Speaker 1: Guess what mango? What's that? Will? So I was looking
Speaker 1: back at some stories that i'd booked Mark from this
Speaker 1: year and there was this one, this really good one
Speaker 1: about a bagpiper, and I felt like I needed to
Speaker 1: share it with you. This already sounds awful, I know,
Speaker 1: but all right. So this is from Glasgow and it's
Speaker 1: late in the night and people are on a commuter train.
Speaker 1: They're trying to get home from the pub or the
Speaker 1: office or wherever, and this guy just steps onto the
Speaker 1: car and starts wailing away on his bagpipes. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine this? I mean they sound like one thing from
Speaker 1: a distance, but up close. So he's been a partying
Speaker 1: mood and he genuinely wants to keep the party going,
Speaker 1: but you know, using his bagpipes. So he starts playing
Speaker 1: a rousing rendition of Yellow Submarine. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: that's sort of upbeat. But does everyone get into it? No,
Speaker 1: just the opposite. So the chorus comes around and you
Speaker 1: think people are going to start breaking out singing, and
Speaker 1: then everyone just keeps staring at him in total anchor.
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing, and the comments were brutal. One person
Speaker 1: said he'd rather opt for water boarding, then hear that
Speaker 1: noise again. But you know, remembering this Piper's tale made
Speaker 1: me wonder, what are some of the most unusual sounds
Speaker 1: in history? What did the Big Bang sound like? Or
Speaker 1: taranno sources roar and what are some sounds worth blocking out?
Speaker 1: And that's what today's episode is all about. Let's dive
Speaker 1: in Heither podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 1: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 1: friend man Guesh Ticketer and on the other side of
Speaker 1: the soundproof glass singing the hit song from The Bodyguard,
Speaker 1: a friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I really wish you
Speaker 1: could hear it because Tristan sings like an angel, and
Speaker 1: you know, every time I hear that song, I will
Speaker 1: Always love You You tear up right no. But every
Speaker 1: time I heard I think about the fact that Saddam
Speaker 1: Hussein used it as his campaign song, like it's just
Speaker 1: so ridiculous to me. I know, that's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite facts of all time. So I did look it
Speaker 1: up again recently because I wanted to see the ads again,
Speaker 1: and the song he used was actually an Arabic cover
Speaker 1: by a pop star from Syria, so still still the
Speaker 1: same emotional impact, but slightly different. Well, I've already gotten
Speaker 1: his off track, or I guess Tristan's gotten his off track.
Speaker 1: But uh, well, I I know where episodes all over
Speaker 1: the place. So today we're covering some of the strangest, loudest,
Speaker 1: and most irritating sounds in history. Where do you want
Speaker 1: to start? I think we should go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: So I think we should start with the actual earliest
Speaker 1: sound in the universe. What do you think? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it sounds a little theoretical or theological, I guess.
Speaker 1: And you know, in Hinduism there's that sound of home
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be like the beginning, middle, and end
Speaker 1: of time. Sound like I mean you heard in yoga
Speaker 1: classes too. But in Christianity, I'm guessing it's like when
Speaker 1: God flipped the light switch? Is that right? Well, before
Speaker 1: there was light, I think there was actually the sound
Speaker 1: of a slashing if I remember correctly, you know, since
Speaker 1: there's water and earth referenced than that darkness. But I
Speaker 1: was actually taking more of a scientific slant here. I
Speaker 1: was talking about the earliest sounds in the universe, as in,
Speaker 1: you know, the big Bang. Yeah, that makes more sense.
Speaker 1: Although the word big bang already seems descriptive, right, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing it just sounds like a massive crash. Well that's
Speaker 1: what I thought too, and I think most people would assume.
Speaker 1: But the truth is actually weirder than that. So there's
Speaker 1: a physicist from the University of Washington. His name is
Speaker 1: John Kramer, and back in two thousand one, he wrote
Speaker 1: this article that described the sound of the Big Bang.
Speaker 1: You know, the physics here is above my pay grade,
Speaker 1: but according to the Atlantic article quote, during the first
Speaker 1: one hundred to seven hundred thousand years after the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: the universe was far denser than the air on Earth,
Speaker 1: which means that the sound waves could actually move through it.
Speaker 1: So he published this piece about how the universe kept
Speaker 1: ringing in the slow, low frequency way until the universe
Speaker 1: grew to you know, these massive proportions and it stopped
Speaker 1: making the hump, and the sound would have been too
Speaker 1: low frequency for human years to pick up on. But
Speaker 1: then a couple of years later, this was in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, I think, a mom who was helping her
Speaker 1: eleven year old with a fifth grade project asked if
Speaker 1: there's a recording of it. Anywhere, and when Kramer responded no,
Speaker 1: he then decided to synthesize it for them. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's awesome that we know what the Big Bang sounds
Speaker 1: like because of a fifth grader. And it's also crazy
Speaker 1: to me that the universe is what like fourteen billion
Speaker 1: years old and we have indications of what it actually
Speaker 1: sounded like from the start. I mean, that's insane. But
Speaker 1: what's it actually sound like? Well, so, like you, I
Speaker 1: assumed the Big Bang was gonna sound terrifically big or powerful,
Speaker 1: but as our friend Lucas Riley puts it, it sounds
Speaker 1: a little bit more like a motorcycle fart. I vote
Speaker 1: don't know what that means. And also it seems gross.
Speaker 1: But wouldn't it sound like do you? Well? Kramer has
Speaker 1: a few versions up on his site and they're worth
Speaker 1: checking out, and they ranged from twenty seconds to even
Speaker 1: eight minutes long, and they're all pretty similar. So to me,
Speaker 1: it sounded somewhere between like a video game character dying
Speaker 1: or like an old school computer powering down or something
Speaker 1: like that. If I don't know if that makes any sense,
Speaker 1: or or just maybe we'll go with motorcycle fire. All
Speaker 1: these noises I don't know what they mean, but you
Speaker 1: do have a link to the sound, right, So I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we should put a link of it to Facebook,
Speaker 1: and then we can ask listeners to describe it, and
Speaker 1: we'll send teachers to like the funniest three descriptions. Sound
Speaker 1: good to you, sounds good to me. But now I'm curious,
Speaker 1: how did Kramer make this sound for human years? Like
Speaker 1: I think he said it was too low frequency for
Speaker 1: us to actually be able to hear. Well, that's a
Speaker 1: good question. So from the way I understand it, he
Speaker 1: used data from satellites and and pulled something called a
Speaker 1: cosmic microwave background. The site futurity dot org refers to
Speaker 1: it as a fossilized fingerprint of the Big Bang, and
Speaker 1: then he made some calculations and pulled the data into
Speaker 1: a sound file. But you know, to create something we
Speaker 1: could hear, Kramer had to boost a frequency a hundred
Speaker 1: septillion times. You know how big that is. That's one
Speaker 1: followed by twenty nine zero. And so when he played
Speaker 1: it in his office for the first time, his sheep
Speaker 1: dogs ran in and started how like they were not
Speaker 1: fans of this. Maybe their creationists. I love that, but
Speaker 1: it reminds me of when I started playing the violin
Speaker 1: in third grade and I was so awful, but when
Speaker 1: I screeched and played, my puff would just run and
Speaker 1: face me. And that's just howl along. And I think
Speaker 1: both my family and my dog were so relieved when
Speaker 1: I finally quit. About it sounds familiar, but I love
Speaker 1: this idea of cataloging sounds. And we've got the Big
Speaker 1: Bang on file now, which is awesome. And there's actually
Speaker 1: a guy who's gone around New Jersey catalog and all
Speaker 1: the sounds of New Jersey for future generations. This just
Speaker 1: sounds like a joke. That's true. Yeah, it's real. His
Speaker 1: name's are Bernie wagon Blast. That's just a joke, right,
Speaker 1: that's also true, Okay, But he's visiting every county trying
Speaker 1: to capture something that feels rare about each place. So
Speaker 1: he'll like tape the rumble of the King dakr roller coasters.
Speaker 1: It's going up for the sound inside this old covered bridge,
Speaker 1: or even like the music of ice skates cutting and
Speaker 1: gliding across the ice and an old historic rink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really beautiful and poetic, and it's like a sound
Speaker 1: library of New Jersey. But there's this even more ambitious
Speaker 1: project I want to talk about, and it's called The
Speaker 1: Sonic Wonders of the World. It's from this British acoustic
Speaker 1: engineer named Trevor Cox, and it's kind of like these
Speaker 1: beautiful sonic destinations that are worth visiting. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. So so what all is on
Speaker 1: the list? Well, one of the first things I saw
Speaker 1: was the singing sands in California in the Mojave Desert. So,
Speaker 1: according to CNN, when you slide down the sand on
Speaker 1: your backside, the unusual sand makes a quote deep parping
Speaker 1: sound resembling propeller aircraft or a susophone accident. Yeah, Cox
Speaker 1: calls it more of a weird droning. So does this
Speaker 1: have to do with like the shape of the sand
Speaker 1: or the size of the sand? Yeah, that's right, So
Speaker 1: it has to do both with the shape of the
Speaker 1: dune and the size of the sand grains. Apparently that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool, all right. So what else does he talk about? Well,
Speaker 1: some of his men made sounds like there's some acoustic wonders.
Speaker 1: There's this chirping Mayan pyramid where when you clap your
Speaker 1: hands it echoes back with the sound of the sacred
Speaker 1: Mayan bird. It's pretty awesome and it was used for
Speaker 1: religious ceremonies. But there's also a place in Carnatica, India
Speaker 1: where I've actually been. It's called gold Gum Buzz, and
Speaker 1: uh there's this massive whispering gallery. You can speak into
Speaker 1: a column on one side and hear the message on
Speaker 1: the other side, and if you speak in a different part,
Speaker 1: the dome kind of echoes the sounds over and over.
Speaker 1: And the way it was described in the article was
Speaker 1: it's almost like a nineteen sixties horror flick where they're
Speaker 1: all these like layered, sampled sounds just echoing over each other.
Speaker 1: But it's actually way less terrifying and more like, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like the open swim at your YMC.
Speaker 1: That's a little different. Yeah, But my favorite thing he
Speaker 1: talks about is the musical road in California, which has
Speaker 1: the William Tell and Lone Ranger song like grooved into
Speaker 1: the pavement, and as Cox and Cena put it, it
Speaker 1: is a very bad rendition of the William Tell overture,
Speaker 1: like someone gargling with water in an adjacent room. But
Speaker 1: it does make you laugh. Wow, I mean, I do
Speaker 1: love the musical highways and runways. I know we covered
Speaker 1: in a previous episode the one at Disney. You know
Speaker 1: where they they when the when the plane goes over
Speaker 1: to you hear when you wish upon a star. I
Speaker 1: guess it says they land, I think. But now that
Speaker 1: we've covered one sound no one has heard and a
Speaker 1: bunch of sounds you travel to hear, I think we
Speaker 1: should probably cover some terrible sounds that nobody wants to hear.
Speaker 1: So I'm a little hesitant about what that means, but
Speaker 1: I'll go with it. But let's pause for a quick break. First,
Speaker 1: welcome back to Part time Genius. So before the break,
Speaker 1: you were teasing that we get into some awful sounds. Well,
Speaker 1: I found this list from two thousand seven and it's
Speaker 1: of the worst sounds in the world. Okay, so two
Speaker 1: thousand seven. I'm gonna put myself back in the mindset
Speaker 1: of when Ratatoui was in theaters and that show Chuck
Speaker 1: was on the air. Chuck, I'm not sure you have
Speaker 1: to think that deeply about it. But so this is
Speaker 1: a British list, So most of the sounds are pretty
Speaker 1: similar as the ones that we might think of here
Speaker 1: and there are things like feedback from a microphone or
Speaker 1: crying babies. And I guess maybe they knew about your
Speaker 1: violin playing you were talking about, because poorly played violin
Speaker 1: is actually number six on the list here. But what
Speaker 1: about something like nails on a chalkboard. Honestly, just saying
Speaker 1: that phrase gives me the shivers. It makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: You know. Surprisingly that wasn't on there. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess the closest thing to that they have here. Let's
Speaker 1: see the train scraping on the track. So that's on there.
Speaker 1: But there are a few on here that I actually
Speaker 1: didn't see, now, okay, or this feels a little bit
Speaker 1: like British family few. But I'm still gonna make you
Speaker 1: take a guess. So what are some of the other
Speaker 1: top ten worst sounds in the world in England specifically?
Speaker 1: I think anyway, Um, I don't know. I have to
Speaker 1: say throwing up is probably top of the list. Nicely
Speaker 1: done survey says that's actually number one. Didn't expecting to
Speaker 1: nail that, so, I mean, vomiting is definitely a sound
Speaker 1: people would love to block out. But there are others
Speaker 1: on here that are pretty hilarious. So Squeaky Seesaw comes
Speaker 1: in at number five, and I think that's that annoying
Speaker 1: of the noise right above violin. It's on there. Whoopee
Speaker 1: cushion comes in at number seven. I don't know what
Speaker 1: makes people think about these things. Number eight is an
Speaker 1: argument from a soap opera, is so specific it is. Well.
Speaker 1: The funniest thing on the list, though, is number ten,
Speaker 1: Tasmanian devil. I mean that makes no sense. How did
Speaker 1: that many people in England even know what a Tasmanian
Speaker 1: devil sounds like? All right, well, here's the strange thing though,
Speaker 1: I mean, I had no idea you were going to
Speaker 1: bring up Trevor Cox earlier. He's the guy that's been
Speaker 1: collecting sounds from around the world, but oddly enough he's
Speaker 1: also responsible for this survey. Basically, he and some colleagues
Speaker 1: took thirty or repellent sounds and they played them for
Speaker 1: a group of men and women. And part of the
Speaker 1: reason he did this is that Cox has been trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what drives such strong emotions and reactions,
Speaker 1: you know, the various sounds, and also the engineers are
Speaker 1: trying to find out if there are ways to re
Speaker 1: engineer these sounds to be less offensive, I guess, So
Speaker 1: do they find out anything interesting? Well, there were some
Speaker 1: differences in gender. You know, women, for instance, tended to
Speaker 1: find a baby's crying a little less jarring than men.
Speaker 1: But I think what's interesting is how some of the
Speaker 1: things you think would annoy people were far lower on
Speaker 1: the list. Alan kats and things like snoring were far
Speaker 1: less annoying to most people than Tasmanian Devil's snoring ranked
Speaker 1: number twenty six on the list. That's such an annoying sound.
Speaker 1: I mean, you'd obviously take snoring over the sound of
Speaker 1: someone vomiting. But this idea of re engineering sounds is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. So what does that mean exactly? Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know what Cox is thinking about exactly, but actually
Speaker 1: there is this ignoble study about nails and chalkboards. So
Speaker 1: these scientists isolated the high pitch frequencies as well as
Speaker 1: the middle and low frequencies, and then they tried to
Speaker 1: figure out what made people cringe, and they realized it's
Speaker 1: actually not the high frequencies, but actually the middle ones
Speaker 1: that cause the hair to go up on your neck.
Speaker 1: So you know, in a movie, taking out or reducing
Speaker 1: that middle frequency would be much easier to watch. All right,
Speaker 1: But two last quick discoveries about this before we move on.
Speaker 1: So number one, if you're given warning about someone scraping
Speaker 1: a chalkboard before you do it, you actually react way,
Speaker 1: way worse than if you just hear the sound. That's
Speaker 1: actually pretty funny because I heard that behavioral economist Dan
Speaker 1: Ry Ellie talk about removing bandages and how if someone
Speaker 1: tells you or warns you that they're going to do
Speaker 1: it and then gently pulls the bandages off your body,
Speaker 1: you've got this higher tolerance for pain versus the idea
Speaker 1: of just ripping them off and getting it over with.
Speaker 1: And it's fine to think about what your mind can
Speaker 1: and can't handle knowing in advance. That's pretty interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: here here's the other thing I was gonna say. So
Speaker 1: scientists have wondered whether our aversion to that nails on
Speaker 1: a chalkboard sound is actually it's just the same frequency
Speaker 1: as some primate warning calls. That's crazy. So primate warnings
Speaker 1: and nails on the chalkboard are actually emitted at the
Speaker 1: same frequency. Yeah, that's right, So it might accidentally be
Speaker 1: triggering this danger instinct that's in all of us. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm certainly glad that part of the show is over,
Speaker 1: and I know we want to talk about earworms too,
Speaker 1: which are the songs that get stuck in your head.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, how about we have a
Speaker 1: little palate cleanser of cute facts. Al right, sure, So
Speaker 1: what do you have for us? So? Did you know
Speaker 1: that baby turtles all hatch at the same time because
Speaker 1: they're actually communicating through their eggshells. Oh that's like synchronized hatching.
Speaker 1: That that is pretty cute. Good job, ango, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: gives them a better chance to survival. And actually, I've
Speaker 1: got another one for you. So did you know that
Speaker 1: scientists at Georgia Tech have created software for barns and
Speaker 1: henhouses that tries to create happier chickens. It does this
Speaker 1: all by listening to their clucks and squawks. Apparently you
Speaker 1: can tell whether a chicken is stressed, or too cold,
Speaker 1: or a whole host of other things by listening to
Speaker 1: a group's cluck king. And this smart barn software actually
Speaker 1: listens to the sound feed of chickens and adjust things
Speaker 1: like the lighting or temperature or whatever makes chickens a
Speaker 1: little happier in their coupes. Apparently it makes for more
Speaker 1: eggs and plumper chickens. That's pretty crazy, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: why don't we move from eggs to earworms? And as
Speaker 1: you know, earworms are those catchy songs and refrains that
Speaker 1: gets stuck in your head. And sometimes they're there for
Speaker 1: a few hours. Sometimes honestly for me, it feels like
Speaker 1: they'll stay there for days and days. But the founding
Speaker 1: director of the Music, Mind and Brain program at Goldsmiths
Speaker 1: in London, her name is Lauren Smith. Well she's been
Speaker 1: studying this phenomenon since two thousand nine, but earworms feel
Speaker 1: like to been around for longer than that, right, Well,
Speaker 1: the phenomenon is a whole lot older. And there's a
Speaker 1: great New Yorker piece by Maria Knakova. You know, we
Speaker 1: actually had her on the program before. Oh yeah, she
Speaker 1: was so great. She did that wonderful podcast The Griffin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a really interesting what do But in this
Speaker 1: piece specifically, she references this Russian musical prodigy named Nicholas Lanimski,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a book in the nineteen is all
Speaker 1: about creating musical patterns that quote hooked the mind and
Speaker 1: force mimicry and repetition, And I don't know if he's
Speaker 1: exactly talking about earworms here, but he is talking about
Speaker 1: catchy music, and Frank Zappa and John Coltrane, among others,
Speaker 1: were influenced by Slenemski's work. So the term earworm then
Speaker 1: gets coined back in the nineteen seventies and this happens
Speaker 1: in Germany. But even that has some old roots kind
Speaker 1: of Covid writes about the old folk music that was
Speaker 1: known to stick in your crawl, like quote a piper's maggot.
Speaker 1: Exactly what that means, but it sounds gross. Which is
Speaker 1: all to say that earworms have a long history, but
Speaker 1: it was only with Lawrence Smith in two thousand nine
Speaker 1: that they really studied what makes an earworm. So what
Speaker 1: does make a earworm? Well, part of it has to
Speaker 1: do with hearing a song a few times, but another
Speaker 1: part is that the song itself normally has notes that
Speaker 1: are very close together. So you're talking about like musical
Speaker 1: intervals here. Yeah, that's right, a lot of half steps
Speaker 1: or whole steps between a lot of the notes. But
Speaker 1: also you know the notes getting held for a long
Speaker 1: time and then it repeats. So if you're thinking about
Speaker 1: something like you know the White Stripes seven Nation Army
Speaker 1: where the song is repeating that like bum bump bump bump,
Speaker 1: bum bomp, and that those notes are all right there
Speaker 1: next to each other on the keyboard. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: both fascinating and terrifying to me, that like Justin Bieber
Speaker 1: or Fifth Harmonies, songwriters or whoever know exactly what makes
Speaker 1: a song stick in our heads? Why is that terrifying?
Speaker 1: Things wonderful because I don't need any more than my head,
Speaker 1: They're already there. But do you have any insight on
Speaker 1: why songs catch or like why they pop up when
Speaker 1: we don't expect them to. Well, we don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: but there is one hypothesis that's pretty interesting, and it's
Speaker 1: the idea that people either get an earworm because it
Speaker 1: matches their mental state or because it's helping you change
Speaker 1: your mental state. So, as this article points out, if
Speaker 1: you're feeling super sluggish, you might hear a song that
Speaker 1: revs you up, or alternately, you know one that can
Speaker 1: calm you down if the situation demands it. And that's
Speaker 1: amazing that, like your body is your mind's regulating your body.
Speaker 1: That right, So one last question on this before we
Speaker 1: move on? How do you get rid of them? Like
Speaker 1: I I heard the best way was to just sing
Speaker 1: yourself another catchy song. But that seems like a terrible
Speaker 1: cure to me. Well, distracting yourself is one way, but
Speaker 1: the better way, according to researchers, is just to belt
Speaker 1: the song out. Like, if you sing it, your mind
Speaker 1: gets over it, or at least gets closer to being
Speaker 1: over it, and then you can actually move on. Crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about some of the more weird
Speaker 1: funny sounds, but before we do, let's go to a break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part time Genius. Now we're talking about
Speaker 1: some of the biggest, strangest and most irritating sounds in
Speaker 1: the universe and basically a whole lot of noise you'd
Speaker 1: love to block out and listeners what Well, we did
Speaker 1: mention this in the episode description. Both this episode and
Speaker 1: the one we did a few episodes back on the
Speaker 1: art of trash talking were made possible by beats by
Speaker 1: Dre and their noise canceling headphones. And just for the record,
Speaker 1: Dr Dre did not personally collaborate or participate in this episode,
Speaker 1: but we do look forward to working with him in
Speaker 1: the future. Right of course. Well some ango before we
Speaker 1: get back to it. You wanted to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about sound in history, right, Yeah. I was reading
Speaker 1: this story at the huffing In post by David Hendy
Speaker 1: about the history of sound and Nolan pointed it to me.
Speaker 1: But it's filled with all sorts of great stories, and
Speaker 1: one of them is like how medicine changed when stethoscopes
Speaker 1: were invented. So doctors have been listening to the body
Speaker 1: for clues forever, you know, heartbeats and paulse and whatever,
Speaker 1: but suddenly there were all these gurgles and rattles and
Speaker 1: hisses that they could now hear, and there was this
Speaker 1: new level of sophistication, and it made the body so
Speaker 1: much more wondrous and opened up all these new mysteries
Speaker 1: and ideas through advances and sound. That's pretty cool. So
Speaker 1: what else, Well, there was a bit on how the
Speaker 1: early phonographs and g the phones weren't really exciting to
Speaker 1: people because of their ability to play music. It was
Speaker 1: really more because they were thought of as these recording devices,
Speaker 1: like there were a way that you could preserve your
Speaker 1: dying uncle's voice and his words of wisdom for posterity.
Speaker 1: Instead of I don't know, just like a way of
Speaker 1: playing your Power of Love, best of the eighties power
Speaker 1: ballads album. So the article had these interesting things I
Speaker 1: hadn't realized about sound in history, But the most fascinating
Speaker 1: thing to me was just how music has been used
Speaker 1: to control people. All right, well, you'll have to explain
Speaker 1: this to me, what do you mean? So in one
Speaker 1: section the article talked about town bells in history and
Speaker 1: how they were used for the whole town to know,
Speaker 1: I don't know when to get up in the morning
Speaker 1: or when to sleep, but they also let you know
Speaker 1: when to pray, or when to take up arms, or
Speaker 1: when to do dinner. And this all sounds so harmless,
Speaker 1: but as the article put it, it actually tightens both
Speaker 1: the secular and religious authorities hold over the daily life
Speaker 1: of all within hearing distance. Yeah, so that's one part
Speaker 1: of it. But in terms of things like music, it
Speaker 1: also works, right, Like how background music is often organized
Speaker 1: to this rhythm that and that tries to calm you
Speaker 1: down or get us to work harder, or eat faster
Speaker 1: or buy more. Yeah, I mean you always hear about
Speaker 1: that at restaurants where they don't want you lingering or
Speaker 1: that old story of the mall parking lot and when
Speaker 1: I think it was in Australia where they were playing
Speaker 1: Barry Manilow and music like that, just to keep the
Speaker 1: kids from lloitering there at night. All right, well, I
Speaker 1: know we've got a fact off to get to, but
Speaker 1: before we do, why don't we each tell one story
Speaker 1: of an annoying sound in history? Do you want to
Speaker 1: do this? Yeah, all right, why don't you go first?
Speaker 1: How one of the best and worst venues to be
Speaker 1: a performer, which was Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Shakespeare's Globe Theater
Speaker 1: and you get to work with Shakespeare performed for royalty.
Speaker 1: Why would this be a terrible place? Honestly, it was
Speaker 1: because the crowds were so awful. I mean, the sound
Speaker 1: is only part of the experience, and for the actors,
Speaker 1: they were constantly under the threat of, like having rotten
Speaker 1: vegetables thrown in their direction, you know, if the rowdy
Speaker 1: crowd didn't like their work. But the smell was a
Speaker 1: huge assault on the census. So, according to literary traveler
Speaker 1: dot com, the penny seats in the yard which went
Speaker 1: to the folk known as I don't know the groundlings,
Speaker 1: or sometimes the stinkers. It was full of drunks and
Speaker 1: they were just waiting and standing ankle deep in mud.
Speaker 1: And according to the site, because the crowds were so thick,
Speaker 1: like the bathroom breaks for men, just ment aiming between
Speaker 1: your shoes. Oh my god, that's so gross. I know
Speaker 1: it wasn't exactly hygienic, but you get what you pay for.
Speaker 1: And for the actors it was even worse because in
Speaker 1: addition to all the stink the acoustics were miserable. Like
Speaker 1: the crowds would be yelling and chatting and fighting, and
Speaker 1: so just to get the stories communicated, the actors would
Speaker 1: have to over exaggerate their gestures and like boom their lines,
Speaker 1: which totally changes how you'd imagine like a Shakespeare play.
Speaker 1: If you're thinking about Hamlet, just yelling to be or
Speaker 1: not to be over this noisy crowd. It's pretty funny though,
Speaker 1: just always angry. I could see why an actor would
Speaker 1: want to tune that out. All right, Well, my story
Speaker 1: is about music being used by interrogators. I'm or remember
Speaker 1: how the FBI played Tibetan monk Chance outside the Branch
Speaker 1: Davidian Compound and Waco, you know, just to drive them crazy.
Speaker 1: But it isn't the only case of them doing this. Apparently.
Speaker 1: In two thousand three, the BBC reported that the US
Speaker 1: was blasting songs from Metallica, Skinny Puppy and of course
Speaker 1: the theme song to Barney to get people to talk.
Speaker 1: How about it that like Barney gets thrown in that
Speaker 1: next somehow that feels like even crueler. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: don't think that should be allowed. Well, but according to
Speaker 1: news Week, twenty four hours of it will drive someone insane.
Speaker 1: Twenty four hours. I'm thinking like thirty minutes of this
Speaker 1: and I'll be ready to talk. That's definitely a sound
Speaker 1: you want to block out. But you know, the story
Speaker 1: got weirder because when the band Skinny Puppy heard about this,
Speaker 1: they realized the government owed them royalties for playing their music.
Speaker 1: So they sent the Department of Defense a six hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar bill for royalties. Actually was six hundred and
Speaker 1: sixties six thousand, because you know, I guess they were
Speaker 1: trying to make a point here. That's funny and pretty cavalier.
Speaker 1: But now that gotten a little warmed up with a
Speaker 1: back and forth, why don't we start the fact off,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm for it. Well, we knew we'd be
Speaker 1: talking about some terrible sounds, so we agreed in advance
Speaker 1: that we would keep this one focused on you know,
Speaker 1: it makes something a little happier. So we're going to
Speaker 1: do a cute animal edition. Are you still up for this?
Speaker 1: That's right, all right, well let's do it. So, I know,
Speaker 1: we both watched that David Edinburgh clip on YouTube about
Speaker 1: the liar bird. It's amazing because in it, like this
Speaker 1: bird imitates all these sounds like a car alarm and
Speaker 1: a cell phone or even a chainsaw in the wild,
Speaker 1: and the doc makes it seem like the liar birds
Speaker 1: picked up those sounds from I don't know, developers invading
Speaker 1: the forest. But the real reason the bird on camera
Speaker 1: could actually make those sounds was that it had been
Speaker 1: living in captivity at the zoo. So apparently the bird
Speaker 1: name Chook, had overheard construction on the new panda enclosure.
Speaker 1: And that's how you did all this like hammering and
Speaker 1: drilling and sauce sounds to his repertoire. That's still incredible though,
Speaker 1: that they can do that, It's it's it's pretty wild. Well,
Speaker 1: did you know that dolphins actually don't have vocal cords?
Speaker 1: So when they're squeaking and chirping, they're actually doing it
Speaker 1: through a lip shaped tissue in their nose and and
Speaker 1: these are called phonic lips. That's super weird. Speaking of
Speaker 1: water critters, did you know that walruses come with bells
Speaker 1: and whistles. They make a bell sound underwater, not from
Speaker 1: their vocal cords, but instead from these inflatable sacks called
Speaker 1: pharyngeal pouches. It's actually kind of beautiful. Well, you know
Speaker 1: what isn't beautiful, mango? When that's the sound of a kowal.
Speaker 1: They might look like bears, but they actually grunt more
Speaker 1: like pigs. So this isn't exactly an animal. But I
Speaker 1: did want to talk about Wolverine and the sound his
Speaker 1: claws make and the X Men movies. You're right, he
Speaker 1: is not an animal. But to make the sound of
Speaker 1: him flashing and retracting those atmantium claws, the sound designer
Speaker 1: used the sound of a knife being drawn from a sheath. Right,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, But because the sound make it seem
Speaker 1: like the clause we're emerging and then slipping back into
Speaker 1: Wolverine's flesh, enough, sound designer mixed it with the juicy
Speaker 1: sound of a chicken carcass being pulled apart, so you
Speaker 1: get like a little squishing noise in there too, if
Speaker 1: you listen closely. It's weird, just saying squishing noise kind
Speaker 1: of makes react. All right, we'll Speaking of movies, I've
Speaker 1: got a great one from Jurassic Park. And obviously it's
Speaker 1: hard to figure out exactly what a t rex roar
Speaker 1: would have sounded like, so the sound designer sampled and
Speaker 1: blended a number of different sounds, everything from a baby
Speaker 1: elephant crying to a hissing tiger to an alligator's gurgle.
Speaker 1: Apparently I don't know exactly what that is, but that's
Speaker 1: what it says. But they all got slowed down and
Speaker 1: mixed together to make for this what they considered a
Speaker 1: realistic t rex roar. That's pretty amazing, and it is
Speaker 1: better than a motorcycle fart. I guess I think you're
Speaker 1: probably right about that. Also, to make the dinosaur's breathing sound,
Speaker 1: the engineers modified the sound of air coming out of
Speaker 1: a whale's blowhole. That's pretty cool. Huh. Yeah, that's all.
Speaker 1: And while none of those are sounds I seek out,
Speaker 1: I am sufficiently impressed that I'm going to crown you
Speaker 1: this week's winter Well. Thank you very much, and and
Speaker 1: thanks to Beats by Drey for sponsoring this episode. If
Speaker 1: there's some great noises from the natural world or history
Speaker 1: that you'd love to share with us, remember you can
Speaker 1: always email us part Time Genius at how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. You can always reach us one fact hotline
Speaker 1: that's one eight four four pt Genius, and of course
Speaker 1: you can hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Two.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and
Speaker 1: wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
Speaker 1: important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil
Speaker 1: does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song
Speaker 1: and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does
Speaker 1: the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher,
Speaker 1: with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Speaker 1: Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the
Speaker 1: show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
Speaker 1: what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe. And if you
Speaker 1: really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
Speaker 1: a good review for us. Did you forget James Jason
Speaker 1: who