Selects: Noise Pollution: Arrrgh!

If you’ve ever found your blood pressure rising because some guy down the street doesn’t know how to keep the trigger on a leaf blower pulled all the way, then you’ve experienced noise pollution. Not only is it annoying, it turns out it’s deadly too! Learn all about it in this classic episode. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:43Josh Clark?

  Hi friends, it's Josh. For this week's select, I've chosen our October 2021 episode on noise pollution, which is actually an overlooked hazard to our health, and it's even been shown to cause death in some cases. Plus, it guest stars the worst thing in the world, the gas-powered leaf blower, and we get to the bottom of why they're so terrible. Plus, there's plenty more amazing, action-packed stuff, so kick back and enjoy this episode on noise pollution.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:28Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry over there and this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  Can I tell people what just happened?

• 2:40Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  After, what, going on 14 years?

• 2:44Josh Clark?

  Coming up, yeah, I guess in April.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Jerry hit record and you went, "Hey, everybody." And you went, "Uh, wait."

• 2:53Josh Clark?

  I've been having a lot of trouble with my brain lately. I think I'm just...

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Hey, I think you're doing great.

• 2:58Josh Clark?

  I don't know if I told you, thank you. I think you're doing great, too. I don't know if I told you, but I had trouble remembering how to, um, what, 6 plus 7 added together, too? Did I tell you that the other day?

• 3:11Speaker 03

  That sounds familiar.

• 3:12Josh Clark?

  That really bothered me, man. Yeah. And that's like my favorite number and it's, like, I just couldn't do it.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Uh, I was putting my daughter to bed the other night and as she was going to sleep, literally falling asleep, "Daddy, what's 4 plus 4?" "It's 8." "What's 6 plus 2?" "It's also 8." "Okay."

• 3:35Speaker 03

  She's learning math and, you know, that first stuff you learn is literally just that simple addition.

• 3:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  And it's just funny to think about, like, wow, that's what's on her mind right now.

• 3:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but also she's learning acceptance, too. Just unquestioning.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  Can I tell people how you spelled this document that you sent my way for this noise pollution episode?

• 3:57Josh Clark?

  Sure. Boy, you're just laying it all out there, aren't you?

• 4:00Speaker 03

  It was fun because it looked like a heavy metal band. It was N-O-I-Z-E. P-O, I think it was P-O-L-L-U-S-H-U-N.

• 4:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  And looking at it on paper, I was like, "Oh, man, that's a good, bad band."

• 4:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Name.

• 4:19Josh Clark?

  It is. Like, that's a, that's a good name for a made-up band in a movie.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  Like Wild Stallions?

• 4:24Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Bill and Ted?

• 4:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, although it's tough to compete with, you know?

• 4:29Speaker 03

  It is.

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  I also think we should, uh, we should give a little COA here. I think it's 100% impossible for you and I not to turn into old men. Complaining about like loud music and loud mufflers and stuff in this episode. So it's gonna happen. I think everybody who knows us and saw the title of this one knew it was gonna happen. But let's just put it on the table now.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Well, and it's also funny you mention this because I did mention noise pollution. I introduced that concept to my daughter the other day and said, you know, she was like, well, what's that? And I said, well, it's it's as bad as trash on the road, but it's noise that's doing it. And you should be aware of it. And she was like, oh, okay.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  And I guess it never occurred to me that like loud noises for kids, unless it's something that really bothers them, is just part of life.

• 5:21Josh Clark?

  Sure. It definitely seems to become more bothersome the older you get.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 5:27Josh Clark?

  I think, I don't know why, but I'm gonna hypothesize that it's because you grow to learn that it doesn't have to be that way. And you come to really resent the things and the people who are making it so.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think that's why people, one reason, people retire to the country or something like that if they've lived in the city their whole life. Just a little more tranquil, perhaps even bucolic lifestyle.

• 5:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Quieter. And there's a lot of science behind it. It's not just like, oh, I don't want to hear those noises. As you will see throughout this episode, it is, it's bad for your health.

• 6:06Josh Clark?

  Hey, speaking of retirement, have you seen that documentary on the villages?

• 6:10Speaker 03

  I have.

• 6:11Josh Clark?

  It is bonkers.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I saw it. Actually, when I had COVID, I went on a documentary binge and that was one of them.

• 6:19Josh Clark?

  Man, it was like one of the most disturbing documentaries I've ever seen. And I've seen like Dear Zachary and somehow it was like up there with it.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  It was good, man. That, I mean, I don't want to give you anything, but the one guy that was, you know, the sort of disco stu.

• 6:35Josh Clark?

  Sure, yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  That was, it's kind of funny at first, but then that got really sad, too.

• 6:39Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  A lot of layers.

• 6:40Josh Clark?

  All of it was incredibly sad.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Highly recommended.

• 6:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, just bizarre, man. And then I was watching the credits and I saw Darren Aronofsky was the executive producer. I'm like, okay, here we go. Now things suddenly clicked a little more.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  I thought a great idea for a movie would be a setting like that. You couldn't call it that because it's, I'm sure, proprietary, but.

• 7:01Josh Clark?

  The town.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, a setting just like that where they wake up one day and there's been a murder. And then like, you know, Kyle McLaughlin, it's kind of a Twin Peaks-y thing. You know, the stranger from a strange land comes in to investigate a murder in a very unlikely place. And all the sort of weirdos there, I think that would be a cool movie.

• 7:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Or TV show.

• 7:19Josh Clark?

  Sure. Well, I mean, that is Twin Peaks, basically.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Right, but you could, if you set it in a retirement community in Florida, people would recognize that.

• 7:28Josh Clark?

  You could just walk away, dusting your hands off like, job well done.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  There's plenty of things that have done that, it's not just Twin Peaks.

• 7:34Josh Clark?

  Sure, I know. Just nobody did it better than Twin Peaks, I think.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Agreed. All right, so noise pollution. I think the fact of the podcast to me came right up front in that I never thought of the fact that a decibel was a tenth of a bull. Or a bell.

• 7:51Josh Clark?

  Which is named.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  And it's got D C right there.

• 7:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I know, I'd never thought of it either because you never hear of any other variation. It's like one decibel, 10 decibels, 100 decibels, you know? And apparently a bull or a bell, B E L, is named after Alexander Graham Bell, too.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Didn't know that either.

• 8:08Josh Clark?

  And the reason why we, why a decibel is used, which is one tenth of a bell, is because a decibel, a one tenth of a bell difference in sound is the lowest, the smallest difference that humans can detect.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:27Josh Clark?

  So we trade in decibels here on the human level.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  And we trade in an algorithm when we talk decibels. Because it's one of those weird things where it's not like a hundred decibels isn't twice as loud as 50 decibels. It's spit into an equation that's actually 100,000 times as loud.

• 8:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so like 10 decibels, the difference between 10 decibels and 20 decibels is 20 decibels is 10 times louder. The difference between 10 decibels and 30 decibels, 30 decibels is 100 times louder. It's logarithmic.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Right. And zero dBs, as we'll call them, that is the threshold of human hearing, period. And 140 decibels is about where you can start to experience literal, physical pain from a sound.

• 9:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw between 120 and 140.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, it ranges like, I mean, I've been to some loud concerts in small venues.

• 9:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Dinosaur Jr. at Variety Theater was it for me.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  I was just about to say Dinosaur Jr. They're one of the legendary loud bands.

• 9:33Josh Clark?

  It was insane.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  It is super loud, but it's not, like, I don't remember feeling pain, but I do remember feeling discomforted at a couple of these where I was like, geez, this is, like, I like my music loud, but this is a little much.

• 9:45Josh Clark?

  Dude, yeah, like, I don't wear earplugs. I wore earplugs in that and I was like, I'm saving myself right now. It was so loud. And I meant to say Variety Playhouse, not Variety Theater.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, because we played there before. We didn't want to disrespect.

• 9:57Josh Clark?

  No, I know. You know, the variety of things.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  But all of this to say, God bless Jay Mascis.

• 10:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, it was great, but it was really loud.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  What about this conversation that we're having? What is that?

• 10:08Josh Clark?

  Well, it depends. A normal conversation, something around 60 decibels. And I saw that that's people standing about a meter apart, speaking without raising their voices. That's 60 decibels right there for reference.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  What about a car?

• 10:24Josh Clark?

  Cars are about 10 times louder to 10, 100, to 1,000 times louder than a normal conversation, depending on the car or the truck, between 70 and 90 decibels.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  What about an airplane or a siren?

• 10:37Josh Clark?

  So you would think, okay, a normal conversation is 60 decibels. An airplane being 120 decibels is twice as loud. No, my friend, it's 70, 80, 10.

• 10:48Josh Clark?

  Hundred thousand, ten thousand. It's a hundred thousand times louder. An airplane is a hundred thousand times louder than a normal conversation if it reaches 120 decibels.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  All right. If you've ever been on a tarmac, like a live tarmac, and heard a plane kind of landing or taking off, that's some loud stuff.

• 11:09Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  And that's why they wear those cans on their ears.

• 11:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they definitely should because we're starting to realize that there's all sorts of hearing loss besides the traditional ones that you can pick up on a regular hearing test. There's something called hidden hearing loss that we're just starting to get our eyes or mind around, where the structure of your hearing apparatus in your ear, the little cilia, that's almost like a Venus flytrap trigger hair but for sound instead, like those things can be intact, but the neurons that form the chain between your ear and your brain can be permanently damaged so that the sound that gets to your brain is garbled or partially missing. And that's a huge thing, and that can happen at much lower intensity than we understood before.

• 11:56Josh Clark?

  And speaking of intensity, I think we should say real quick, a decibel, to us humans, we basically talk in decibels as like a measure of volume, because that's what it appears to, like us, like an increase in decibels is an increase in the volume of the sound. But really, what a decibel is measuring is the intensity of the disturbance of the air that something has made. So if you're really close to that disturbance, it's going to be a very intense exposure to your ear. If you're further away, it's going to be a much less intense exposure because it kind of dissipates over distances. But to you, it's just registering as a difference in volume, where really it's a difference in the intensity of the wave that's being produced, that's traveling through the air.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  That's right. And this is all sound.

• 12:45Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  That's not noise. Noise is different. Noise is what we're talking about mainly. And noise is classified as unwanted sound.

• 12:53Josh Clark?

  It's simple enough.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, that can vary depending on who you are, obviously.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  You know, the, the sound of your significant other's voice after 40 years may be noise to you. Asking for some tea, the sound of a Harley Davidson motorcycle being revved up in front of your house might be noise, or those, uh, those blowers that they used to hate.

• 13:17Josh Clark?

  That's objective.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  You love and use.

• 13:19Josh Clark?

  I still don't love it. And I want battery powered, but it's still, even while I'm using it, I'm like, I'm a terrible person.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  But you get it done quickly, probably, right?

• 13:27Josh Clark?

  So quick, so quick. I'm like mincing and prancing, just getting it done.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Uh, and there's a lot of kinds of different noise.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Sometimes like, let's say you work in a, in a machine shop or something. And you use a machine, like the, the sound the machine makes is like, it's not necessary, but it's a byproduct. It's a result of that machine working correctly. It's not like, well, let's just make this thing loud. It's like, well, I'm sorry. A jackhammer's gonna be loud, because that's just the way it goes. You can reference our, our jackhammer episode. It was fantastic.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  So that sound isn't necessarily noise, but the intensity and repetition of that sound makes it becomes noise.

• 14:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. It's an unwanted intensity, or it can, just the sound existing itself, like you were saying, like a leaf blower. Just an unwanted existence of sound. So either way, the, the operative thing is it's unwanted sound. That's the key, right?

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and this is another cool fact of the episode, I think, is that, uh, they, they think that as late as, uh, through the 1940s and into 1950, natural sounds were still the dominant sounds that you heard. And then things really changed.

• 14:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because there's a, there's a big qualifier that a lot of researchers make that, and not everybody does, but that noise is by definition, human caused.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 14:54Josh Clark?

  Like either we're yelling or whatever, or one of the machines that we've created is making noise, but that you wouldn't say like, the sound of that waterfall is noise. Like, we don't think of like, natural sounds typically as noise, it's just sounds. And as we'll see, it's probably because we have been living, like, our species has been living around those sounds and has definitively excluded them as threatening, so that they're, they don't, they don't produce like, an irritation in us. They're just are sound, almost regardless of how intense they are.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Right, and that, and again, that irritation is subjective, because that rock concert that I enjoy, someone else might call that noise. That, that space shuttle launch that is super loud, might be noise to some people, but to others, you know, it's the same sound, but they, they don't think of it as noise, because they're excited and exhilarated in the moment to see and hear that thing.

• 15:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so you know, the other night, the Inspiration Four crew came back on the Dragon capsule, did you watch that?

• 16:04Speaker 03

  No, did you, did you see it live?

• 16:06Josh Clark?

  We didn't see it, because they splashed down in the Atlantic, but we heard the sonic boom it made when it came back into the atmosphere over Florida. It was astounding.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 16:15Josh Clark?

  Did you see that doc?

• 16:16Speaker 03

  Love the sonic boom.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  No, I didn't.

• 16:18Josh Clark?

  Oh, it's really good. It starts out like, oh god, this is not good, this is like, a terrible corporate ad. And then it really starts to find its feet. It's, it's crazy how it evolves over like, just the first couple of episodes.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  You gotta see it.

• 16:33Josh Clark?

  It's good, it's definitely worth seeing.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  What other kinds of noise? You've got industrial noise, which that's classified as kind of from the beginning of the process, all the way to the end of any kind of industrial process. And that's basically called continuous noise. From, you know, raw materials all the way to the, to the end disposal of whatever byproducts can usually cause a lot of racket.

• 16:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so like, you know, like, like a generator humming or something like that? There's not a lot of variation in intensity. It's basically this hum, or steam being released, or even like a rhythmic, like, like, like, something being like hammered. No, not hammered, that's a different, that's called the impulsive noise. But just something that doesn't really vary, it's just kind of a monotonous sound. That's, that's kind of a subcategory called continuous sound. And it just so happens that most industrial processes are continuous in, in nature.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Right, whereas a train going by your house, or a plane flying, or a car going by, or a siren is intermittent.

• 17:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and then also, you could probably say, like, if you held the trigger down on a backpack leaf blower, which again, is the worst thing that anyone's ever invented. But if you held it down, that would be a continuous sound for the whole time it was going. But no one does that ever. They just rev in this arrhythmic pattern, that your brain is just, just giving its all to trying to, to try to find a pattern in.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:08Josh Clark?

  And so you get worn out and irritated so quickly because of those things, because they don't follow rhyme or reason. And in conjunction with that, it's an intermittent sound.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:18Josh Clark?

  So, which is, from what I can tell, one of the worst sounds for us.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Right, and then you've also got community noise, which is just people noise. I think the leaf blowers are thrown into that, lawn mowers, you know, if you've got a, a festival in your neighborhood, or fireworks on the 4th of July, or people playing their music in their cars or their houses. This is all this sort of people-generated, generated, community sound.

• 18:43Josh Clark?

  Yep. So those are basically the three categories that I saw, industrial, traffic, and community.

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Should we take a break?

• 18:50Josh Clark?

  I think we should.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  All right, we'll be right back. I've got to go quiet down that racket outside, and I'll be right back.

• 19:08Josh Clark?

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• 20:08Speaker 04

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 20:11Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 20:14Speaker 02

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• 20:30Speaker 04

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• 20:38Josh Clark?

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• 21:01Josh Clark?

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• 21:11Speaker 02

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• 21:22Josh Clark?

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• 21:45Josh Clark?

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• 22:25Josh Clark?

  Okay, did you finish shaking your fist at those teenagers on your lawn?

• 22:30Speaker 02

  I'm lucky because we don't have loud, we don't have one neighbor on one side and our neighbor beside us is pretty quiet. But I do live near, and I've talked about it before, a pretty main road. And you kind of get used to it, but I also yearn, you know, to be a few blocks in. But, you know, you can't pick up your house and move it. So what are you gonna do? You get used to it.

• 22:50Josh Clark?

  You can, but it's really expensive.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Well, no, that is true. You can move a house sometimes.

• 22:55Josh Clark?

  Didn't we do an episode on that once?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  How to move a house?

• 22:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  I think, I don't know if we did one just on that. It may have been like historic districts or something. I don't know. And by the way, that episode we couldn't think of the other day was crumple zones.

• 23:09Josh Clark?

  Oh, boy. So we did do a whole episode on crumple zones?

• 23:12Speaker 03

  We did.

• 23:13Josh Clark?

  Boy, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel there. But I remember that being an interesting episode, though, wasn't it?

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Oh, it was totally interesting, yeah.

• 23:19Josh Clark?

  Well, it's the Stuff You Should Know way, isn't it, Chuck?

• 23:22Speaker 03

  Uh, it is, indeed. Should we talk about hearing damage?

• 23:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so, like I was saying, there's that kind of new type of hearing damage that we're wrapping our minds around that is like the death of the neurons that are supposed to transmit the electrical impulse to the brain. And so we don't hear very well, our communication is garbled, and yet you can pass a traditional hearing test, no problem. But other research is really starting to unfold like less predictable ways that noise and noise pollution actually affects our health. And it's like, our entire system is negatively affected by noise and noise exposure.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  It is. And it basically, at the beginning of the whole process, is triggering the same exact thing that triggers your fight or flight response. Like, you're gonna have the same reaction to, you know, if you hear a siren go by, the same thing is happening in your, as far as your brain knows, then what happens if, like, a bear walks up to you and roars?

• 24:28Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah, so like, our hearing is always on, and it's always on the lookout for a potential threat. And one of the ways that a potential threat can give itself away is by making a sound, right? It was like I was saying earlier, like, we've been around waterfalls and the sound of waves in our evolutionary history for so long, that basically, it seems like when you're born, you come equipped with this, "Don't worry about that sound." Actually, you can be soothed by it. It's not something that should stimulate your fight or flight response. But we've lived around industrial machinery and the sound of a text message or a leaf blower, the stupid leaf blowers, for such a little amount of our evolutionary history,

• 25:11Josh Clark?

  that our minds are not at all attuned to those things. Or we haven't kind of adopted this idea that a leaf blower is non-threatening, and so it stimulates the fight or flight response in us when we hear it.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  That's right. So you're gonna hear that sound. Your amygdala, which we've talked about plenty, contributes to emotional processing, is gonna send that same distress signal to the hypothalamus again that gets if you are in a fight or flight response, which is why you probably wanna run screaming if you hear too many sirens or hear too many leaf blowers.

• 25:46Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  And then that's gonna signal your adrenal glands to get your adrenaline going. And I believe cortisol gets going as well.

• 25:55Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 25:56Speaker 03

  It's like literally mimicking fight or flight.

• 25:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and so they figured out that like people who are continuously chronically exposed to sound, like say people who live like really close to an airport, really close to the subway tracks, or people who work in a really noisy factory, they have all sorts of crazy random health problems, like their kids sometimes have low birth weight, obviously they can develop tinnitus, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, their children who are exposed to chronic noise can have cognitive impairments, high blood pressure, like all sorts of crazy stuff. And so you think, well, okay, that's terrible. Anybody who has to

• 26:41Josh Clark?

  live near noise or work near noise, like we should do something about that. But it's even worse than that. Like noise pollution is even more insidious than that, because you don't have to be chronically exposed to it. You don't have to live in a place where you're like, this is an objectively noisy place that I live or work in, to still suffer from the effects of noise pollution.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it can affect you when you're asleep, because like you said, your ears are always on. It's not like you go to sleep and the ears say, well, I'm gonna take a nice break. That would be a fantastic evolutionary adaptation, actually.

• 27:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  Well, actually, it'd be terrible.

• 27:16Josh Clark?

  It would these days. It wouldn't back in the mountain lion saber-toothed tiger days.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, it'd be nice if there was a switch and you could kinda control that.

• 27:24Josh Clark?

  Oh, it'd be so nice. I think the switch is the white noise wave machine is the switch.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, which I've gotten addicted to such that I have to travel with them now.

• 27:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Everywhere I go.

• 27:36Josh Clark?

  I've heard that. Yeah, basically, once you start, you can't go back.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like it, though. I do brown noise is my drug of choice.

• 27:43Josh Clark?

  It sounds so gross, though.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Brown.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Hey, I make a brown noise every morning, you know what I mean?

• 27:51Josh Clark?

  Wow, I was not expecting Dangerfield to make an appearance.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Well, that's what you meant, right? Poop or no?

• 27:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, I guess. Anytime I hear brown, I think it's poop, you know?

• 28:03Speaker 03

  You think of that, or you think of Ween, the band?

• 28:05Josh Clark?

  Do they have a brown song or album?

• 28:07Speaker 03

  They talk about the brown thing, the brown sound, and brown is just sort of their color and how they used to talk about sound. And I've heard other groups talk about brown sounds.

• 28:16Josh Clark?

  So what does brown sound like?

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Well, brown noise, you know, if white noise is

• 28:23Speaker 03

  brown noise is

• 28:25Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  That's the best way I can describe it. Yeah, it's sort of a lower, lower end. And if you actually play it through a speaker, like if you put it on your phone and play it through a little Bluetooth, you can get some good bass and it just, it really works wonders for me.

• 28:38Josh Clark?

  I should try brown noise, or even white noise. I've been using chrome noise, where it's like

• 28:46Josh Clark?

  and it's really not helping me sleep at all.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  You're like, I have the sound of an early internet connection being made.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Did they ever name that? They should have named that. It'd be great to

• 29:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Just call it whatever it was.

• 29:05Josh Clark?

  They called it the tickety widget.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Interrupted sleep, though, that's, that's the big problem, or one of the big problems, because your ears are always on. If you have uninterrupted sleep or, or poor sleep overall, you're gonna be tired, obviously. Your creativity, your memory can get impaired, your creativity is gonna be low, you're gonna have impaired judgment. Your psychomotor skills might be impacted. You might have more headaches. They've done studies. If you live near airports and stuff like that, or, you know, next to like a rail yard, you're gonna have more headaches, you might take more sleeping pills as a result. You might be more prone to minor accidents. And you are going to be more prone to seek psychiatric treatment in your life. Like, studies have shown this.

• 29:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there was a study of people living near European airports. They found a 10 decibel increase in aircraft noise was associated with a 28% increase in anxiety medication. And that people were also likelier to have, like, 25% more likely to have symptoms of depression. So, again, all this is just from, like, having not good sleep, which is bad enough. But apparently, Chuck, it even gets worse, because even if your sleep isn't disturbed, where you're waking up and not getting sleep because of noise.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  Right, like, you get used to it, sort of?

• 30:26Josh Clark?

  Uh huh. The, the noise is still affecting you while you're sleeping. Because, again, your ear never turns off. It's always on the, the listen out for some sort of threat creeping up on you. And so if you're exposed to noise while you're sleeping, it still has that stress effect on you. And what they figured out is that one of the problems of just being chronically stressed through something like noise, and I think stress in general, is that it, it affects, I think it's called the endothelium, which is the lining of your blood vessels. And, and they respond to chemicals that tell them to constrict, to relax. And they get constricted when they get stressed, when they're exposed to stress,

• 31:09Josh Clark?

  like cortisol or something like that comes along and says, "Constrict." And when they do that, you get high blood pressure, you can end up with heart disease, you can end up suffering from heart attacks. And what's insane is they figured out that after one night of being exposed, while you're sleeping, to something like train sounds, your endothelium is, starts suffering, like, it doesn't function as well, after just one night of that.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Right, like, isn't the idea that you can have no other sort of poor health markers? And it can actually be brought on because of this noise, right?

• 31:47Josh Clark?

  Yes, while you're sleeping, you're still getting sleep, but it's still happening to you while you're sleeping. And not only like high blood pressure or like a heart attack or something like that coming down the road, but also like diabetes, obesity, there's a lot of things that we're figuring out are tied to the lining of the blood vessels and whether they're healthy or not. It's a huge predictor of a whole range of diseases. And when you hear noise, that's your stressors trigger your endothelium to constrict. And that is a really bad thing.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  It is. Here in the United States, we kind of started studying this stuff in earnest in the seventies. That was when pollution was a big deal, just all around in the United States. And we started to say things like, hey, maybe you shouldn't just have a family picnic and then just pick up your blanket and dump all the trash on the ground, like they did on that episode of Mad Men.

• 32:46Josh Clark?

  And on Anchorman, when they're all eating McDonald's and they just throw it on the ground in the park.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  I saw a guy throw a fully, like McDonald's thing out the window the other day and smashed on the sidewalk.

• 32:59Josh Clark?

  Oh, my God.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  And I was just like, who, who does that still?

• 33:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's, the problem is, is we're at a place in our country's history where if you confront people like that, there's a chance you're going to get shot for confronting someone like that.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  I don't confront.

• 33:14Josh Clark?

  But that's like, that is the kind of behavior you should, under normal circumstances, non-shooting circumstances, feel perfectly fine confronting somebody about and being like, what is wrong with you? Like, we're so far beyond that. Like, everyone knows you shouldn't do that. It's just, oh, it drove me insane.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Oh, I got into a good fight with him in my brain.

• 33:33Josh Clark?

  Yes, I know. Like, what, like, where's the solution? Where's the answer?

• 33:38Speaker 03

  I don't know, man. I think the Zen path is you go pick up that McDonald's cup and throw it away.

• 33:42Josh Clark?

  Totally.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  And, and say a prayer for that person. Good luck.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  So yeah, New York is where they started studying this stuff in the 70s. Because it was kind of wrapped up, like I said, folded into larger pollution studies. They're like, well, we might as well talk about noise pollution.

• 33:59Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  New York is the place to do it. And they did, there were a couple of studies in the 1970s about subway noise. That really sort of gave, put the whole thing on some terra firma. As far as the health effects and, and, and learning effects. In the case of kids at PS98 in Manhattan. It was very close to the train tracks there, the subway train tracks.

• 34:22Josh Clark?

  Like real close.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, like 220 feet away. And they found, and this is, this is pretty startling. They found that the kids that were closest to the train tracks were 11 months behind their classmates that were on the other side of the school.

• 34:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like not in another school, just on the other side of the school.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, almost a full. Well, I mean, that is basically a full school year.

• 34:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Cause you know, with summer's off and stuff, that's an academic year plus.

• 34:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  That they were behind and they installed acoustic tiles in the classroom and some dampening devices. And they did a follow up study and the gap had closed, basically. So I mean, there's proof right there, like your kids are not learning as well if they're near that subway noise.

• 35:08Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. There's another kind of landmark study in the 70s in New York that established the concept of noise pollution at a place called The Bridges. Apartment high rise or a cluster of them in Manhattan. That I believe 95 maybe drives under or really, really close. And the, the traffic noise is so bad that even as high up as the eighth floor, the traffic sound is about the level of a vacuum cleaner. And like just sitting in your apartment, you have to raise your voice to, to be heard. Which, I mean, just the stress of that, I can't imagine. Like, that's an inhabitable, uninhabitable place.

• 35:51Josh Clark?

  I believe people are still living there as well. But the, the, the, this study found that children living there were far behind at reading comprehension, at listening comprehension, and just weren't learning as, as quickly as other kids their age who did not live in the bridges. So those two studies together from New York kind of established this idea like, okay, there's a, there's a real problem with noise pollution. And then it just went away for many, many years until about 2011, when the WHO, there was a bunch of other studies. A lot of the other ones that we've referenced so far came out around 2010, 2011, 2013. I'm not sure what exactly kicked it off, but there was a big spate of them.

• 36:36Josh Clark?

  But then the WHO released a really big report. Not the WHO, the band, the World Health Organization.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're another loud band, actually.

• 36:43Josh Clark?

  And, yeah, they felt terribly guilty about causing hearing loss in their, their fans. So they launched this study of, basically, all of Western Europe. They looked at, I think, something like 500 different studies and did a meta-analysis of them to calculate what's called the disability-adjusted life years, or dailies, that were lost in Europe every year to noise pollution.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the idea of a daily is they, they basically say it's like the healthy years of your life that are, end up being lost to this human-made noise that you're living with.

• 37:24Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  And it, it's kind of a, sort of an esoteric way to think about it. But once you wrap your head around it, it makes a little bit more sense.

• 37:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  But, but they found that at least 1 million healthy years Of life are lost every single year. Only in, just in Europe due to noise pollution. A million healthy years of people's lives.

• 37:46Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Annually.

• 37:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and that, that means because of all of the disease burden that noise pollution produces in humans, that, that's how much of our, our healthy lifespan is shaved off every year collectively, or how much Europe's is. And they did a follow-up study in 2018, Chuck, and found that, oh, actually, no, we got it wrong. It's 1.8 million dailies are lost in Western Europe alone each year. So they definitely established through these, this, these couple of WHO studies, like, oh, no, noise pollution is still a thing, and we should probably do something about it. And there was another study that was released this past year that said, yes, dailies are significant,

• 38:28Josh Clark?

  but we may have found a link that shows that noise pollution can actually straight up kill you under some circumstances, potentially.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, and this one was, this is pretty startling because they looked at heart, uh, well, not necessarily heart attack, but nighttime deaths. No, I guess it was heart attacks.

• 38:47Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  But if you die overnight, die in your sleep, quote unquote, from heart attacks, and the link to commercial aircraft flying over your house. And I guess they had a way to sort of cancel out all the other factors. And they got down to the nitty gritty that 3% of all nighttime deaths from heart attacks can be attributed to the sound of aircraft flying overhead while you're sleeping.

• 39:13Josh Clark?

  Yep, that is just like, that was it. That was the last stress response that your body could handle, and you had a heart attack and died from that sound. And they, they said, like, okay, we found a definite correlation. But if there is causation here, then we can chalk up about 3% of those. That's astounding.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  It is astounding. Uh, we're gonna take a break. That's the, the human grossness. And we'll talk about the awful things that we're doing to our animal friends and nature right after this.

• 39:54Josh Clark?

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• 40:57Josh Clark?

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• 41:29Josh Clark?

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• 42:17Speaker 03

  All right. We talked about a lot of studies that basically all added up to noise pollution, very bad for human beings, like literally bad for their health. And I know we've talked about a few of these before over the years, especially when it comes to whales, but all manner of Mother Nature are impacted by this noise. They did a study in the early 2000s about stress hormones for, what kind of whales were they?

• 42:47Josh Clark?

  Right whales.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, right whales in the Bay of Fundy. And they saw, and this is remarkable, they saw a really weird, unexplained decline in the stress hormone concentrations that went away and then came back up again. And they eventually realized it was a halt in the shipping in the bay after 9/11 happened.

• 43:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because shipping is probably humans' noisiest marine endeavor that we do all the time, constantly. And the idea of a break in that, having been connected to a huge decline in stress hormones and whale poop, that's significant. But it was an accidental discovery. And I think it led other people to start studying stuff like that, like the effects of noise on wildlife. And there was this, I think, University of Idaho, I'm sorry if it's Idaho State, please don't be mad.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  I think it's Idaho.

• 43:40Josh Clark?

  Okay. A study from 2012 where researchers set up like what they called a phantom road, which is basically they affixed a line of loudspeakers to some trees out in the wilderness that stretched about a half a mile in length. And they just played road and traffic noise. And not like city stuff, just like the kind of stuff that possibly a remote road through the wilderness would sound like, because they recorded it in Glacier National Park on a road there. And just from that, just from like this rural Glacier National Park road noise, something like more than a quarter of all the birds in the area just left. They were like, we're moving.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:23Josh Clark?

  We're going to Canada. So did everybody in the United States.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, I think I definitely noticed and I heard other people talk about in like April of last year, when things really slowed down commuter and traffic wise due to the pandemic. And I don't think it was just our imaginations, but there was a lot more bird activity going on. And I remember, I think I remember us even talking about it. Or maybe it was just quieter for us, or we noticed them more, or maybe a combination of both. But there was a difference. And when, you know, when shipping stops after nine 11 or when traffic stops, nature says, oh, the human a-holes are gone.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  Now we can start behaving normally again.

• 45:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like things are back to normal. And that's, I mean, that's just on land. Also, they found that Idaho study found that the birds that stuck around lost a bunch of weight, which they would have needed to migrate. So maybe they couldn't leave even if they wanted to. But that was a land study. There's been other studies on land, but it seems like we're doing a lot of damage to marine ecosystems as well, like probably even more because sound waves travel in water a lot better than light, which means that most of the animals that live in the water have really sensitive hearing. That's what they've evolved to use to communicate and listen out for, right? So when we make noise, it's really problematic in marine ecosystems.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we make a lot of noise. I mean, that shipping activity we talked about is super disruptive to anything underwater. When they search for mineral deposits on the seafloor or under the seafloor, they use these seismic air guns that are, you can hear those things, like a fish can hear that a thousand, thousands of miles away. Very disruptive. Sonar, I know we talked about sonar. In an episode years ago and how that affected marine life. I can't remember what it was.

• 46:26Josh Clark?

  Did we do an entire episode on the time they blew up the beached whale, like what to do with the beached whale?

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Maybe, but they basically kind of say now, like, they think the reasons whales beach themselves is because of these noises and sonar is a big culprit.

• 46:41Josh Clark?

  Right. Like, it just drives them out of the water, which sounds bonkers, but if you ever think about how humans sometimes jump from tall buildings rather than being burned by the intensity of a fire, I think it's virtually the same principle.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 46:56Josh Clark?

  So we are, we have become aware of just how much noise pollution affects not just us, but the environment as well. Like, it is a form of pollution. And it seems like, you know, it started to accumulate in the last few years. But really, we've known for a good 50 years that noise pollution is really bad for everybody. And yet, we've done almost nothing about it. But we had the start, Chuck. We started out like we were going to, like, almost immediately. When we realized how bad noise pollution was in the 70s, we started to do something about it. And the federal government passed like three, and actually I saw a fourth one, huge acts that had to do with basically controlling noise pollution.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, either controlling noise pollution for people in general, or through OSHA, making sure people were working in safe conditions. Or at least had, you know, the ear cans and things they needed to work safely.

• 47:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  And it was, like you said, it was headed in the right direction. We knew it was bad and we were trying to stop it. And then the Reagan administration came along and said, nuts to that, that's federal regulation. Let's just leave it to the states because you ask any governor of any state and they'll tell you their citizens know to do the right thing and they'll do that right thing. And so we'll just leave it up to the states and let them, they volunteered to phase itself out, the Office of Noise and Abatement Control. On paper, still exists, but Congress said, you know, let's just not fund them anymore. And let's keep these laws on the books, but really not worry about it too much. Because the states will take care of it, right? Because states always do the right thing.

• 48:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the states, of course, did absolutely nothing. And it's partially because they can't do a lot about it. A lot of noise is really best understood, studied, and regulated by the federal government. Like, what, like, Georgia has a bunch of money reserved to study the effects of noise on humans. Like, no, that's totally a federal kind of thing to do, you know? And that's what some of those 70s acts set up, like that, that Office of Noise Abatement and Control, or Noise Control and Abatement, like, its purpose was to study that kind of stuff. That's not what states do. So the states have, well, not the states, but usually more municipalities and counties have, they have taken steps to kind of mitigate sound pollution, like, there's, or noise

• 49:16Josh Clark?

  pollution, there's usually regulations on how early or late a landscaping crew can work within the city limits. Or some of them say, like, you can't boom your stereo, or you're not allowed to have that broken glass muffler on your Harley. Like, there's some stuff like that. But then, like, if you live kind of under a flight path, if your town wanted to say, you know what, you can't fly over our town and wake everybody up, between, you know, 12:00 at night and 7:00 in the morning, you can't fly an airplane over it, the airplanes would just be like, like, I didn't hear you, sorry, I was listening to the feds who say you can't make laws like that.

• 49:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, you know, I get the feeling with municipalities, it is more like complaints from neighbors kind of noise, or the lawn crews in construction, like you were saying, unless, like, stuff with big teeth. Recently, weird reason I won't get into, but I was looking up noise ordinances in Athens, Georgia, and they're kind of funny when you look at these noise ordinances. It's like, it literally said, like, You know, walking down the sidewalk, yelling at one another, talking about basically drunk kids.

• 50:26Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 50:27Speaker 03

  You know, like the French Quarter kind of thing. It said, you know, this includes hooting and hollering. And it was something about being able to hear you from like 300 feet away. But or noise from your apartment, but it's, you know, it's like, good luck with that. Like you can call the cops on someone, maybe.

• 50:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  But there's no teeth or or reg or, uh, what do you call it when you or enforcement? Kind of with a lot of this stuff, aside from singling out people when it happens in the moment. And you may get a cop come by and say, turn it down.

• 50:59Josh Clark?

  But even if there's a will to do something, it depends on if it's like rail traffic or air traffic. Like the federal, um, the federal government ties local, local.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  Oh, sure.

• 51:10Josh Clark?

  Towns and counties hands, like they can't do anything about it. And there's, um, as a result, there's a lot of noise pollution that people can't do anything about. There's a, um, there's a town in Canada, I can't remember the name of it. But it is, um, it's got rail, like a rail system that goes through it. And it doesn't have like alarms or like the, the arms that come down. So trains have to honk their horns at least three times as they cross through this town. And there's a bunch of different crossings and they calculated that train horns blare 1,200 times a day in this little tiny town. And like, obviously everybody's going nuts, but they can't do anything about it because

• 51:51Josh Clark?

  the federal government of Canada is in charge of regulating rail travel like every other developed or industrialized country.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, and even if it's something like OSHA and like you, you work in a loud factory and they're trying to, uh, regulate that, they, they say that A, they don't cover all industries they should cover. And when, when they do, it's very inconsistently applied. And even when they do apply it inconsistently, um, they say that these limits aren't even low enough to protect all the workers anyway from hearing loss. Uh, it said OSHA regulations allow workers to be exposed to 95 decibels. For four hours a day, five days a week for your entire 40-year career.

• 52:32Josh Clark?

  That's insane.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  And that's like you're going to suffer from hearing loss if that's the case.

• 52:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's like holding a leaf blower right next to you for four hours a day, five days a week for 40 years. Like, of course you're going to lose your hearing. Like, that's crazy.

• 52:48Speaker 03

  Well, and then factor in the other health effects that no one ever talks about that we mentioned in the whole first half of this thing.

• 52:54Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  And you have an unhealthy population if you're stuck in one of those places.

• 52:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So we can sit here in Kavetch all day, which we would love to do, but there are solutions to this. But I want to point out one more time, all these solutions are zero thanks to the Reagan administration. Instead, there's some simple stuff you can do to help us humans, like you can change aircraft routes, you can build barriers along roadways and railways. You can even green it up. Like, they found that if you use shrubbery and trees mixed together so that they basically produce a fence, and you plant them close to the road or close to the railway rather than close to the place that you're trying to protect, they do pretty good at reducing the decibels of the sound, the noise pollution coming from

• 53:40Josh Clark?

  the traffic. That's some easy stuff you can do. And then on the user end, on the individual's end, there's all sorts of like acoustic insulation and paneling you can add to your house to make it a little more soundproof and quieter. What about those mufflers, Chuck?

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Car mufflers?

• 53:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So apparently the ones that make the sound are not, they're not good.

• 54:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, they could change that. The EPA could get involved and say, you know what? You can't have those kind of mufflers anymore.

• 54:11Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm. Thank God if they did.

• 54:15Speaker 03

  As far as the shipping go, I know it's always like a Honda Civic or something that is like tricked out like it's some kind of race car. Um, as far as the water goes and the shipping stuff like that, those big ships, they found that if they separate the ship's engine from the hull, they are quieter, much quieter. And they even found that there is, I think there's a 75% reduction in acoustic energy, um, six to eight decibels, which is significant. And they also found that it is less fuel efficient. And if they like retrofitted or kind of changed the way they built these ships, I don't know if you can, well, I guess you can retrofit some of them.

• 54:51Josh Clark?

  Well, yeah, the propellers are what's making them less fuel efficient. So you can not easily, but you can take off the old propellers and put on new ones.

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Right. But it costs a lot of money upfront, like they will save in the long run. And I think, uh, is it pronounced Maersk, the big shipping company?

• 55:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 55:08Speaker 03

  They spent a hundred million bucks to do just 11 of its ships. So that gives you the idea of how much it costs. Uh, there may be some efficiencies if they did more or something, but it's not cheap. Uh, and they have 740 ships. They've done 11. So.

• 55:23Josh Clark?

  Well, I did see that is actually a very small fraction of all of the ships involved in shipping that are responsible for the vast majority of the noise. So if you did just focus on the worst offenders, it would have a significant impact.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:39Josh Clark?

  There's also a huge amount of noise, apparently underwater noise that comes from offshore wind farms because of the pile driver that is moved by up and down by the blades to help produce the electricity to move the turbine, right?

• 55:53Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 55:54Josh Clark?

  And they found that if you just put a perforated pipe around the pile driver, the pile driver is going to produce bubbles and those bubbles will dissipate the noise, almost all the noise. I think like 95% of the noise coming from those offshore wind farms. That's a really simple, easy solution.

• 56:11Speaker 03

  Just do it, people.

• 56:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And there's one other thing that I hadn't thought about, but I saw a couple of places and it really makes sense is that the noise pollution we're contributing to marine ecosystems in particular is.

• 56:23Josh Clark?

  Just such low hanging fruit that there's no reason we shouldn't do this. There's some really easy stuff we can do, like even rerouting shipping lanes is one thing we can do. And that by doing that, it will actually stabilize marine ecosystems and marine life so that it will buy us a little time while we're figuring out much trickier stuff like ocean acidification and things that are also threats to it. So it's like, just removing noise pollution would really go a long way toward extending the, I guess, the health and vitality of the oceans while they're, you know, while we're combating climate change.

• 57:00Speaker 03

  I love it. Let's get all these things going. Our health is suffering.

• 57:04Josh Clark?

  Let's start with the mufflers.

• 57:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's just annoyance and health.

• 57:08Josh Clark?

  Yep. Uh, well, since Chuck said, "That's just annoyance," of course, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  Uh, this one's pretty short and sweet. I just love it when we get an answer about something. Uh, I think I might've known this at some point, but we talked about shrinking as humans.

• 57:25Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  And this is from, uh, Steve in Roscoe, Illinois. He says, "I've been a longtime listener, never had a reason to reach out, but you hit my area of expertise. I'm a physical therapist and while listening to the episode about crash testing, you ask, 'Why do we shrink when we get older?'" What happens as we age, guys, is the intervertebral discs in our back lose hydration, and as a result, we shrink.

• 57:49Josh Clark?

  Huh.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Uh, "There are six discs in the cervical spine, 12 discs in the thoracic spine, and five discs in the lumbar. If each disc were to lose a minimum of 1/16 of an inch in height, that adds up pretty quickly and you can easily lose an inch plus in your lifetime."

• 58:05Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  Uh, "The other thing to consider as we age is our muscles and tissues get tighter, pulls us into positions of poor posture."

• 58:12Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm, sarcopenia.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  That's right. Uh, "And this restricts our ability, uh, to stand up straight. You combine all these things together and all of a sudden Josh isn't going to hit his goal height of six feet."

• 58:23Josh Clark?

  I have to stand on my tippy toes now.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  Uh, "Thanks for all the good work. I hope I didn't step on the toes of a future short stuff." I think we just did it, Steve. Uh, that's Steve Marima, or Marima, from Roscoe, Illinois.

• 58:35Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Steve. That was a good email. We appreciate that big time. And if you haven't stumbled upon it yet, you should check out our episode on sarcopenia. It is old, but it was interesting.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. If you have any physical therapy needs in Illinois, give Steve a call. Sounds like a good guy.

• 58:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Head to beautiful Roscoe, Illinois. Come on. If you want to be like Steve from Roscoe and give us some more info that we were asking for, we love that kind of stuff. You can send it to us via email to [email protected].

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 59:28Josh Clark?

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