Your moments of silence (The Sound Barrier #5)

This episode is a follow-up to The Sound Barrier series, which explores our brain's relationship to sound. In our third episode of the series, we asked listeners to try to experience silence and record what they heard. Today, we share the sounds of quiet from across the world in a tribute to John Cage’s 4’33”. Plus, Tinnitus researcher and Unexplainable guest Dan Polley answers your questions from the series. Guest: Dan Polley, tinnitus researcher at Mass Eye and Ear. Thank you to everyone who wrote in and shared their silences. If you still have thoughts or questions about the series, write us! We also heard from a few teachers who plan to use the series as a part of their curriculum. Is this you? Let us know! For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠. We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from TikTok. If you listen to this show, you probably enjoy discovering new things. It is built into the DNA of the show that curiosity is its own reward and that there's always a deeper dive to do. And one place to explore some of the topics we've covered here is TikTok. Whether it's how to forecast volcanic eruptions, strange phenomena that the James Webb Space Telescope picked up near the beginning of time, or a literal deep dive on the ocean's deepest reefs, TikTok has a wealth of fascinating videos just waiting to be discovered. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, just a minute.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  I just finished the third installment of your Sound Barrier series, which my cat and I both appear to have loved. So I had to stop doing my dishes to come and record something.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  It is the day before Thanksgiving. I was cooking some cornbread while you guys had that section of silence and I heard the sounds of cracking eggs and the mixer going. I heard the brush of my finger against my cheek and I heard the electronic noise of the inside of my headphones.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  It was interesting to me when no one had us experience silence together. You know, I'm doing meditias. Suddenly, there's nothing.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  And then I realized there is not silence. There's the water that's running until I shut it off. Then I could hear my fridge and my cat in the other room demanding my attention. And as I sat there for the four minutes and thirty-three seconds, my fridge stopped making noise, which was more interesting to me than it has ever been before.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  I got goosebumps afterwards and it just felt really powerful to think about like all these people sitting in silence together and what are all of us doing?

• 3:41Speaker 03

  And how wonderful that was.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  The four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence coincided with the exact moment I began to do my makeup this morning.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  The pencil going into the sharpener, filing layers away.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  I heard every stroke of my eyebrow pencil as I swiped my brows to fill them in.

• 4:36Speaker 05

  During my four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence, I was able to hear the quiet patter of spring rain coming down on the roof and water dripping down the side of the house.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  The scratch of placing the cap back onto the pencil when I was finished.

• 4:53Speaker 05

  The ticking of the wall clock, the buzzing of the fridge.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  The pop of my mascara wand going in and out of the tube.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  The trains passing nearby, as well as the water pipes piping water to the kitchen.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  The twisting of my highlighter cap opening and closing.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  The wheel rolling in the track of my bathroom drawer.

• 5:16Speaker 05

  I heard my stomach processing the pizza I'd eaten about an hour earlier.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  Finally, the smack of my lips after an application of gloss.

• 5:27Speaker 05

  The sounds are always with you, which usually fade into the background. The soundtrack to your very own life.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  Very interesting and almost tactile experience for someone typically irked by the repetitive noises of life.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  This is Alex in Atlanta, Georgia.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  Hello from Daniel in suburban Melbourne in Australia.

• 6:05Noam Hassenfeld?

  I'm in Toronto. It is dark and early and there is a sliver of orange rising above the city. My partner is in bed, my dog is on the balcony, and this is the sound of my morning.

• 6:57Noam Hassenfeld?

  But listening to the silence, I discovered that the sound of peeling yams is actually distinctly different from peeling parsnips. Peeling parsnips was somehow a softer sound.

• 7:11Noam Hassenfeld?

  Almost comforting.

• 7:15Speaker 07

  My name is Robin Moore. I'm gonna record the silence here in my kitchen.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  This is Dan Shepherd in San Dimas, California. Most excellent place to live.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  We had just gotten a lot of rain and... The mosquitoes are back out again. You will hear me slapping my leg to try to keep the mosquitoes away.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  This time of year, the Rufus hummingbird and the Anna's hummingbird, they like to argue and fight. So you can hear a little of them in the background.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  I heard goldfinches, you know, a couple of kinds of goldfinches, the American goldfinch and the lesser goldfinch, mostly the lesser goldfinches.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  You might be able to hear the doves and my next door neighbor, apparently she was a former magician's assistant.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  And she keeps doves in her back garden and you can hear those occasionally.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Today is November 11th. Here in Canada, we do Remembrance Day on November 11th. And I've participated every year. You go to the semitath at the corner here in town and watch folks lay wreaths and at one point they do a moment of silence. My dad was in the Navy, so I like to go every year.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  It's just interesting every other year. The moment of silence has been

• 10:19Speaker 02

  what I thought was longer than needed. But I think I will think of that differently today.

• 10:40Speaker 07

  I am in downtown Rochester.

• 10:44Speaker 07

  Tucked away behind a wall to not catch the wind.

• 10:56Speaker 07

  It can be very strangely peaceful

• 11:00Speaker 07

  and still feel kind of natural when you're in the middle of a city. It's wild sometimes.

• 11:56Noam Hassenfeld?

  It was hard not to feel that silence with my own thoughts.

• 12:03Speaker 07

  I was really amazed by the reaction people had to the room of silence, where it seemed super uncomfortable for people to be immersed in absolute, complete silence. And that's because, for me, I take my hearing aids out and I'm in absolute, complete silence.

• 12:39Speaker 07

  I don't hear my heartbeat, I don't hear myself breathing, I don't hear anything. And that, for me, is quite comforting, actually. It's my place of being sort of home.

• 12:52Speaker 07

  You know, like that home base feel of, ah, yeah, now I'm, you know, I'm good.

• 13:03Speaker 07

  I do that every night. I take my hearing aids out. I'm in complete and utter silence. And then I wake up in the morning, totally silent, until I put my hearing aids in, and then all of a sudden,

• 13:22Speaker 07

  I am tuned in. I'm awake and alive with the world that's going on around me. Things are moving and shaking. You can hear just the gentle hum in the room. You can hear yourself walking across the room. You hear everything. It's like suddenly turning a switch and being kind of, well, more awake. I just thought it was fascinating that people are in general uncomfortable with silence. And thought, well, I'm not. And I wonder how other very hard-of-hearing people feel, and how the deaf community feels about silence.

• 14:06Speaker 07

  It must be totally different than the hearing folk.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  One of the things that you won't hear when you're listening to it is the din of the tinnitus that is in my ears, which is constantly going, even as we speak. It is this high drone. It's like a high G. And so sometimes when I'm trying to listen to something quiet,

• 14:31Speaker 07

  it takes a lot of effort. But I always like to take a moment anyways when there is some quiet time and try to be there, focus on that sound to tune it out, or to like, listen to the world around me.

• 14:49Speaker 07

  G'day. Gordon Taylor from Mullamimbi, Australia. I'd just hit off the third tea and was walking down towards my ball with my headphones on, and now I'm started the silence.

• 15:04Speaker 07

  I think it was when I heard him cough in the studio that I realized what I was hearing was just so beautiful and unique to me.

• 15:13Speaker 07

  The early cicadas of spring, the bird life, the wind noise, the rattle of my clubs.

• 15:22Speaker 07

  And the whole time, I thought it was someplace quiet.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Anyway, I think I'm gonna go take a walk in the woods later

• 15:38Speaker 02

  and listen to the silence in the woods.

• 16:30Speaker 07

  Support for the show comes from Sonos. Hey, Sonos, give me some music.

• 16:37Speaker 07

  All right, one of life's great mysteries. You're listening to music in the living room, but you gotta grab something from the kitchen. You don't want to take the speaker with you, but you also don't want to miss that beat drop. And this is where I introduce you to the magic of Sonos. Sonos sent me a couple of speakers to try out, so I've got to move two here in the living room. And then I walk down the hall.

• 17:02Speaker 07

  I get in here to the kitchen, and I got a brand new Sonos Play right here on the counter. I can open the fridge, grab a seltzer.

• 17:19Speaker 07

  And yeah, I didn't miss a second. And I can make each speaker louder or softer in the Sonos app, or if I'm using AirPlay, so I can make it louder in the kitchen without blasting whoever is still in the living room. It's all just easy, and it sounds amazing. These speakers are crisp, they've got great bass, and I'm especially impressed with the new Sonos Play. It packs this truly awesome sound in a much smaller size.

• 17:48Speaker 07

  So I don't know if I want to

• 17:52Speaker 07

  head outside for a minute.

• 17:55Speaker 07

  It's super easy and yeah, pretty nice out. Visit sonos.com and build your system. Sonos, love the sound, feel the system.

• 18:10Speaker 00

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• 18:53Speaker 00

  I think my favorite thing about Quince clothes is that they're just good wardrobe staples. I got three black shirts from them, each in a slightly different style, and they are just correct. They fit the way they are supposed to, they look nice, they feel nice, and they go well with the rest of my closet. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, please let them know it was unexplainable. It's a great way to support the show.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  I'm Dan Pauly and I'm at Mass Inere Infirmary, where I'm the director of the Lauer Tennis Research Center and professor at Harvard Medical School.

• 20:22Speaker 07

  I might have to do this often because of where you are right now, but I'm just gonna do that again in one second after the siren has gone.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  After the siren, yeah, which just confirms I work at a hospital.

• 20:32Speaker 07

  Exactly. I don't know if this is...

• 20:33Speaker 03

  Ambulance is behind me.

• 20:34Speaker 07

  We'll try this one time and then I don't know if we'll be able to keep doing it. But yeah, one more time, if you can just say your name and the best way to introduce you.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  I'm Dan Pauly. I'm the director of the Lauer Tinnitus Research Center at Mass Inere and professor at Harvard Medical School.

• 20:50Speaker 07

  Okay, so last time we talked was for the tinnitus episode in the Sound Barrier series.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 20:57Speaker 07

  And we just got tons of questions from listeners that I'd love to run by you in a sec. But before I get there, I kind of want to ask you a question I had that came up while I was doing this episode. Basically, you have tinnitus, right? You told me you got it after you became a researcher.

• 21:16Speaker 03

  That's true. Yep.

• 21:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, so the other researcher I talked to, Stefan, he also got it after becoming a researcher. And this psychologist I know listened to the episode and told me he got it after working with tinnitus patients for years. And I was even obsessing about tinnitus so much while making this episode that I kind of thought I started hearing things. And I guess, I'm wondering, do you think there's anything going on here that's more than just irony? That there might be some kind of connection between focusing on tinnitus a lot and getting it?

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Okay, so let me play the skeptic. As researchers, you don't really ever get to choose what you're gonna do research on until you're a little bit older and number one risk factor for tinnitus is age. So I think there's a, okay, all right, so like a little bit of a

• 22:07Speaker 07

  Okay, fair.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  coincidence there, but I started doing research after the Boston Marathon bombings. You know, there were 100 people standing near those blasts that developed it afterwards. You know, I just kind of felt a calling because of wanting to feel useful to something that was like big and eventful in the city I lived in and the people I worked with. And then I, you know, I was able to relate to it personally because I went to this wedding of

• 22:34Speaker 07

  A Scottish postdoc in my lab and the bagpipers and the sound of the music that basically was like the straw that broke the camel's back. I guess after that event, the tinnitus that came from being around loud sounds that normally clears up didn't and it's still with me. But the brain is always perched right on the razor's edge of being able to produce tinnitus. If you look at the activity of the brain in silence of somebody without tinnitus, it's very active. It's not like the brain is quiescent when there isn't a sound. It's just that that activity that's ongoing isn't being read out by your consciousness as a

• 23:16Speaker 07

  sound. So really, what distinguishes all this sort of blinking lights of neurons firing from being read out as a percept versus not? What is the line between hallucination and just the ongoing sort of noise of this massive machine at work? This is the key question of why is there tinnitus? It isn't like a switch that goes on or off. It's probably very subtle. What distinguishes activity in the brain during silence that is just not perceived as anything versus the activity that is perceived as this never ending sound? That's not just a philosophical question. That's like what gives me confidence that

• 24:00Speaker 07

  we can defeat tinnitus because it's not like you have to take this aberration in the brain and turn it back to nothing. You just have to disorganize it enough to go back to what it was before you didn't have tinnitus, which is still plenty of activity in the presence of silence. It just isn't being read out consciously as a sound.

• 24:22Speaker 07

  All right, let's get to some of the questions we got from listeners on tinnitus and silence. Yep. The first one I wanted to get into was a question. About misophonia?

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 24:31Speaker 07

  Can you tell me a bit about misophonia? Like what it is, how it works?

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Sure, misophonia is a condition where

• 24:40Speaker 03

  certain sounds elicit a very powerful, very negative emotional reaction.

• 24:46Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  Irritation does not do it justice. It's closer to almost like anger or like rage. It's like extremely unpleasant.

• 24:55Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  So chewing, burping, coughing, sometimes like tapping on the keyboard or clicking a computer mouse will be triggered. So these are often sounds that when they're experienced by someone on the other end, they're like, ah.

• 25:11Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, extremely irritating.

• 25:13Speaker 07

  I don't know. I've, I've felt like I've had something like misophonia for a long time. I remember as a child, when I would hear certain types of mechanical noise, like a fridge or an AC unit, it's hard to describe. It would sometimes sound like it was angry.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 25:29Speaker 07

  And I would kind of freak out as a kid. Is that sort of what misophonia is? This sort of like profound fear discomfort response to sounds?

• 25:44Speaker 03

  Look, I'm a neuroscientist, so way I look at it, of all the senses, the auditory system has a really strong interconnectedness with the limbic system. So limbic system, you know, regulates mood and emotion. It also is surveilling the environment for threats. So imagine all of these bridges between the hearing parts of the brain and the limbic parts of the brain. If the weights are changed slightly on them, they can quickly take on an emotional significance.

• 26:14Speaker 07

  Hmm.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  It seems in a way almost like arbitrary. Like, why does listening to the sound of a refrigerator sort of elicit this sort of emotional reaction? But. The hearing system is the watchman of our bodies, right? It is doing 24-hour surveillance. And so, of course, it sort of has a privileged connection with the parts of our brain that are assessing threats. Because that's what we depend on the auditory system for. Threats that our other senses might not catch, threats we might encounter while we're sleeping. So it's a good thing that the auditory system is so heavily interconnected with brain systems that evaluate threats, but it's also a vulnerability.

• 26:52Noam Hassenfeld?

  That just makes me think of what you said last time about how people with tinnitus have a whole brain problem. That it's not necessarily just hearing a sound. It's actually that that sound is maybe getting hooked into their other emotional centers of their brain. I wonder if you think there's a way of connecting them or thinking about them in the same way?

• 27:11Speaker 03

  In that regard, yes. I mean, what makes them different is that in tinnitus, it's a sound that doesn't exist in the external world. In misophonia, it is so about an actual, physical sound. So when you think about their upstream, how are they elicited? They couldn't be more different. But they become very similar when you think about the common relationship they share between this emotional response to activity that's flowing out of the auditory centers of the brain.

• 27:43Noam Hassenfeld?

  Yeah. Someone else wrote in and was talking about, rather than trying to get rid of tinnitus, trying to embrace it. Has that ever been a conversation you've had to maybe even try to see the beauty in tinnitus?

• 28:00Speaker 03

  You know, I think about like those guitar cases that like as somebody has owned a guitar for a while, like it just accumulates dings and dents. I mean, as we age, our bodies accumulate injuries and the world has acted on it. It is me and this is my guitar case. It's not brand new. So I really love the spirit of that suggestion. If you experience it as other, you experience it as being assaulted by it. It's irrepressible. I want to oppress it. It is an adversarial relationship. And of course, like-

• 28:32Speaker 07

  It's going to bother you. You're going to come to hate it. And if you understand that it is being produced by you, it is a part of you. That's nice. I mean, I think I say all this, like, I'm a researcher because I don't accept that tinnitus. Right? Like, I don't think that people should have to get used to it. I think that there is a way to silence it, and I am totally hellbent. And like, it consumes my every waking professional moment of like, how are we actually going to be able to do this? So I don't mean to just offer the glib advice of like, try to embrace it. But at the same time, like, it's a good approach in the absence of some wonderful therapy that my lab or a clinician will come up with. Like, you know, you gotta use the tools available to you. That's the one that that we all have.

• 29:16Speaker 07

  You know, I was talking to a musician I play with, who told me that he's had tinnitus for a while because of playing loud music without earplugs. And he told me that when he thinks about his tinnitus, it shows him how much of what we hear is kind of like a trick our brain is playing on us. And it reminded me of what you said last time we talked. You said, the brain doesn't have direct contact with the physical world. So everything we perceive as consciousness is constructed from the activity of our brain. Yeah. And I guess I just wonder, does working on tinnitus make you amazed or surprised or humbled by what the brain can do? Oh, my gosh, yes. Yes, yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 07

  You know, it seems like so ineffable, you know, just like, how does the brain work? You're like, good luck figuring that out. You almost need a foothold. So, you know, tinnitus is so, you know, I wouldn't, you would never design a brain that way, you think. Like, why, like, what? But it's one of those flaws that like, you know, there's that line that, medicine is the great tutor of biology, that, you know, by studying these sort of exceptional cases of when the human body doesn't work as it should, that you actually figure out like how it manages to work at all. And so, yeah, studying tinnitus gives me a foothold to study those operations and appreciate them more.

• 30:46Speaker 07

  Because to know that it can fail in this very specific mode gives me an insight into it.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  How it works normally. It fuels a huge amount of the research we do in the lab. It makes me appreciate that it works, you know, 99% of the time.

• 31:17Noam Hassenfeld?

  This was the fifth installment of our Sound Barrier series. We might keep putting these out once in a while, so let us know if you have any thoughts or suggestions or questions you want us to look into on the science of hearing. We've also heard from a few teachers who've wanted to use some of the stuff from our series for their students. If you're using any of our episodes in the classroom, please let us know. We'd love to hear about different ways you're using them. And if you need resources, we're always here, so feel free to give us a shout. This episode was produced by me, Noam Hassenfeld. I also wrote the music. Editing from Jorge Just with help from Joanna Solotaroff, who's also running the show. Mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala and fact checking from Melissa Hirsch. Sally Helm is trying to take over the sky. Amy Padula is trying to take over the sea.

• 32:02Noam Hassenfeld?

  Meredith Hadnot is our senior supervising producer. Julia Longoria is our editorial director. And Byrd Pinkerton took off toward the platypuses. "Where's Platty?" she yelled. "Where's Platty?" Finally, one of the platypuses pointed toward a hole in some tree roots by the river. And just barely sticking out of the hole, there was a small guitar.

• 32:29Noam Hassenfeld?

  Thanks to all the listeners who sent in emails or voice memos for this episode. Brett, Haley, Alex, Daniel, Daniel, Dan, Alessandro, Jay, Rob and Glenn, Gordon, Sarah, David, Mary, Brad, and so many more of you that we didn't get to feature. Every sound in the first half of this episode came from your recordings. I really can't tell you how much it means to me that you listened so carefully and that you wrote in with such thoughtful and generous messages. Thank you. Thanks also to Vartika Sharma and Paige Vickers for the artwork for the Sound Barrier series. Thanks, as always, to Brian Resnick for co-creating the show along with me and Bird. And if any of you out there have thoughts about the show, send us an email.

• 33:14Noam Hassenfeld?

  We're at [email protected].

• 33:17Noam Hassenfeld?

  You can also leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen. Really helps us out. And if you're into supporting the show even more and all of Vox in general, join our membership program. You can go to vox.com/members to sign up. And during the holidays this year, your membership actually goes further. When you join Vox as an annual member, we're going to gift a complimentary membership to a reader facing financial barriers. You can read more about all of this at the same site, vox.com/members. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we will see you next time.

• 33:59Noam Hassenfeld?

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• 34:27Noam Hassenfeld?

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