In Pursuit of Silence Page #3

preventing people

from getting sick.

What is central to this

whole situation we live in

is silence.

And that the sounds

that we notice

are merely bubbles on the

surface of silence that burst.

(BELL TOLLING)

(BEEPING)

- (LAUGHING)

- (RUMBLING)

(PHONE RINGING)

(DISTORTED MUSIC)

(BLARING)

(BARKING)

(CRYING)

(STATIC)

(SQUEAKING)

(RINGING)

(WHIRRING)

Silence doesn't really exist.

Silence is sounds.

If I stop talking, for instance,

now we hear

the sounds of Sixth Avenue.

Sound is affecting

our brain waves,

our heart rate, our breathing,

our hormone secretions.

All of our physical rhythms

are being affected by sound

outside us all the time.

A sudden noise, for example...

So, anybody watching that

probably had a little shot of

cortisol, fight/flight hormone.

And that happens to us

a lot in cities.

On the other hand,

if you imagine surf,

that would calm you down,

in fact even send you to sleep.

Many people will

go to sleep to surf.

So, physiologically

sound affects us,

that's the first way.

Second is psychologically.

It changes our mood,

our feelings.

Music does that.

So do other things,

like birdsong.

The third way that sound

affects us is cognitively.

So, you can't understand two

people talking at the same time.

We've got a huge

storage space in our brain,

but the auditory input channel

is quite limited

in its bandwidth.

Roughly 1.6 human conversations.

Of course, we have no ear-lids.

- (OVERLAPPING SPEECH)

- Therefore if we're in an office

and we hear somebody talking

and they're taking up

one of our 1.6,

it doesn't leave us

with much bandwidth

to listen to our internal voice

where we're trying to

write something

or calculate something.

And the final way sound

affects us is behaviorally.

We'll move away

from unpleasant sound.

We'll move, if we can,

towards pleasant sound.

Here in London, they have about

140 Tube stations

with classical music

playing in them now

because the research has shown

that classical music

reduces vandalism.

If you put pounding music on

and you're driving,

then suddenly

you'll drive faster.

That kind of behavioral change

happens to us all the time.

(PLAYING JAZZY MELODY)

ARLINE BRONZAFT:
Sound is

a physical phenomenon, right?

And when the sound hits the ear,

the ear physiologically

picks up the sound

brings it to the brain

and the sound is identified.

Mama!

When does it become noise?

That's a different part

of the brain.

(AIRPLANE ENGINE ROARING)

That's the part of the brain

that says,

you know,

this particular sound

is intruding on

what I'm trying to do.

This is unwanted,

unpleasant sound.

(SIRENS WAILING DISTANTLY)

(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER:
It is official,

Arrowhead Stadium is again

the loudest outdoor stadium

in the world.

Fans reached 142.2 decibels,

beating the

Seattle Seahawks fans

who previously had that record.

To put this amount of noise

in perspective for you,

it is more than a jet engine

and far more than the human

pain tolerance of the ear,

which is why the Chiefs

passed out about 36,000 earplugs

but that's only enough

for half of all these people

that were inside tonight.

(SIREN WAILING)

PROCHNIK:
I came to feel that

one way of articulating

the presence of noise

is to think about sound

that gets inside of you,

and for the time it's there,

dominates all of your

perceptual apparatus.

It might be bad,

it might be good,

you might be

in the mood for it or not,

but it's consuming you,

it's taking over your heartbeat

or at least taking over

your attention.

(TRAIN RUMBLING)

(TRAIN RUMBLING)

Almost everybody knows

that education is

very, very, very important.

But with the train passing by

every, like, two minutes,

you can't hear some things

that could be

very, very important

to know when you grow older.

TEACHER:
That's right.

Okay, so she said...

REBECCA BRATSPIES: For schools,

the internal maximum that the

city recommends is 35 decibels.

It's routinely over 85,

with the windows closed!

When the windows are open,

it's routinely in the 90s,

and this school doesn't have

any air conditioning,

so in August and September

and May and June,

those windows

have to be open

or it's unbearable

in the classrooms.

(MUTED CLAMORING)

PROCHNIK:
When people make

decisions in noise,

and this has been shown

again and again,

their decisions are reactive.

PAUL BARACH:
Noise is a

huge issue because it constantly

envelops everything we do.

It surrounds us.

There's technical

elements, devices,

pumps, alarms,

physical environment,

in combination with humans

that make mistakes.

We see very clearly anxiety,

delays in decision making,

errors in receiving information,

errors in

transmitting information,

errors in calculations

of medication dosages,

and a whole series

of other downstream problems

because of confusion caused by

the overall external noise.

(DANCE MUSIC

PLAYING ON SPEAKERS)

SUMAIRA ABDULALI: Mumbai is the

loudest city in the world

according to an

official statement

of the

Central Pollution Control Board.

We have a whole range

of festivals in India.

We call them traditional,

but traditionally

we didn't have loudspeakers.

I could say it

in terms of decibel levels,

but I think I should just say

that if you were to stand

right next to a jet engine

for a long period of time,

that's what your house

would be like

for at least three months

during the festival season.

And people can't bear it.

People in hospital,

there have been

instances of people

who have died

due to heart attacks.

The Supreme Court of India

first took notice of noise

when a 10-year-old girl

was raped during a festival

and her screams couldn't be

heard because of the noise.

(LOUD MUSIC PLAYING)

PROCHNIK:
If you look

at what's happening today,

I think we're in

a kind of frenzied echo chamber.

STEVEN ORFIELD:

Visually, it's busier.

Acoustically it's busier

and louder.

CARA BUCKLEY:
You just want

to go buy a sweater

and you're bombarded

with loud music.

There are decibel ratings in

New York restaurants of 90 now.

You're screaming at somebody

from a foot away to be heard.

Technically, in those

New York restaurants,

all the waiters

should be going around

with hearing protectors on.

BUCKLEY:
Obviously,

when you move to New York,

you're moving to a loud city.

It's the biggest, most vibrant

city in the country.

It's famously loud,

it famously never sleeps.

But what has seemed to happen

over the years,

what has changed is noise has

become more ubiquitous,

and we seem to be

almost desensitized to it.

Do you want me to ask

the neighbors? Is that sound...

MAN:
Yeah, is that the thumping?

(CREW TALKING INDISTINCTLY)

LEES:
Why should we

always be stimulated,

or more and more stimulated,

so it'll reach a fever pitch...

Then what happens?

Where do you go next?

PROCHNIK:
There is a tinier

and tinier space

for reflective thought.

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