Speaker 1: Pushkin. We do just about everything we can to make
Speaker 1: things pleasing for our senses. When we're relaxing at home,
Speaker 1: we might put on some comfy pajamas and cozy up
Speaker 1: under a warm blanket. We paint our homes and colors
Speaker 1: we love and put our favorite pictures up on the wall.
Speaker 1: We go out to restaurants with our friends or cook
Speaker 1: amazing meals at home. We might even wear a perfume
Speaker 1: or cologne so that a pleasant smell follows us wherever
Speaker 1: we go. But while we curate for taste, touch, smell,
Speaker 1: and vision, we often forget to do the same thing
Speaker 1: for the sounds we hear. Yeah, we might dance around
Speaker 1: to our favorite songs, but sound goes far beyond just music.
Speaker 1: In fact, we can get rid of sounds that annoy us,
Speaker 1: and we can surround ourselves with sounds that make us
Speaker 1: feel good. And this is super important because studies show
Speaker 1: that sound has a huge impact on our health and
Speaker 1: our happiness. It's a topic I wanted to explore on
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab for a long time, and now I
Speaker 1: found the perfect person to help me out. I'm Dallas Taylor.
Speaker 1: Dallas is the host of twenty thousand Herds, a podcast
Speaker 1: that explores the stories behind the world's most recognizable and
Speaker 1: interesting sounds. Over the years, we've done tons of episodes
Speaker 1: about sound and how it relates to happiness. We've talked
Speaker 1: about the benefits of asmr everything that's going to be
Speaker 1: all right, as well as getting rid of noise and
Speaker 1: the power of sonic tourism. I've always wanted to collect
Speaker 1: these pieces together into kind of a handbook for Sonic Happiness,
Speaker 1: a practical guide that can tell us how to make
Speaker 1: our world sound better so that we can feel better.
Speaker 1: So let's get started. You're listening to the Handbook for
Speaker 1: Sonic Happiness. Chapter one, Music, So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: positive sounds and things that we should pay attention to
Speaker 1: and try to get more of. The first thing my
Speaker 1: brain goes to when I think about good sounds is music.
Speaker 1: So I think a lot about music is almost just
Speaker 1: like a sonic prescription. For example, when I'm cooking, like
Speaker 1: I need jazz or like bluegrass of all things right.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I gravitate to those, but they
Speaker 1: really calm me down. This calming effect isn't surprising because
Speaker 1: we hear music from the start of our lives. When
Speaker 1: we're in the womb, the heartbeat is the first rhythm
Speaker 1: we hear and feel. I think there's something built in
Speaker 1: about this form of emotional regulation. For example, we know
Speaker 1: that babies as young as five months of age can
Speaker 1: tell the difference between a piece of music that an
Speaker 1: adult would say is like a happy tune versus a
Speaker 1: piece of music that an adult would say is a
Speaker 1: sad tune. One of the ways it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: music really affects us is that it's really deeply entwined
Speaker 1: with our sympathetic nervous system, which is kind of our
Speaker 1: fight or flight system. There's alerts that I can play
Speaker 1: for you that will instantly get your fight or flight
Speaker 1: system activated, as though I slapped you or it showed
Speaker 1: you some really scary thing like a gun or a
Speaker 1: snake or something like that. But then it can also
Speaker 1: kind of rev down our system. It can make our
Speaker 1: pulse go slower. I can do all these interesting physiological
Speaker 1: effects on our body, and some of those are really
Speaker 1: good for working out. There's lots of evidence, for example,
Speaker 1: that if you're playing a super high tempo song, you
Speaker 1: actually experience less physical exertion when you're exercising, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a legal drug, like a performance enhancing drug,
Speaker 1: to kind of make you not feel the effects of
Speaker 1: your own physical exertion. I'm curious, what music do you
Speaker 1: listen to do that prescriptive mood thing with music. For me,
Speaker 1: it's partly the tempo, it's partly what the music is
Speaker 1: doing to me physiologically. I think sometimes when I'm cooking,
Speaker 1: I just want something upbeat to put me in a
Speaker 1: good mood. But for me, it's also music that really
Speaker 1: connects to memories. You know. So I'm going to be
Speaker 1: listening to bad eighties pop mus music, which you know,
Speaker 1: puts me in a good mood because it reminds me
Speaker 1: of friends back in the day, or like bad nineties
Speaker 1: boy bands. And it's not just listening to music that
Speaker 1: can affect our mood. Playing music in a group actually
Speaker 1: makes us feel more connected. One very compelling experience is
Speaker 1: the feeling of groupiness, right of social cohesion. That's David Popel,
Speaker 1: professor of auditory psychology at New York University. The first
Speaker 1: thing is you're a group, and the second thing is
Speaker 1: you're trying to actually synchronize. One of the very interesting
Speaker 1: new areas is to try to figure out how not
Speaker 1: just pairs, of the entire groups actually become synchronized. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's why, for instance, an orchestra can work right or acquired.
Speaker 1: When people are musically in sync with one another, their
Speaker 1: brain activity starts to sync up as well. If I
Speaker 1: have a group of people chanting and I wire them
Speaker 1: all up with EEG recording equipment, you can show that
Speaker 1: actually the extent to which they're really synchronized with each
Speaker 1: other is reflected in their neurophysiological activity very directly. So
Speaker 1: there is something that is you know, a universal feature
Speaker 1: is if you're doing something in a group, it increases
Speaker 1: your physiological activity or your synchronization between people. And the
Speaker 1: more synchronized you are, the better you feel. That in turn,
Speaker 1: actually correlates with the extent to which you like the
Speaker 1: experience or find it engaging. This experience of groupiness doesn't
Speaker 1: just make people happier, It can also make them kinder
Speaker 1: to one another. It correlates with all kinds of interesting things,
Speaker 1: like the extent to which you find each other empathic,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. Chapter two ASMR. Please
Speaker 1: note the following two chapters on ASMR and misophonia contain
Speaker 1: noises that might be triggers for people who are sensitive
Speaker 1: to certain sounds. If you don't want to hear them,
Speaker 1: please skip forward by about thirteen minutes to skip only
Speaker 1: the as MR chapter. Skip forward by about four minutes.
Speaker 1: So Dallas tell me about ASMR. So as MR stands
Speaker 1: for autonomous sensory meridian response. And I didn't even realize
Speaker 1: I had this until I did a show about it.
Speaker 1: But what it is is when you listen to very
Speaker 1: delicate sounds traditionally like somebody whispering or just like really
Speaker 1: whispering in your ear, really nicely and sweetly. What that
Speaker 1: can trigger internally is this tingling sensation that starts kind
Speaker 1: of at the base of your neck and goes up
Speaker 1: into your head and down shoulders. I am literally having
Speaker 1: it right now, because I can trigger it at any point.
Speaker 1: So there's all these ASMAR artists on YouTube doing everything
Speaker 1: from like whispering very quietly, like sweet happy things. Everything
Speaker 1: that's going to be all right to someone who might
Speaker 1: just be manipulating an object that just crackles to in
Speaker 1: the case of somebody that I spoke with eating pickles
Speaker 1: into a microphone, and that triggers this kind of like
Speaker 1: tingly response. What's interesting about ASMR is that it's a
Speaker 1: stimulus in one modality like sound, that is producing a
Speaker 1: tactile sensation. That's Julia Poerio, a psychology researcher studying asmar
Speaker 1: at the University of Sheffield. So you are experiencing almost
Speaker 1: the feeling of being touched through sound. MR feel great
Speaker 1: for some people, but not everyone has it, and for
Speaker 1: the people who do have it, people generally fall into
Speaker 1: one of two categories. They either think that ASMI is
Speaker 1: something that everybody has, or they think that they're the
Speaker 1: only person that said it and they don't realize that
Speaker 1: it's something that other people experience. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people when they find out about the ASMI community and
Speaker 1: they find out that they can watch these videos on YouTube,
Speaker 1: they're like, Wow, this is amazing because this is something
Speaker 1: that I've experienced all my life and that I didn't
Speaker 1: know that I could go and intentionally experience it. One
Speaker 1: of the things I think is really interesting about sound
Speaker 1: is I feel like we don't really understand its effects
Speaker 1: on our psychology very well. I mean, we could point
Speaker 1: to specific kinds of sounds that affect us strongly, Like
Speaker 1: if I was to blast a like siren right now
Speaker 1: in the middle of this podcast episode, you have the
Speaker 1: sense it could probably accurately forecast that it would make
Speaker 1: you feel a little bit stressed. But when you're talking
Speaker 1: about you know, like eating a pickle very quietly or whispering,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's a case where I have like
Speaker 1: strong affective predictions about how this is going to feel.
Speaker 1: That might get the direction right, but I definitely wouldn't
Speaker 1: have predicted before we started having this conversation, like tingly
Speaker 1: feeling inside my head. And I think this is just
Speaker 1: generally true of sound, where we really don't have strong
Speaker 1: intuitions about how it's going to affect us, so that
Speaker 1: there are these kinds of funny cases like ASMR or
Speaker 1: you get people whispering on YouTube, Hello everyone, long time Newsy,
Speaker 1: and it profoundly affects the listeners who are hearing it.
Speaker 1: So is it safe to assume that you've never experienced Asmar? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: I definitely get chills, But for me, those kinds of
Speaker 1: chills tend to come from different kinds of things. Not
Speaker 1: to say I wouldn't get them from Asmar, But you know,
Speaker 1: something like in an awe inspiring piece, or you know,
Speaker 1: a sound or a piece of music that really reminds
Speaker 1: me of an important memory. Right. But yeah, there's this
Speaker 1: kind of interesting question about why sound can affect us
Speaker 1: so profoundly. You know, something like whispering. You could imagine
Speaker 1: it being connected with certain kinds of acoustic signals that
Speaker 1: are very familiar with caregiving or like infant directed speech.
Speaker 1: What do you I say, Yeah, you could imagine these
Speaker 1: kinds of cases, you know, And so maybe we have
Speaker 1: some leftover physiology that goes with that stuff. But I
Speaker 1: think it's more just interesting that we can start playing
Speaker 1: with sound in a different way now and noticing interesting
Speaker 1: things about it that we might not have documented well before.
Speaker 1: But the question is, can ASMR actually make us happier?
Speaker 1: I mean, there's not really any great research on this,
Speaker 1: but my guess is that listening to these acoustic signals
Speaker 1: that are kind of interesting and sort of quiet can
Speaker 1: make us a little bit more present. And there's lots
Speaker 1: of evidence that being mindful and being present can make
Speaker 1: us feel better and increase our positive mood. I also
Speaker 1: think that these kinds of sounds can actually make us
Speaker 1: a little bit calmer. I mean, a lot of these
Speaker 1: sounds are sort of quiet. They make us listen more carefully.
Speaker 1: I think they might actually decrease our fight or flight system.
Speaker 1: But again, all of this is just speculation. I think
Speaker 1: it'd be great to actually explore whether or not ASMR
Speaker 1: sounds can make us happier. I think we just don't
Speaker 1: know yet. The Handbook for Sonic Happiness will continue after
Speaker 1: these messages. We now return to the Handbook for a Happiness,
Speaker 1: Chapter three mesa. Please note the following chapter contains noises
Speaker 1: that might be triggers for people who are sensitive to
Speaker 1: certain sounds. If you don't want to hear them, please
Speaker 1: get forward by about four minutes when we've gotten into
Speaker 1: the topic of mesaphonia, which literally translates to the hatred
Speaker 1: of sound. Most people have no idea that they have it,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's like tied in with like a sensory
Speaker 1: sensitivity in general, but essentially it can give people extreme
Speaker 1: panic reactions to certain sounds that to some people is
Speaker 1: perfectly fine. So think of someone kind of uses their
Speaker 1: teeth to scrape food off of a fork, or the
Speaker 1: most classic as nails on a chalkboard. But that idea
Speaker 1: goes much further into normal sounds that people have these
Speaker 1: really strong reactions to. It feels like a bear is
Speaker 1: chasing you. That's Meredith roshold you freeze whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1: You're not able to focus on anymore. Your heart races,
Speaker 1: you feel tense, you feel irritable, and not just mildly irritable,
Speaker 1: like you're really irritable. Hermesphonia started when she was six,
Speaker 1: and it caused problems at home. The hardest part was
Speaker 1: listening to my parents chew, so at the dinner table,
Speaker 1: I would cry and my mom would not know what
Speaker 1: was wrong, and that would frustrate her. So at dinner
Speaker 1: time was the hardest for most of us. Chewing just
Speaker 1: sounds normal. We might not even notice it, but doctor
Speaker 1: Ali Matu, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University, says that
Speaker 1: mysophonics have a totally different experience. You're experiencing it as
Speaker 1: if someone is chewing right in your face, to the
Speaker 1: point where maybe there're spit or the bits of their
Speaker 1: food are just flying all over you. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: tapping into this basic aversion that we all have. But again,
Speaker 1: the volume of these sounds, the experience of these sounds
Speaker 1: are turned up way high for people who have musophonia.
Speaker 1: Psychiatrists have only recently become aware of mesophonia. As a result,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a clear psychiatric definition. So the unfortunate
Speaker 1: thing here is there is very limited research on mesophonia.
Speaker 1: It's a part of a set of sensory experiences we're
Speaker 1: beginning to better understand, like ASMR, like synaesthesia. We're beginning
Speaker 1: to understand that our senses are more complicated and there's
Speaker 1: more diversity to how we experience our senses than we
Speaker 1: knew before, and we're still not exactly sure what causes
Speaker 1: me sophonia. We're beginning to think that how people experience sounds,
Speaker 1: and also how they are connected to memories and the
Speaker 1: way people regulate their emotions is very different for people
Speaker 1: who have mesophonia versus those who don't, So we don't
Speaker 1: really know why that is. I have theories, but I
Speaker 1: don't have any data to back it up. Now, it's
Speaker 1: natural to have some reaction to the sounds you've heard
Speaker 1: in this chapter, like the chalkboard scraping and the chewing,
Speaker 1: and that's because these are extreme examples. But for people
Speaker 1: like Meredith, the sounds that trigger Hermsphonia can be much
Speaker 1: more subtle and they can come from anywhere. My triggers
Speaker 1: are eating gum, popping, slurping feet, shuffling base coming from
Speaker 1: cars and apartments, keep typing. Newer ones are whistling and humming.
Speaker 1: At the moment, there is no cure for meesophonia, but
Speaker 1: there are techniques that can help people to manage it.
Speaker 1: It's about learning how to distract yourself from the anger
Speaker 1: in a healthy way, So finding activities that distract you
Speaker 1: from sounds, making a comparison to a different time when
Speaker 1: you were coping better with a situation, or comparing yourself
Speaker 1: to someone else who might be struggling more temporarily pushing
Speaker 1: yourself away from the situation that is difficult for you,
Speaker 1: and creating sensations that shock your body into focusing on
Speaker 1: something else. Yeah, I think that like kind of opening
Speaker 1: people's minds to become a little bit more conscious. Active
Speaker 1: listening and associating mood with certain sounds and sonic environments
Speaker 1: can really help people understand this mystery. I sometimes when
Speaker 1: somebody's in a bad mood, Yeah, this was happening to
Speaker 1: me today, which is very salient because I knew I
Speaker 1: was going to have this conversation with you. I was
Speaker 1: in my office at Yale, and I was just feeling
Speaker 1: kind of frustrated, like I was trying to check my email,
Speaker 1: and then I had this realization that there was a
Speaker 1: horrid beeping sound happening somewhere down the hallway that had
Speaker 1: probably been going on for like the last forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a minute, my mood is
Speaker 1: intricately tied to this annoying sound that's been repetitively going off,
Speaker 1: and it's probably not just my mood. And we know
Speaker 1: that sound can automatically affect our attention, right, you know,
Speaker 1: we have this limited store of attention, this spotlight. When
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do some work on a computer and
Speaker 1: get my emails done, if part of my brain is
Speaker 1: naturally going vigilantly to like, what is this random sound
Speaker 1: that's going on in the background, I might not notice
Speaker 1: all that consciously, but my processing speed is going down.
Speaker 1: It's feeling a little bit more frustrating to do this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. You know, I think there are these
Speaker 1: clear cases where our sound environment is negatively affecting us
Speaker 1: and we might not even realize it. Chapter four noise.
Speaker 1: There's one funny study I tell my students about in
Speaker 1: my class that looked at how well you savor a
Speaker 1: positive experience when you get a phone ding. So they
Speaker 1: had people experiencing a massage and there's just a phone
Speaker 1: in the background that just dings wants during the massage,
Speaker 1: your enjoyment of the massage goes down like a whole
Speaker 1: point on a ten point scale, just because you heard
Speaker 1: that ding. There was another study that looked at people
Speaker 1: playing Mario Kart. So you're playing Mario Kart right and
Speaker 1: you just hear your phone buzz in the background. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, your enjoyment of that Mario Kart game
Speaker 1: goes down just because you heard a little text message.
Speaker 1: I think we forget the strong consequences that noise can
Speaker 1: have for us. Maybe not the whine of a refrigerator,
Speaker 1: but outside construction noise, outside traffic noise. The evidence that
Speaker 1: this stuff is affecting us deeply is stronger than we
Speaker 1: really think. There's lots of evidence, for example, that hospital
Speaker 1: patients that are in louder rooms with like louder noise
Speaker 1: mechanisms and like beeping things wind up healing from surgeries
Speaker 1: more slowly than patients that happen to be in more
Speaker 1: quiet rooms, and the effects on kids is profound. Some
Speaker 1: super famous studies in the nineteen seventies showed that kids
Speaker 1: who live on the lower floors of an apartment building
Speaker 1: in New York that happened to be near a big bridge,
Speaker 1: they wind up showing reading scores that are worse than
Speaker 1: the kids on the higher floors. And at first folks
Speaker 1: are like, oh my gosh, the ambient sound is kind
Speaker 1: of messing up learning. And folks fought this because that's
Speaker 1: not people's intuition of, well, how can sound affect learning?
Speaker 1: Maybe the people on the lower floors are, you know,
Speaker 1: the lower income, you know, maybe there's something else correlated
Speaker 1: with it. And then finally, this guy, Gary Evans at
Speaker 1: Cornell was able to do a really cool study on this.
Speaker 1: He was studying noise pollution near the Munich Airport, and
Speaker 1: just as it would happen, they decided to move the
Speaker 1: Munich Airport. I guess it was under renovation and so
Speaker 1: they moved it somewhere else. So he was able to
Speaker 1: track kids learning who were near the super loud airport,
Speaker 1: and then the airport moved versus kids who are at
Speaker 1: the new spot for the airport and compare what happened.
Speaker 1: And what he finds is you look at say like
Speaker 1: third and fourth graders, like reading scores go up when
Speaker 1: the airport moves. For the kids who live near the
Speaker 1: loud airport, and the kids who are now near like
Speaker 1: the new place where the airport goes, they're reading scores
Speaker 1: go down over time. And so all this goes to
Speaker 1: say that I think, you know, if you were asked
Speaker 1: those folks, hey, is it noisy, they'd probably consciously realize like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's noisy, But would you think, like, you know, is
Speaker 1: it messing up your cognitive processing? I think people don't
Speaker 1: really realize this stuff, and it can have huge effects
Speaker 1: on things that matter a lot for your happiness. It
Speaker 1: doesn't just make you happier because that annoying sound is gone.
Speaker 1: There's evidence that if you have less annoying sounds around,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to be nicer to people. You just
Speaker 1: become a worse person when there's bad sounds around. But
Speaker 1: there are simple things we can do to make our
Speaker 1: lives quieter. It's time to play the quiet game, the
Speaker 1: game where you could win a quieter life. But first
Speaker 1: you have to complete all four stages. Let's play Stage one.
Speaker 1: Spray all of the doorhinges in your home with w
Speaker 1: D forty. I do this every few months. Stage two.
Speaker 1: Turn off every appliance in your home. Then turn them
Speaker 1: back on again, one by one. If you find one
Speaker 1: that's making a lot of noise, there might be something
Speaker 1: that needs fixing, or maybe eventually you can replace it.
Speaker 1: Stage three. Consider adding more soft materials to your home,
Speaker 1: like curtains, throw blankets, pillows, rugs, and fabric based furniture.
Speaker 1: These will soak up sound so your home feels quieter
Speaker 1: and more intimate. Stage four. Put your phone in silent mode.
Speaker 1: Your phone should work for you, not the other way around. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: you have won yourself a quieter life. Thanks for playing
Speaker 1: the quiet game. Will hear you next time? Chapter five Sleep.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about how noisy sounds can negatively effect
Speaker 1: our emotional state, our learning state. But there's another thing
Speaker 1: that noise in particular can negatively affect, and that's our sleep.
Speaker 1: If I could change one thing about my current college
Speaker 1: student's mental health, I would make them sleep more, because
Speaker 1: instantly that would improve their levels of depression and their
Speaker 1: levels of anxiety, their wakefulness, and class. We forget that
Speaker 1: sleep is so essential for our mental health and sound
Speaker 1: can really affect sleep. Do you have any like sonic
Speaker 1: rituals that you have to do around sleep? So I
Speaker 1: definitely wake up a lot in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: These days, I listen to a lot of sleep meditations
Speaker 1: and for me, these are really powerful for just like
Speaker 1: helping me fall asleep. Here's a part of a sleep
Speaker 1: meditation from a YouTuber named Jason Stevenson. And as you
Speaker 1: gaze up the window, you admire the radiant color that
Speaker 1: are spread across the sky. Violet, pink, and ambustris douzzle
Speaker 1: your eyes. Sleep meditations are amazing. They've been really helpful
Speaker 1: for me. I can't sleep without some form of noise,
Speaker 1: like white noise. The reason that this white noise is
Speaker 1: useful in that circumstance is that white noise is basically
Speaker 1: sound that's covering all of the possible sounds that your
Speaker 1: ears could hear. That's Mac Haygood, I'm a sound scholar
Speaker 1: at Miami University of Ohio. The same way that white
Speaker 1: light is a combination of every color, white noise is
Speaker 1: a combination of all the frequencies that we can hear.
Speaker 1: And the reason that's useful is you could have any
Speaker 1: sound in any particular frequency, like the sound of a
Speaker 1: dog barking, which is in the one thousand to two
Speaker 1: thousand hurts range, and part of that frequency range of
Speaker 1: the white noise is going to be covering that up.
Speaker 1: And so this is known as masking, where one sound,
Speaker 1: if it's in a similar frequency range to another sound,
Speaker 1: it will cover that sound up. While you used to
Speaker 1: need a dedicated device for white noise, these days you
Speaker 1: can just download an app. These apps also include nature
Speaker 1: sounds like bird calls, wind, and every kind of rain
Speaker 1: you could imagine. You might think will rain as rain,
Speaker 1: but actually people want the exact kind of rain that
Speaker 1: they have a really positive emotional, psychological association with. So
Speaker 1: people want rain on a tent, rain on a tarp,
Speaker 1: rain on a tin roof, on a slate roof. They
Speaker 1: want a big storm, or they want to light drizzle.
Speaker 1: I had one app developer tell me if I have
Speaker 1: to make another kind of rain, I'm going to lose
Speaker 1: my mind. So why do many of us need to
Speaker 1: cover up the random sounds around us in order to
Speaker 1: get a good night's sleep. Our auditory systems have evolved
Speaker 1: over time to aid us and to protect us and
Speaker 1: to be alert and ready for things. And it was
Speaker 1: probably pretty useful when we were sleeping outdoors on the
Speaker 1: savannah to be a light sleeper, right and be tuned
Speaker 1: into sounds that are happening out there. So just because
Speaker 1: our physical circumstances has changed and we sleep in these
Speaker 1: quite safe houses, that doesn't mean that our auditory systems
Speaker 1: have completely changed in that way. The way our attention
Speaker 1: works is we can't say, pay attention about to fall asleep.
Speaker 1: Please stop paying attention to distracting sounds that pop out.
Speaker 1: You hear the creek, you hear the dog bark outside.
Speaker 1: Your brain notices that. But also it comes with a
Speaker 1: certain amount of wakefulness, right, Like these moments where our
Speaker 1: attention gets cued make us feel more vigilant. So we're
Speaker 1: like and the comes with a whole rush of you know,
Speaker 1: our neural system throwing in all these arousal mechanisms, like
Speaker 1: we're noticing now you throw the white noise on. If
Speaker 1: you can block those out, your brain just has less
Speaker 1: moments to notice that stuff, which allows you to fall
Speaker 1: asleep faster. The Handbook for Sonic Happiness will conclude after
Speaker 1: a short break. Welcome back to the Handbook for Sonic Happiness,
Speaker 1: Chapter six. Hearing protection. So this is something that I'm
Speaker 1: really passionate about, mainly because how loud this world is
Speaker 1: compared to our primitive ears, and as we get older,
Speaker 1: that is natural for people to lose the highest frequencies
Speaker 1: in their hearing. For example, my show is called twenty
Speaker 1: thousand Hurts. Twenty thousand hurts is basically the highest frequency
Speaker 1: that we humans can hear when we were kids, and
Speaker 1: so if it was more accurate to me, it would
Speaker 1: probably be called like sixteen thousand, five hundred hurts. At
Speaker 1: my age rage, it's bad that you have to change
Speaker 1: the name of your podcast as you get older it's
Speaker 1: twelve thousand hurts. But it is totally totally normal for
Speaker 1: these higher frequencies to diminish with age. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you can't enjoy hearing. That's just part of life.
Speaker 1: But if you're not careful, it is possible to damage
Speaker 1: your hearing permanently. That kind of damage is different and preventable.
Speaker 1: The best way to think of hearing protection is to
Speaker 1: think of it like sunscreen. You can lie on the
Speaker 1: beach in the sun for a few minutes without it,
Speaker 1: but if you're going to be there for a long time,
Speaker 1: you're gonna need it. And with sound, a few minutes
Speaker 1: in a loud space is okay, but any longer and
Speaker 1: you're gonna risk permanently damaging your hearing. Once it's damaged,
Speaker 1: it's not like skin that got burnt in the sun.
Speaker 1: The hair cells in your ears that capture sound never
Speaker 1: grow back. Once they're gone, they're gone. But yeah, hearing protection.
Speaker 1: I think everyone should have earplugs in their pocket, anything
Speaker 1: from the simplest little foam earplugs to something a little
Speaker 1: bit fancier. I always keep them with me, and it's
Speaker 1: not just because I'm a sound designer. It's just that
Speaker 1: I find myself in the gym and my watch will
Speaker 1: go off saying this is loud. In twenty minutes, you're
Speaker 1: gonna start doing hearing damage. Or I'll find myself in
Speaker 1: a loud restaurant, or I'll find myself at a loud concert.
Speaker 1: If I'm giving my kids a bath, they're just having
Speaker 1: a ball, splashing and screaming and stuff. But I just
Speaker 1: start to get really tense because it's so loud in
Speaker 1: this little bathroom and my stress level of just having
Speaker 1: the control of being able to plug that feels nice
Speaker 1: to me. But yeah, I was wondering if you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts on hearing protection. I think it's super important.
Speaker 1: I mean, we often discount our future selves and forget
Speaker 1: what our future selves preferences might be. Everybody's hearing is.
Speaker 1: You're going to get a little worse over time, but
Speaker 1: it can get a lot worse if you're not being
Speaker 1: really careful. I think that we forget the cost that
Speaker 1: hearing damage can cause, especially socially, right losing the frequencies
Speaker 1: that are most important for hearing. A conversation over a
Speaker 1: slightly louder restaurant that deeply affects your quality of life,
Speaker 1: It deeply affects your social connection, It deeply affects your
Speaker 1: well being over time, and so taking steps ahead of
Speaker 1: time to protect that is really important for your future self.
Speaker 1: But it's also important for you now, because we see
Speaker 1: that noise makes us grumpier, it makes us worse people,
Speaker 1: It makes us feel a little bit more frustrated, and
Speaker 1: it makes it harder for us to regulate our attention
Speaker 1: in our presence. So I love this idea of just
Speaker 1: that your plugs in your pocket that you could just
Speaker 1: pop in. And my argument is, I know it's hard
Speaker 1: to really convince people about preventive measures in hearing, just
Speaker 1: like it is with sunscreen. But I wouldn't even make
Speaker 1: that as my primary argument. I would recommend anyone just
Speaker 1: have it, just have it around, always accessible, because you
Speaker 1: know when you need it, And just there's a very
Speaker 1: stark contrast when I suddenly realize, oh, I really need
Speaker 1: earplugs to me, it's almost just like a little blankie
Speaker 1: or like a little bear, like it's my protective mechanism,
Speaker 1: not because I'm a sound designer, not because I want
Speaker 1: to protect hearing so much. It's very much in the
Speaker 1: moment an anxiety pacifier for me. And you know, functionally,
Speaker 1: what you're doing is like some sound that's really tripping
Speaker 1: up your fight or flight system, that's causing you in
Speaker 1: your body to feel like there's a tiger attacking me.
Speaker 1: Right now, you can get rid of that tiger, and
Speaker 1: in the moment that can have a huge effect on
Speaker 1: you know, how you're feeling. Chapter seven, Sonic Tourism. I
Speaker 1: know one of the things you've talked about is this
Speaker 1: idea of sonic tourism. So what's sonic tourism. It sounds
Speaker 1: kind of amazing, So it's you know, when we go
Speaker 1: sight seeing, it's very similar to that we sight see
Speaker 1: for a reason because there's that difference between a picture
Speaker 1: or a video and what we feel there in the place,
Speaker 1: because all of your senses are firing up. But the
Speaker 1: idea of becoming more conscious with your hearing in these
Speaker 1: moments for me, has brought a lot of joy. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go seek
Speaker 1: out like some special sonic touristy place. There are lots
Speaker 1: of them. There's a lot of like buildings with whispering galleries,
Speaker 1: and usually you're going to find those when there's a
Speaker 1: lot of arches in kind of a dome, so like
Speaker 1: in Grand Central Station in New York City. So what's
Speaker 1: happening is the one person can stand in the corner
Speaker 1: of one side of the room, somebody else can can
Speaker 1: whisper into one in the other corner pretty far away.
Speaker 1: But the way that the dome is is that it'll
Speaker 1: carry that signal very clearly kind of up and over
Speaker 1: to where you hear it really clearly on the other side.
Speaker 1: This is one of my favorite things to do. When
Speaker 1: people visit New York and come in on the train
Speaker 1: in New Haven, Connecticut, where I live, it like flops
Speaker 1: you right into that spot in Grand Central Station. And
Speaker 1: every time I'm there with a new prison, I'm like,
Speaker 1: let's go to this room and stand in here, just
Speaker 1: stand there, just stand there. Hey, sorry, you can hear
Speaker 1: you over there, And people like, what WHOA. I think
Speaker 1: it's people's favorite spot in New York. There's lots of
Speaker 1: places where sound is as important, or maybe more important
Speaker 1: than the visuals. That's accoustition and Trevor Cox. Trevor wrote
Speaker 1: an entire book on sonic tourism called Sonic Wonderland. The
Speaker 1: premise of Sonic Wonderland was to go and find the
Speaker 1: most incredible, most gobsmacking sounds you could find in the world.
Speaker 1: One of his favorites are the singing sand dunes of
Speaker 1: Kelso Dunefield in the Mohave Desert. It's an exhausting experience
Speaker 1: going to hear these sand dunes. It's incredibly hot in
Speaker 1: the middle of summer, so it's a struggle to walk
Speaker 1: up them to start with, But once you get to
Speaker 1: the top, you hear a totally unique sound, you know
Speaker 1: when you're in the right place, almost immediately because you
Speaker 1: walk on the dune and it sounds a bit like
Speaker 1: a bad played tuba sort. In the literature they talk
Speaker 1: about this being a burping sound, but I think it
Speaker 1: sounds more like a badly played wind instrument. So that's
Speaker 1: one aspect, and then there's a completely opposite aspect of
Speaker 1: something like an anachoic chamber. Have you been in one
Speaker 1: of those? I have. It's really creepy. I find it
Speaker 1: incredibly disturbing and in a kind of trippy, you know,
Speaker 1: oh what a cool experience. Way, So to explain what
Speaker 1: an anachoic chamber is, you know, if we were doing
Speaker 1: an echoic chamber, that would be like a symphony hall,
Speaker 1: lots of echoes, lots of sound bouncing around. Anakok is
Speaker 1: the lack of that echo. So when you speak or
Speaker 1: when you clap, there is no residual sound. It just
Speaker 1: goes and it's done. And what's funny is it's terrifying
Speaker 1: for you. Interestingly for me, I've been in one for
Speaker 1: a long period of time with the lights out, so
Speaker 1: when I got in it, I was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: this just feels soothing. It just gets quiet. The cool
Speaker 1: thing about it, though, is when the door shut and
Speaker 1: I'm standing there, there's no echo. What happens is there's
Speaker 1: first this realization of WHOA, okay. This is disorienting. I
Speaker 1: almost want to fall over because I just feel like
Speaker 1: something's gone. Okay. So I'm rolling and you're gonna shut
Speaker 1: the doors and leave me in here for a little while.
Speaker 1: That's right, fun, fun, alright. I think I've been in
Speaker 1: here for about seven or eight minutes. One thing that
Speaker 1: people talk about when they go into anto coach chambers
Speaker 1: is pressure. So I do feel pressure, which is odd
Speaker 1: because there's nothing that would actually be putting pressure on
Speaker 1: my ear drums. But having no sound at all feels
Speaker 1: feels a little bit like being under the water far
Speaker 1: enough where it starts to hurt your ears. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what it feels like. And I hear a high
Speaker 1: pitched I don't know if i'd say I would hear it,
Speaker 1: but I eve a high pitched noise. It's got to
Speaker 1: be something that's just in my brain or ear. My
Speaker 1: brain is interpreting it as audible, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if it is. It's not a single tone but it's
Speaker 1: like high pitched noise. So another phenomenon is that you
Speaker 1: start to hear your internal organs more the longer you're
Speaker 1: in here. So I'm starting to hear my heartbeat. I
Speaker 1: can't even like breathe through my nose because it's so loud.
Speaker 1: So you should hear a pretty loud rush of air
Speaker 1: when they open this door. He's alive, I survived. What
Speaker 1: was your experience? Mine is just that it sounds kind
Speaker 1: of weird. I also have some ear balanced things. My
Speaker 1: ears don't like it when there's no reverb happening. It
Speaker 1: feels like I'm about to be on a plane and
Speaker 1: my ears might pop or something. I wish that there's
Speaker 1: an anachoic chamber, like in every state or in every city,
Speaker 1: just as a tourist attraction, because it is very disorienting, right,
Speaker 1: But you don't need a whispering gallery or an anachoic
Speaker 1: chamber to be a sonic tourist. All you really need
Speaker 1: to do is step outside. So I think there's all
Speaker 1: these sounds in nature that just feel evolutionarily nice. You know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of built to hear them. But nature sounds
Speaker 1: also can bring about new kinds of emotions, and one
Speaker 1: of my favorite emotions that you can get from natural
Speaker 1: sounds is this emotion of awe, the sense that the
Speaker 1: world is bigger than us. We see something really beautiful
Speaker 1: and it can let us rethink our relationship with things.
Speaker 1: I think there's these interesting natural sounds that tend to
Speaker 1: do that for us, that bring up this emotion of
Speaker 1: awe in the way that we might not expect. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of the sound of wind and like our big storm.
Speaker 1: You know, I've experienced this being in New Englander and
Speaker 1: hearing hurricanes or just the sound of surf, or really
Speaker 1: different kinds of cool animals. You just feel this interesting
Speaker 1: connection to something bigger than you, whether that's the natural
Speaker 1: world or something spiritual. And there's so much evidence that
Speaker 1: experiencing awe can improve our well being over time, can
Speaker 1: make you feel more socially connected with other people in
Speaker 1: the world around you. And I think this is something
Speaker 1: we miss out on the natural world, is that our
Speaker 1: auditory environment can actually give us this sense of awe.
Speaker 1: I think we can all relate with being on the internet,
Speaker 1: on social media, or in work or an email or whatnot.
Speaker 1: To me, that's sonically like an anachoic chamber. It's very
Speaker 1: me focused. I'm getting sucked into my brain and I'm
Speaker 1: starting to hear all of my thoughts. I'm hearing all
Speaker 1: of my fears, and I'm doing all of my second guessing.
Speaker 1: But when I go out and I listen to nature,
Speaker 1: or have a conversation with a real person, or go
Speaker 1: to a concert and hear things that are outside of myself,
Speaker 1: it's all inspire and it reminds me that I'm a
Speaker 1: piece of a greater humanity. So I don't think it
Speaker 1: has to even be like grand You don't have to
Speaker 1: go to the ocean, but being mindful of the things
Speaker 1: around you, going for a walk in the neighborhood, for me,
Speaker 1: it feels like nature, So it's within reach. This episode
Speaker 1: was a co production between twenty thousand Hurts and The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab. Over on twenty thousand Hurts, Dallas share stories
Speaker 1: behind the world's most recognizable sounds, like famous sonic logos
Speaker 1: from HBO, Windows, Couple, and Netflix. My ten year old
Speaker 1: daughter just wandering about and I go Smarrow, I need
Speaker 1: some help good over here, and I played for samaraw
Speaker 1: Our five sounds and she was immediately no hesitation. It's
Speaker 1: so obvious, Dad, it's this one, and she was gesturing
Speaker 1: towards the sound file for the one that we used,
Speaker 1: the two Dumb. They also share some surprising human moments,
Speaker 1: like the inventor who hid in a bathroom just so
Speaker 1: she could pitch her idea for a new digital format
Speaker 1: to a famous director. I heed myself in the restroom
Speaker 1: for ten hours and I was able to meet Spielberg.
Speaker 1: I just jumped on in Man. And of course there
Speaker 1: are lots of episodes about finding joy through sound, because
Speaker 1: we're all audio files. We just haven't realized it yet.
Speaker 1: So subscribe to twenty thousand Hurts now right here in
Speaker 1: your podcast player. Until next time, stay safe and stay happy.