recordings
Speaker 1: that he's done, ideally you were underwater listening to a
Speaker 1: piece of music that he is composed using recordings of
Speaker 1: underwater sound for an underwater listener. Okay, let's let's take
Speaker 1: a listen here. Okay, So that was gait of Mystery
Speaker 1: from the micro Rodolphie album Underwater Music, and you can
Speaker 1: find that on Amazon, by the way, and download the
Speaker 1: entire thing in case you're interested to hear more. His
Speaker 1: stuff ranges from tracks like that, which I actually really
Speaker 1: dig that has a nice electronic ambient kind of sound
Speaker 1: to it, and then some of his other stuff is
Speaker 1: a little more operatic, and you'll find some of those
Speaker 1: tracks on that album as well. My Heart's Sea Dwelling too.
Speaker 1: That's a sample that you sent me and I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed that. But I really want to talk about a
Speaker 1: performance sources named Julianna Snapper because the clip that you
Speaker 1: sent me on YouTube, I was visually absolutely blown away.
Speaker 1: I have to say, because that this is the artist
Speaker 1: who makes Lady Gaga look like she's just phoning it in.
Speaker 1: How would you even describe the dress that she wore
Speaker 1: to submerge herself in the pool. Kind Of like a
Speaker 1: sea cloud, I guess, Okay, a netted sea cloud. Like okay,
Speaker 1: if you were a Queen of the Mermaids and you
Speaker 1: were about to be betrothed to Poseidon, perhaps I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just a giant pieces of material floating out and
Speaker 1: I'm not doing it justice. So you guys should definitely
Speaker 1: look this up. Well. I will definitely include a clip
Speaker 1: of this on the blog posted accompanying to this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she uses a mouth to water technique when she sings
Speaker 1: in the water. She spent a lot of hours submerged
Speaker 1: in her bathtub and friends tubs and stuff and and
Speaker 1: and also apparently did a lot of research into acoustics
Speaker 1: of underwater sound. But yeah, I mean, this is again,
Speaker 1: it's something that is we're discussing it. It sounds kind
Speaker 1: of crazy, it sounds avant garde, and and it is
Speaker 1: and it is. But I also have a feeling that
Speaker 1: is really tied to this idea. And once you start
Speaker 1: experiencing underwater sound and exploring it, you're hooked. And then
Speaker 1: you start doing these things that and engaging in these
Speaker 1: artistic endeavors that to an outsider might seem a little nutty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you've got to stick your head underwater. But it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: This is the thing, like you know, when you you
Speaker 1: see we're talking about this in art right, Like how
Speaker 1: something strikes you or takes your breath away, it's usually
Speaker 1: because somehow you have taken these themes of life, love,
Speaker 1: all these things that we experience, and you've made them
Speaker 1: new again. You've recast it into some other language that
Speaker 1: is recognizable but not quite recognizable. And that's really exciting.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what's going on here. Some people
Speaker 1: would describe it as sticking an opera in a swimming pool,
Speaker 1: but I like your description better. Let's hear a quick
Speaker 1: clip from this. This clip is from the two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine opera You Who Will Emerge from the Flood.
Speaker 1: The voice that you're hearing in this is actually the
Speaker 1: underwater her mouth to water singing that we were discussing earlier. Okay,
Speaker 1: So imagine her and her her giant about to be
Speaker 1: betrothed to Poseidon dress, making these crazy bumblebee noises underwater. Yah,
Speaker 1: while other people were getting about floating about it's really
Speaker 1: a crazy scene. I mean it's it's great. I mean
Speaker 1: that art should stir you and and get some sort
Speaker 1: of a visual reaction out of you. And I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what I got hooked phone. And that's the other
Speaker 1: performance artists that you sent me, Claudia Hair. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: this is the German production from just this last year
Speaker 1: two eleven, I believe, yeah, and I believe the underwater
Speaker 1: opera is called aqua Ada. Alright, So anyway, swater that
Speaker 1: she is a German swimmer turned opera singer, which is
Speaker 1: that's perfectly yeah, there you go, using all of her skills,
Speaker 1: and it is a combination of opera, underwater musical performance
Speaker 1: in synchronized swimming. What I love about this is that
Speaker 1: it's it's much more simplistic in terms of this sort
Speaker 1: of eye candy that's present. Yes, it's very German. The
Speaker 1: pictures of it I've seen. Yeah, I mean she's in
Speaker 1: a wet suit and she's singing outside of the pool
Speaker 1: and below in the pool is someone who is playing
Speaker 1: what looks to be like metal garbage can tops, some
Speaker 1: sort of percussive interestments, so you can hear those instruments
Speaker 1: being played underwater, and then she's just a beautiful meso
Speaker 1: soprano voice. And then she's walking and submerging herself and
Speaker 1: going underwater and still singing, and so all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you can hear the quality of that beautiful voice
Speaker 1: still coming through, but in this very eerie, muffled way.
Speaker 1: That's what got me to be like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm totally in on this underground underwater music scene, and
Speaker 1: he's underwater percussion going on the whole time. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: should also point out that are a friend Michael Rodolphie
Speaker 1: then and early. Over the years, he's invented and co
Speaker 1: created various instruments designed for underwater use, generally percussion instruments,
Speaker 1: things that look kind of like xylophones that you play underwater.
Speaker 1: And he's also engaged in the design of underwater electronic
Speaker 1: equipment because if you're doing an underwater performance, that brings
Speaker 1: a lot of design problems with it that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: encounter on the surface. Well, I think it also shows
Speaker 1: the level of obsession here too, right, that you're creating
Speaker 1: new instruments. It's not just something that you're exploring one weekend,
Speaker 1: Like I wonder what happened if I stuck an opera
Speaker 1: in a pool, or or what happens if I'm not
Speaker 1: really happy with this track? What have I played underwater? No,
Speaker 1: it's not an offhand thing. They're really passionate about it,
Speaker 1: and there's spending a lot of time with it. It's
Speaker 1: very cool stuff, so they have it. This podcast, we hope,
Speaker 1: was kind of an introduction and an exploration of not
Speaker 1: only the natural sounds and the way it sounds naturally
Speaker 1: travel underwater, both what we know about it in some
Speaker 1: of the mysteries, but also how we have exploited the
Speaker 1: way that sounds alvels underwater and at least we've begun
Speaker 1: to appreciate it in a new and an artistic way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I can't help but seeing the sort of technology
Speaker 1: being used at like high end resorts one day, Well,
Speaker 1: you do encounter underwater speaker systems that a lot of
Speaker 1: really posh spa and swimming pool environments. Yeah, I'm just imagining, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here you are in the Caribbean coast. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking neck Or Island from our friend Branson. Right,
Speaker 1: maybe he's got the system. You take a little swim
Speaker 1: out there and you have you know whatever sort of
Speaker 1: ambient music playing for your pleasure. Well, I couldn't help
Speaker 1: but think of our friend Lily the Dolphin. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: he was really into well taking a lot of and
Speaker 1: then getting in his isolation booth, which sometimes, or my
Speaker 1: mistaken on that often includes water. I'm probably thinking of
Speaker 1: altered states, but that was I think there was water
Speaker 1: in that one. Yeah, they can to involve water. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say I don't know on that one. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that you can get an isolation chamber.
Speaker 1: It contains water, and so all the better to have
Speaker 1: it wired for sound. Right, it's some the author has one,
Speaker 1: let us know. Yeah, absolutely well, And I have to
Speaker 1: say too, that's probably going to enhance his experience, or
Speaker 1: would have it enhanced his experience. But but I like
Speaker 1: the mention of Branson because I can easily imagine him
Speaker 1: sliding naked into his his music tube like Luke Skywalker
Speaker 1: in the Batha tank. Okay, so are you imagining some
Speaker 1: sort of underwater tube that connects to his home that
Speaker 1: he can just slide into out into the ocean. Well
Speaker 1: that's good too. I was thinking like a like a
Speaker 1: acrylic through it. He could swim with the sharks right
Speaker 1: past them because he's got this vast network of tubes,
Speaker 1: acrylic tubes, maybe like a big hamster ball full of water.
Speaker 1: He's wearing a snorkel mask, nothing else, listening to music
Speaker 1: because he rolls around totally. I totally see the totally cembm. Like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm so stressed about not getting into
Speaker 1: this asteroid mining thing. I'm going to go take a
Speaker 1: swim out in my tube ocean. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: look at some quick listener mail. What do you say,
Speaker 1: Arnie Ring the mail please. This is from a listener
Speaker 1: by name of Patrick Patrick Ridson and says, I recently
Speaker 1: heard your podcast on Google Goggles and found your commentary
Speaker 1: on featuristic contact lens is a little well too negative.
Speaker 1: For instance, you say, and I'm paraphrasing here, that should
Speaker 1: these contact micro computers indeed come to exist, we will
Speaker 1: as a society become officially dumber. The point at first
Speaker 1: seems valid, for if we had a computer with us.
Speaker 1: We would not need to remember anything birthdays, important dates
Speaker 1: for history classes, or even what the exact name of
Speaker 1: that flesh itting bacteria currently consuming your arm is. And
Speaker 1: this would seemingly be a problem. However, in my humble opinion,
Speaker 1: remembering these things as somewhat arbitrary. What does it matter
Speaker 1: if you can't remember how to spell a particular word.
Speaker 1: If you can correctly correlate the word you're thinking of
Speaker 1: to the idea it represents, then you should be okay.
Speaker 1: I feel that if these micro computers do one day
Speaker 1: come to fruition, that it will free the human mind
Speaker 1: from the clasps of memorization and promote a far more
Speaker 1: important cranial attribute, critical thinking, something that is seriously lacking
Speaker 1: in much of the population, including college graduates. And with that,
Speaker 1: I step off my stump. I love your show. It
Speaker 1: keeps my brain from oozing out my ears while pulling weeds.
Speaker 1: Oka's entreating. He raises the interesting point there. I mean,
Speaker 1: perhaps by bringing us from the need to memorize all
Speaker 1: these facts like there anniversary or our loved ones names
Speaker 1: or faces, it don't come to that, you know, to
Speaker 1: really critically. And I'm having some fun there, but but
Speaker 1: but no, I think he has a valid point, the
Speaker 1: counterpoint to some of the ideas that we were presenting.
Speaker 1: Or does it just leave more room for useless facts
Speaker 1: like you know, things that I know about Angelina Jolie
Speaker 1: and Brad Pitt that I don't even know how I know,
Speaker 1: but I know them. Yeah, right, in some sort of
Speaker 1: passive way, that information has flowed through and remains in
Speaker 1: the nets of my memory, whereas important things don't so much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's what we're kind of afraid of.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but who knows. And the idea is to
Speaker 1: what extent we can actually manage it as we're bombarded
Speaker 1: with this technology. So we'll see. Let me see if
Speaker 1: I have another bit of listener mail here in the bundle.
Speaker 1: Here's one from Donnie and Arizona. Donnie Ritson and says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just finished listening your Lucid Dreams episode and wanted to
Speaker 1: add to it. I've been interested in lucid dreaming for
Speaker 1: years now and have on numerous occasions lucid dream to myself.
Speaker 1: You mentioned briefly various medicines that could affect dreams, but
Speaker 1: failed to touch on one in particular. Kalia zach taquici.
Speaker 1: Pardon is spelling is incorrect on that, and likewise, pardon
Speaker 1: if my pronunciation is is a herbal cupplement used by
Speaker 1: shaman's to introduce lucid and or prophetic dreams, commonly intended
Speaker 1: to help find answers that may be plaguing in the
Speaker 1: individual or their tribe. He's often smoked in a cigarette
Speaker 1: with equal parts kalia and tobacco. In fact, lucy dreaming
Speaker 1: in general seems to be very common in shamanistic ritual
Speaker 1: practices around the world. Love the show Thanks Dying. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's reminded me of a book called Rational Mysticism. It's
Speaker 1: centered around trying to dwell deeper into the mind, and
Speaker 1: the writer actually takes aya kusa. I know I have
Speaker 1: to slaughtered that, but that's the same thing. It's it's
Speaker 1: is that it search with a Yeah. I may have
Speaker 1: heard it in mispronounced as well, but well, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: go with your because I always noticed it's kind of
Speaker 1: like hiawappa Native American from the Children's story anyway. Alright,
Speaker 1: so yes, anyway, it aids in the humanistic rituals. That
Speaker 1: is very interesting. It's a good point that you make
Speaker 1: about Lucid dreaming. The dream world is always played an
Speaker 1: important role in her formation of spiritual ideas well. Hey,
Speaker 1: if you have anything you would like to add, be
Speaker 1: it about Lucy dreaming, the future of technology, or especially
Speaker 1: about underwater sounds. What do you think the blue pits?
Speaker 1: Let us know. We'd love to hear about it. Also,
Speaker 1: underwater music. We highlighted a few possibilities there for listening underwater,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure we missed something. So if you have
Speaker 1: heard some music, or your familiar with some music that
Speaker 1: either incorporates underwater sounds or is intended to be listened
Speaker 1: to underwater, let us know about it. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear about it. We'd love to share it with the
Speaker 1: rest of the listeners. And if you have solved the
Speaker 1: riddle of the blue send us an email about it
Speaker 1: and you can do so at blew the Mind at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com for more on this and thousand of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how staff works dot com. M