Speaker 1: M Ephemeral is a production of I Heart three D
Speaker 1: audio for full exposure, listen with headphones. This is the
Speaker 1: sound of the American bison. A bull wads across stream
Speaker 1: to feed on grass, a thunderstorm rolls in. It's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that must happen all the time, but
Speaker 1: this time someone was there with a backpack full of
Speaker 1: audio gear. How many recordings do you think you've made total?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, um, something like that. Maybe it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a pretty big number. I mean I just recorded
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty hours working along the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: for two and a half months. It's a lot of recordings.
Speaker 1: My name is Jacob job. I am a research associate
Speaker 1: at Colorado State University working for the Sound and Like
Speaker 1: Ecology team. Someone just asks you what you do? What's
Speaker 1: the you know? Really quick pitch? I just laugh and
Speaker 1: be like I usually turned to someone who knows me
Speaker 1: and say why why don't you describe it? Um? But
Speaker 1: I mean, essentially, I record the sounds of wilderness to
Speaker 1: bring to people, to familiarize them with these places so
Speaker 1: that they care about it. And once they care about it,
Speaker 1: conservation falls into place. That much easier, That's what I say.
Speaker 1: In other words, Jacob takes epic backpacking trips out into
Speaker 1: some of the wildest places on the planet to general
Speaker 1: write a record what those places sound like? This sounds
Speaker 1: like my dream job. Is that a common job? Um No, No,
Speaker 1: it's not. Certainly not with our team and certainly not
Speaker 1: with the National Park Service on this official capacity. I'm
Speaker 1: a research scientist. I trained as a research scientist. I
Speaker 1: came into a post doc position, decided I wanted nothing
Speaker 1: to do with research science anymore. But I still love
Speaker 1: science and I love science communication. Told my bosses, I
Speaker 1: was just like, hey, guys, I'm kind of I'm kind
Speaker 1: of done with this. Cringing as I'm watching their faces.
Speaker 1: I just came from a science communication seminar with NPR
Speaker 1: on campus. So I think it's like Christopher Joyce talking
Speaker 1: about science communication. That was sort of the straw that
Speaker 1: broke the camel's back. I said, all right, I'm inspired
Speaker 1: by this. I'm not happy with research. Let's just give
Speaker 1: it a shot and see where it goes. To their
Speaker 1: credit there just like all right, so what can we
Speaker 1: do to help you be successful? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of interested in this audio recording idea as
Speaker 1: a conservation tool. I didn't force their hand. They were
Speaker 1: they were welcoming to it, and they've encouraged it. But
Speaker 1: I just kept pushing it in front of them so
Speaker 1: they couldn't ignore it. I've got this sort of baseline job,
Speaker 1: which is to run this research laboratory with undergraduate students
Speaker 1: who helped the parks quantify noise pollution that's always there,
Speaker 1: that's been there. All of this other stuff I do
Speaker 1: on the side, this recording stuff. When I can make
Speaker 1: time for it, I do after hours, and they've slowly
Speaker 1: allowed me to incorporate it more and more into my
Speaker 1: main job. I think I just have better use working
Speaker 1: with the public and sort of conveying what all those
Speaker 1: wonderful scientists do to the public so we have greater
Speaker 1: scientific literacy. I start this position in March of In May,
Speaker 1: I'm going to Hawaii to work at a National Geographic
Speaker 1: Bioblitz event. A bunch of scientists and citizens convene on
Speaker 1: Wide Volcanoes National Park, and the idea is just a
Speaker 1: document as much biodiversity as they can find in the park.
Speaker 1: Morning to I recorded a dawn chorus where the birds
Speaker 1: wake up the world wakes up as the sun comes up.
Speaker 1: That was my first real dawn course recording, and I
Speaker 1: was just blown away. I just I just couldn't believe it,
Speaker 1: both how beautiful it was, but how predictable it was too.
Speaker 1: And I love predictability, and I think that's part of
Speaker 1: just being a scientist. I started working in Rocky Mountain
Speaker 1: National Park, set up a project with Yellowstone National Park.
Speaker 1: I worked in Sekoy and Kings Canyon for almost two years,
Speaker 1: and then Lewis and Clark National Historical Park up in Oregon.
Speaker 1: Been the Mason very day. Then I've gone down to
Speaker 1: Central America and Costa Rica and Mexico. I just spent
Speaker 1: two and a half months on the road recording the
Speaker 1: sounds of bird migration and the stories of people living
Speaker 1: alongside those birds from basically the mouth of the Mississippi
Speaker 1: all the way up to the headwaters in northern Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Working in Rocky Mountain National Park helped widen the focus
Speaker 1: of the project. The project there was to record all
Speaker 1: of the songbirds, so we have this library of the
Speaker 1: songbirds that call that park home during the spring and summer.
Speaker 1: Been anticipation of climate change and the impact it's going
Speaker 1: to have on the park. Some species are going to
Speaker 1: be doing well in climate change in the park. Some
Speaker 1: new species will arrive, but we're going to lose some
Speaker 1: species as well. The park won't be suitable habitat anymore.
Speaker 1: Realized that I was missing the forest through the trees,
Speaker 1: and what we're really talking about when we're talking about
Speaker 1: climate change is sort of this whole change to the
Speaker 1: ecosystem and how that ecosystem sound. So I started focusing
Speaker 1: on entire sound events in the park, thunderstorms and the
Speaker 1: elk rut down choruses and amphibian courses at night. That's
Speaker 1: when I really started to go to all the depths
Speaker 1: of the park high elevation, tundra, low elevation, lakes, rivers, streams, ponds,
Speaker 1: beaver ponds, you name it. And most of the time
Speaker 1: I'm completely off trail, trying to avoid people as much
Speaker 1: as possible because people make noise and noise isn't good
Speaker 1: for my recordings. From inception to execution, this work is
Speaker 1: a mix of serendipity and rigorous planning, but starts with
Speaker 1: pitching an idea to a park. Sometimes the parks have
Speaker 1: heard about the work I've done and they asked me.
Speaker 1: You show up at a park, you get your burying
Speaker 1: straight the first day. You where you're going to sleep
Speaker 1: in a tent on the ground. More than likely sometimes
Speaker 1: you get a bunk house. You're there for X number
Speaker 1: of days, hiking two, three, four or five miles all
Speaker 1: the way up to twenty miles in a day, just
Speaker 1: to get to some of these places that are your objective.
Speaker 1: So I want to go record a high elevation tundra, thunderstorm,
Speaker 1: and every day you've got your objectives thunderstorms, birds, ella, moose, wolves, bears,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And then at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: your exhausted, You come back, you eat boil bag food
Speaker 1: and you maybe have a little energy to read before
Speaker 1: you fall asleep at eight thirty nine o'clock and you're
Speaker 1: up at four again, and you know, lather, rinse, repeat.
Speaker 1: What's your longest trip look like? Well, two and a
Speaker 1: half months just finished with that, the normal type projects
Speaker 1: for the park service. My longest trip was I think
Speaker 1: it was eleven days. Ten days. We ended up stalking
Speaker 1: big horn sheep up Mount Whitney in California in the Sierra,
Speaker 1: and so we had camped at high elevation thirteen thousand
Speaker 1: feet or so. When we been several days following bighorn
Speaker 1: sheep trying to get some good audio and video of
Speaker 1: them during their rut, you know where they bash heads together.
Speaker 1: That was That was a long trip. You have to
Speaker 1: get up there first, and then you have to find them,
Speaker 1: and then then you have to like actually get good audio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got a day pack. It's got a lot of water,
Speaker 1: it's got some trail food, some of the essentials. I
Speaker 1: have two setups that carry with me. One of them
Speaker 1: is a parabolic dish, the ones that they use at
Speaker 1: like sporting of the exactly exactly the sideline of a
Speaker 1: football game or something, so you can like bring into
Speaker 1: focus the sound of a big hit or a quarterback
Speaker 1: yelling a ca hins or something. So it really focuses
Speaker 1: on capturing what I call cano recordings of individual organisms.
Speaker 1: A bird it can really bring into focus right there
Speaker 1: in your ear, or a distant wolf, some individual I
Speaker 1: also have my soundscape set up. It records in stereo,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of constructed like a human head. Two
Speaker 1: ears or microphones was asymmetrical. One of them is sort
Speaker 1: of more forward facing then the other one's higher up
Speaker 1: than the other. It allows you to put on headphones
Speaker 1: and pinpoint with your eyes closed, the location of every
Speaker 1: sound you hear around you. It reproduces the three D
Speaker 1: soundscape around you. And then I got a hundred feet
Speaker 1: of XLR cable and so I'm I don't know pounds
Speaker 1: in any given time. You can be as quiet as
Speaker 1: you want in the outdoors, but if you're sitting there,
Speaker 1: things are going to notice and they're going to act differently.
Speaker 1: So what I do is set that microphone up and
Speaker 1: then I retreat as far as I can, so, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty ft away with that XLR cord, and I'll hide
Speaker 1: behind a tree, or I'll lay on the ground and
Speaker 1: just be still as can be and allow everything to
Speaker 1: happen as naturally as possible. I've probably gone out with
Speaker 1: an assistant three or four times. I prefer to be
Speaker 1: by myself, just because it's that much harder to coordinate
Speaker 1: everything and be quiet when you've got multiple people. I
Speaker 1: try to describe it as if you're on a hunt.
Speaker 1: You're moving slowly intentionally, you're not wasting any energy, you're
Speaker 1: avoiding walking through noisy areas, you're not talking. That's a given,
Speaker 1: and when you do move, you're using less of your
Speaker 1: small joints and more of your big joints. And what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is you're rotating at your hips
Speaker 1: or your back rather than your neck or your leg.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna move from side to side to grab something,
Speaker 1: you're not just throwing your arm out to the side.
Speaker 1: You're kind of moving like a chameleon. When they move,
Speaker 1: they sort of do this whole body movement that makes
Speaker 1: it harder to notice movement. Trying to lend into the
Speaker 1: background as much as possible. Does it ever go horribly wrong? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's the average day. I mean, it
Speaker 1: doesn't go horribly wrong because there's always some cool sound
Speaker 1: out there to listen to. I've missed thunderstorms that I
Speaker 1: was gunning four, But you find something else. If you're
Speaker 1: able to, are willing to just sit patients and being quiet,
Speaker 1: those two things alone can put you in contact with
Speaker 1: the coolest situations outside. Some of it is understanding the
Speaker 1: lay of the land, understanding how animals move and the habitat,
Speaker 1: and so you know where to place yourself for these
Speaker 1: things to happen. But if you can just sit silently
Speaker 1: for hours at a time. Things will come to you.
Speaker 1: You will see the best things, and so you know
Speaker 1: that's that's a fallback plan when things go wrong. This
Speaker 1: is a good one. So the junction Butte pack we're
Speaker 1: hiking in. It's it's January, it's six am, five thirty am,
Speaker 1: it's blackout. We're going to record these wolves. I've got
Speaker 1: my equipment all set up. It's on my shoulder, fifty
Speaker 1: ft of XLR cord. Before I learned how to properly
Speaker 1: manage XLR cord. The wolves start howling, and so I
Speaker 1: threw down the tripod and I tried to unravel the
Speaker 1: chords and they were knotted up, and so like there's
Speaker 1: all this noise, and then they stop howling before I
Speaker 1: even get still, and I'm just like bummed out big time.
Speaker 1: I did have two people with me that time, emotionally
Speaker 1: them to just sit in the snow and hopefully it
Speaker 1: was gonna happen again. I've got the headphones on, I'm monitoring.
Speaker 1: I can hear the snowfalling around us, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I hear the crunch of footprints and the
Speaker 1: snow around us close enough to where I know they're
Speaker 1: within twenty thirty yards and I hear just this little yip.
Speaker 1: The coyotes in that area had woken up, and they
Speaker 1: all went off in this three dog chorus, totally unexpected.
Speaker 1: Didn't know they were there. Got the most incredible recording
Speaker 1: coyotes waking up in Yellowstone. And then the wolves held
Speaker 1: again later on, and so I got that too. But
Speaker 1: it started off as this disaster. One of the perks
Speaker 1: of the job Jacob encounters with few humans will ever
Speaker 1: experience firsthand. One of the coolest things I got to
Speaker 1: do in Sequoia. It's called Crystal Cave. It goes back
Speaker 1: about half three quarters of a mile. It's open for tourists,
Speaker 1: but at six pm it shuts down. There's a big
Speaker 1: gate and there's nobody back there. They gave me access,
Speaker 1: They gave me a key to go back into this
Speaker 1: cave by myself one night, being back under the earth
Speaker 1: that far back, completely dark, there's no light, not that
Speaker 1: I can detect. Very few people I bet get to
Speaker 1: experience that. I've stalked moose for a couple of hours
Speaker 1: waiting for them to do something, and I got distracted
Speaker 1: for twenty seconds. The next thing, you know, I look
Speaker 1: up and it's walking right towards me. My press record
Speaker 1: jumped behind a tree and record this moose fifteen yards
Speaker 1: from my microphones, and it's just eating and grunting, and
Speaker 1: it just starts peeing right next to the microphone. It's
Speaker 1: not like the coolest thing in the world. But I
Speaker 1: don't think many people have heard that, and I'm really
Speaker 1: happy that I have. I just got done in Minnesota
Speaker 1: listening to a den of wolf pups and their mother.
Speaker 1: Hoween hiked out in the middle of the night. The
Speaker 1: guy who has with the wolf biologists retreated back down
Speaker 1: the trail a few yards and left me there and
Speaker 1: he did his howl. He's an incredible howler. I thought
Speaker 1: it was the wolf they started holling. Rodway. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've gotten asked this before. Do you have a favorite sound? Oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh, do I have a favorite sound? Um? I do.
Speaker 1: It is the sound of wilderness in the north Woods,
Speaker 1: especially northern Minnesota. It's at night at camp, the haunting,
Speaker 1: haunting call of common looms echoing from lake to lake.
Speaker 1: It's just the best sound in the world to me.
Speaker 1: I first heard him. I was fishing with my dad
Speaker 1: in northern Michigan. Since then, I've taken several trips into
Speaker 1: the north Woods Michigan, Minnesota, searching for that sound in
Speaker 1: that experience. And now my parents live in a place
Speaker 1: in somewhat northern Michigan where they have loons nesting on
Speaker 1: their very small lake. So I love going to the
Speaker 1: house there and during that It's just one of my
Speaker 1: favorite places to be. M hm. So once you have
Speaker 1: this incredible library of the natural world captured and cataloged,
Speaker 1: what exactly do you do with all of it? I
Speaker 1: think online in sort of a library like SoundCloud is
Speaker 1: one of the worst places that can go. That being said,
Speaker 1: Jacob SoundCloud is amazing. He has his sight set on
Speaker 1: more participatory mediums. So what I do is I work
Speaker 1: with the parks and create either interactive exhibits. You can
Speaker 1: go to Sequoyan Kings Canyon. They just opened up this
Speaker 1: rotating permanent exhibit that goes through all their visitor centers
Speaker 1: and you stand under these like sound domes parabox dish
Speaker 1: above your head and you can watch this film we
Speaker 1: put together. It's completely non narrated. It's the soundscapes of
Speaker 1: Sequoyan Kings Canyon and there's accompanying video and it's just
Speaker 1: this immersive experience. It should when you're done with it,
Speaker 1: just blow your mind about what opportunity exists out in
Speaker 1: the park. That's one way to get people's imagination going
Speaker 1: and get them excited about the park. We put together
Speaker 1: a story map, so essentially we we followed a trail
Speaker 1: that exists in the park. It starts in the foothills
Speaker 1: about feet and then it goes all the way up
Speaker 1: to alpine zone up to four feet, and we recorded
Speaker 1: the sounds, all types of sounds, animal, water, wind, thunder, whatever,
Speaker 1: all the way along this trail through these different ecosystems.
Speaker 1: The visitors can put on the headphones and explore this
Speaker 1: map and listen to these sounds, and there's accompanying text
Speaker 1: that interprets the sounds and what they mean and give
Speaker 1: people a better understanding of what they're experiencing when they
Speaker 1: experience it in the park. Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National
Speaker 1: Park and Secoa and Kings Canyon all have sound live
Speaker 1: berries where every recording I've ever made in those parks
Speaker 1: they're on there for people who just listen to at
Speaker 1: a minimum, it tells them where it was recorded and
Speaker 1: what the vocal subject is. And then with Yellowstone we
Speaker 1: make what are called audio postcards. We take our coolest
Speaker 1: sounds of Yellowstone National Park. There's a short bit of
Speaker 1: narration geyser continuously, a rough, short burst of water, but
Speaker 1: not too much, just enough to let people know what
Speaker 1: the scene is, what's going on. And then we just
Speaker 1: both those out there on social media, and it's another
Speaker 1: way to get people engaging with the park and thinking
Speaker 1: about the park in a different way. The hope is
Speaker 1: they become advocates or stewards of that place. That's a
Speaker 1: somewhat realistic hope, especially now that our public lands are
Speaker 1: under attack in a lot of ways. A lot of
Speaker 1: them have been shrunk, giving way to oil and gas interests.
Speaker 1: That should never happen when you've set aside places to
Speaker 1: be protected, or humans to be able to go and
Speaker 1: test their metal against wilderness to be inspired and awestruck.
Speaker 1: I'm an advocate of preservation, so there's a conservation and
Speaker 1: preservation I would love if we could protect some places
Speaker 1: where humans can't go. I don't need a place to
Speaker 1: exist for my enjoyment. I would like it just to
Speaker 1: exist for the fact that it supports life for other
Speaker 1: organisms that I don't need to be a part of
Speaker 1: But if I can get people just to care about
Speaker 1: conservation of our already protected places, that's great. If I
Speaker 1: can get people to think about their impact on natural
Speaker 1: places when they're out there, so if they can be wider,
Speaker 1: if they're not revving their engine, if they're not yelling,
Speaker 1: they're not playing music, if they can just think about
Speaker 1: experiencing the outdoors in a more natural way, that's a
Speaker 1: huge wind for me. Perhaps these soundscapes tap something deep
Speaker 1: within us a time before, but the pristine place evoked
Speaker 1: is in some ways only a fantasy. Wilderness doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: It does as a talking point, it's great, but noise
Speaker 1: pollution has completely removed wilderness from this planet. It's hard
Speaker 1: to go longer than ten fifteen minutes without a jet
Speaker 1: flying over, like they kind you take in vacation. I
Speaker 1: think you're anywhere in Colorado or most of New Place,
Speaker 1: any further than seventeen miles from the road, and that
Speaker 1: seems like a long way. But these a low frequency
Speaker 1: engine sounds, they travel forever, especially when you get in
Speaker 1: these canyons, generators, boiling gas, the sound of drilling or
Speaker 1: pumping or post production. I mean just low frequency noise,
Speaker 1: the sound of human advancement. Um, It's just it's everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it's it's almost impossible to escape for any period
Speaker 1: of time. I love solitude, I loved silence. I hate
Speaker 1: noise pollution. There's a very real thing that people love,
Speaker 1: the din of city light, and part of that is
Speaker 1: the energy and the noise that comes along with it.
Speaker 1: There are cool urban sounds, for sure. But if I
Speaker 1: had the choice to get rid of them all, if
Speaker 1: we could somehow make society or quieter, I don't a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't miss any of it. We could do a
Speaker 1: better job of getting rid of the unnecessary noise pollution.
Speaker 1: Vehicles that are overly loud, motorcycles without bufflers, I mean,
Speaker 1: stuff that's just not necessary. It's just a way for
Speaker 1: people that peacock their way around the world. For now,
Speaker 1: freedom from pollution is only ever temporary. Are there any
Speaker 1: places left untouched by human noise? They've all been touched
Speaker 1: by human sounds. It's just a matter of how long
Speaker 1: you can go between noise pollution events. The Boundary Waters
Speaker 1: of Northern Minnesota, that Canoe area wilderness up there, you
Speaker 1: can go quite a long time. Hours or maybe even
Speaker 1: a whole day sometimes without noise pollution. That's really special.
Speaker 1: But like Rocky Mountain National Park, you think it's this
Speaker 1: wilderness area, and you can be in some of the
Speaker 1: more popular parts of that park and you can't go
Speaker 1: more than fifteen seconds, And you certainly can't go during
Speaker 1: rush hour, both morning and evening more than a minute
Speaker 1: and a half to two minutes without an overflight a
Speaker 1: jet landing into Denver in the national airport. You know,
Speaker 1: the desert is a great place to find silence sometimes,
Speaker 1: but again, over flights will get you eventually. It's just
Speaker 1: incredibly rare. And the fact that I'm telling you this
Speaker 1: will probably alert you to this for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. So I'm apologizing right now. The more you
Speaker 1: start to pay attention, the more you realize everything we
Speaker 1: think is this grand outdoor experience is manipulated, controlled, touched
Speaker 1: by the human hands. It's almost as far away from
Speaker 1: that wilderness experience as being in a city park in
Speaker 1: some ways. I mean, I can be with around grizzly
Speaker 1: bears and wolves and you don't see that in a
Speaker 1: city park. And that's that's a very real thing that
Speaker 1: can put you in a lot of danger quickly, But
Speaker 1: there are still elements that are completely missing from that
Speaker 1: wilderness experience, and you can't ignore that. Like climate change, dehabitation,
Speaker 1: and other symptoms of human advancement, noise pollution alters the
Speaker 1: behavior of wildlife. Imagine going on a date with somebody
Speaker 1: to a bar. First date. You're trying to communicate some
Speaker 1: information to them, but the bars so loud. What do
Speaker 1: you do? Talk louder, You move closer, You maybe moved
Speaker 1: to a different, quieter part of the bar. You talk
Speaker 1: during gaps in the noise, you just sticulate more. You
Speaker 1: do all these adjustments to make yourself heard. But the
Speaker 1: birds of the same birds avoid singing in the noisiest places,
Speaker 1: which can be hard. If you're in the middle of
Speaker 1: the city, all may be noisy. They also adjust their
Speaker 1: songs so they're in a different frequency level that is
Speaker 1: not being overlapped with urban noise. In the marine world, fish, whales, dolphins,
Speaker 1: there's evidence to suggests that shipping lanes the Navy sonar
Speaker 1: causes these animals to display these behavioral adjustments, avoid areas altogether,
Speaker 1: and sometimes even beach themselves because of noise pollution. It's
Speaker 1: so loud insects. We see insects responding to noise pollution,
Speaker 1: some mammal species, amphibians. We see a response across the
Speaker 1: board of invertebrates and in some invertebrates. As the world changes,
Speaker 1: the moments frozen in these recordings reflect less and less
Speaker 1: the character of our planet. They become remembrances what did
Speaker 1: this place used to sound like? All of my work
Speaker 1: in Rocky is based on the idea that these species
Speaker 1: are going to shift their ranges and so new species
Speaker 1: will show up. Species will be lost completely the soundscape
Speaker 1: because of the birds and maybe amphibians disappeared in Pike
Speaker 1: a pike At these little adorable little rabbit rodents at
Speaker 1: the top of mountains. They can only go so high
Speaker 1: up in elevation before they run out of mountain and
Speaker 1: they can't exist anymore. That's going to happen, certainly. I
Speaker 1: don't see any trajectory where that doesn't happen because of
Speaker 1: where we're going with climate change. As far as like development,
Speaker 1: you know, every time I go to my parents house,
Speaker 1: there's another house built on the lake and it gets
Speaker 1: a little bit louder. In national parks we do a
Speaker 1: pretty good job of protecting and thinking about soundscapes. But
Speaker 1: you know there are construction projects or new trails that
Speaker 1: get put in, and that puts people in new places
Speaker 1: and that changes the soundscape. For sure. What I'm doing
Speaker 1: when I record certain birds in Rocky Mountain National Park
Speaker 1: that are projected to not live there in the future
Speaker 1: because the climate change is creating acoustic fossils, the moment
Speaker 1: in time that was captured that will never happen in
Speaker 1: the same way. Again, It's no different in some ways
Speaker 1: than finding a fossil dinosaur bone. It's it's evidence of
Speaker 1: something that used to be there. It's important to capture
Speaker 1: that now as a record of what once was, as
Speaker 1: in any kind of documentary work, every editorial decision. As
Speaker 1: an ethical consideration, I fall back on my background as
Speaker 1: a scientist, understanding how all the pieces of an ecosystem
Speaker 1: work and what's natural and what's not natural. I know
Speaker 1: when I've interrupted things. I know when things are responding
Speaker 1: to me, they're vocalizing because of me. If I'm editing
Speaker 1: tape and I'm cutting things certain ways, I know that
Speaker 1: I can't cut certain bird songs a certain way because
Speaker 1: they're not singing out a way that they normally, would
Speaker 1: you have to remember your objectives of the project, whatever
Speaker 1: those are, you make sure whatever decisions you make fall
Speaker 1: in line with those objectives. I'll get a really good
Speaker 1: recording and I'll remove the sound of an aircraft flying
Speaker 1: over Well, what was the objective of the project? Was
Speaker 1: it to accurately represent the sounds of that location? If so,
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave the jet. There is the objective
Speaker 1: to produce an awe inspired recording just get people excited,
Speaker 1: then yeah, I may cut that out of there. I
Speaker 1: rely on ecology, and I rely on the goals are
Speaker 1: objectives of the project to make those decisions. In our big,
Speaker 1: noisy world, what becomes a fossil next? Jacob has a
Speaker 1: hit list. Most every night, I fall asleep dreaming about
Speaker 1: these sounds. I would love to capture the sounds of
Speaker 1: the sandhill crane migration through Carney, Nebraska. And that sounds
Speaker 1: maybe about its boring. It can be to some people,
Speaker 1: but like, can you imagine several hundred thousand cranes all
Speaker 1: moving through this area at the same time? And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever heard of Sandhill crane. That's
Speaker 1: your homework for the day. Go listen to one online.
Speaker 1: It's such a loud prehistoric noise. Listening to all them
Speaker 1: at once would be incredible. More and more I find
Speaker 1: myself focusing less on individuals or organisms rather than ecosystems
Speaker 1: and places. I would love to go to Grand Staircase,
Speaker 1: Escalante and the Coyote Bridge Natural Area and recorded Dawn course.
Speaker 1: They're just to advocate for those places that are under threat.
Speaker 1: My dream, my absolute dream right now, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: tossing around how do I approach this is to get
Speaker 1: up to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, hearing the sound
Speaker 1: of Arctic wolves and seabirds and sea ducks and shorebirds
Speaker 1: as close as to wilderness as we have in this country.
Speaker 1: There was a rider in the two thousand seventeen tax
Speaker 1: bill that opened up an noir for oil and gas exploration.
Speaker 1: I want to get up there and record the sounds
Speaker 1: of that place before that's happened, because that's not a
Speaker 1: place that will recover pure read. One of the things
Speaker 1: that is so chilling and horrifying to me is that
Speaker 1: you never get it back. You can, there's no there's
Speaker 1: no there's no rewind, there's you never get that thing
Speaker 1: ever again. That's I don't you know. And I think
Speaker 1: this is where our science education fails us in grade
Speaker 1: school and high school. We don't instill upon people the
Speaker 1: fragility of places like this and moments like that, and
Speaker 1: we make it about facts and numbers and things that
Speaker 1: they have to learn, but we don't really inspire awe
Speaker 1: and wonder. So a place like anwar, if you were
Speaker 1: to go in there and put in roads and start drilling,
Speaker 1: you're disrupting so many systems and processes and animals and plants.
Speaker 1: And because the tundra is so slow growing the growing
Speaker 1: season and I almost scoffed to say growing season, although
Speaker 1: it's getting longer, believe it or not. I guess you
Speaker 1: don't have to believe it or not. Climate change is happening.
Speaker 1: It's so short that for that place to overcome that damage,
Speaker 1: it would take tens of thousands of years. If ever,
Speaker 1: if I could push a button right now to preserve
Speaker 1: this place, to lock it as totally protected, but humans
Speaker 1: never get to go, and that includes myself, I would
Speaker 1: absolutely do in a heartbeat, just because it exists, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to exist for us. It can just
Speaker 1: exist for the sake of existing. When you consider all
Speaker 1: of humanity's threats stacked against the natural world, it can
Speaker 1: feel insurmountable, hopeless. The work of groups like the Sound
Speaker 1: and Light Ecology Team help keep things in perspective. The
Speaker 1: next step for me is this national geographic projects that
Speaker 1: I'm working on called Voices of a Flyway. In A flyway,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a route that migratory birds take
Speaker 1: to move across continents or oceans or hemispheres. It's just
Speaker 1: a route that they take over and over a year
Speaker 1: after year. I've already got the natural world covered in
Speaker 1: some ways. That's where my focus is. But now I'm
Speaker 1: turning my attention to the voices of people living alongside
Speaker 1: the natural world who have a relationship with it one
Speaker 1: way or the other. Maybe they farm the land, or
Speaker 1: they fish, or they hunt. Maybe they are a conservationists
Speaker 1: or biologists. Maybe they're a bird watcher, maybe they just
Speaker 1: live out in the country. The idea of this project
Speaker 1: is to understand a our relationship with the natural world,
Speaker 1: build an idea of commonality between all of us. We
Speaker 1: all rely on healthy ecosystems for food and water and
Speaker 1: clean air and economic advancement. We're so divided into how
Speaker 1: we talk about each other, and we think about our
Speaker 1: place in this world. The goal is to bring in
Speaker 1: commonality first and make us all neighbors again in some way.
Speaker 1: But also the second part of this is climate change, noise, pollution,
Speaker 1: and habitat destruction. All of these things affect birds and
Speaker 1: other organisms. Forty of the world's bird species are threatened
Speaker 1: with extinction because of our activity on this planet. And
Speaker 1: that doesn't really connect well with people. It's so far
Speaker 1: removed from their lives it may be a luxury even
Speaker 1: for them to even think about stuff like that. The
Speaker 1: goal is to show, yeah, these birds are struggling along
Speaker 1: this flyway, this route along the Mississippi because of habitat
Speaker 1: loss and pollutants and so on and so forth, but
Speaker 1: people are also struggling for the same exact reason. It's
Speaker 1: not just the birds. It's YouTube that aren't going to
Speaker 1: suffer for because, let's face it, everything we do, we use, industry,
Speaker 1: oil and gas, mining, logging, those are the things that
Speaker 1: make our life possible, at least how we've come to
Speaker 1: learn how to go about life. They're not going anywhere,
Speaker 1: and I don't want them to go anywhere, but I
Speaker 1: do want them to go about their business in a
Speaker 1: way that is as sustainable as possible and preserves or
Speaker 1: protects the surrounding area so that the birds can have
Speaker 1: the best chance for future as possible, but so can people.
Speaker 1: The biggest component and through line of Jacob's work, it's
Speaker 1: just getting people to listen. In Rocky Mountain National Park.
Speaker 1: Last week or the week before, I gave a talk
Speaker 1: and someone came up to me and they had listened
Speaker 1: to some of the recordings and they just said, I
Speaker 1: just can't believe that this is out there. And when
Speaker 1: I'm outside, I listened to everything so much more, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of changed my way of interacting when I'm outdoors.
Speaker 1: It's opened up a new world for me. I hear
Speaker 1: that quite a bit, and then I've had a hundred
Speaker 1: people tell me You've ruined listening for me, because now
Speaker 1: I hear every airplane, a supplies, over all the cars,
Speaker 1: and I can't unhear it. The only time in my
Speaker 1: life where I'm truly mindful and truly present in the
Speaker 1: moment is when I'm listening outside. I lived so much
Speaker 1: of my life planning three or four or five steps ahead,
Speaker 1: trying to be as efficient as possible trying to be
Speaker 1: as productive as possible. That prevents you from living in
Speaker 1: a moment. When I'm out there, I can just be,
Speaker 1: which is such a reliefs almost like I'm sleeping with
Speaker 1: a few other sensory systems working. It also just brings
Speaker 1: me into contact with the coolest events and organisms that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't see otherwise if I wasn't just sitting and
Speaker 1: listening and being patient. Mm hm m hm hm oh.
Speaker 1: Home the ra where the deer and the anal play
Speaker 1: worse mser is raagent. I'm ah oh oh. This episode
Speaker 1: of The Femeral was written and assembled by Williams and
Speaker 1: produced by Matt Frederick, Trevor Young, and Max Williams. By
Speaker 1: the way, what does your SoundCloud name mean? Gavia immer
Speaker 1: That's the Latin name of the common lunar g A
Speaker 1: v I A I am m e R. That's also
Speaker 1: of my license play in my car. Jacob Job has
Speaker 1: a new national geographic podcast called Voices of a Flywet
Speaker 1: Find it wherever you listen to podcasts, and find us
Speaker 1: at ephemeral got show um where so May's her are
Speaker 1: despird agin word and the sides are not all oh
Speaker 1: mhmm next Time on Female. Alex Ki Blascha was the
Speaker 1: first female film director. The Lumillar Brothers projected their first
Speaker 1: motion picture in and she started. It's been hard for
Speaker 1: people looking through twenty century eyes or century eyes to
Speaker 1: see her as a person. If you say she directed
Speaker 1: a thousand films, you're really taking her out of context.
Speaker 1: But she did everything the scenes, the costumes, and the
Speaker 1: first actual story film in a minute. Wow, how did
Speaker 1: anybody ever do that? Well? She started in the beginning
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Speaker 1: podcast met my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart rate
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Speaker 1: m hm