Episode 141 - Why Hearing May Be The Most Important of Your Senses

[JulyDiaz 2797]

It's underestimated how important your sense of hearing is, how much it affects your daily life in ways you don't fully appreciate. Take the inconceivable geometry you do in your head all the time, thanks to your ears. Say you're standing with your back facing a street and you hear a car approaching from the right--how do you know that? Your brain is instantly calculating the miniscule differences in volume and the slight difference in time it takes for the sound of the car to reach both ears. Yes, thank you Captain Obvious, but it's still an amazing feat that you're performing all the time, every day, with everything you hear.

 

You probably don't even know how much you hear every day, how unaccustomed to silence you actually are. Silence actually sounds weird, your brain knows something is wrong when it's absolutely quiet. Conversely, really loud places like cities take up so much of your subconscious mental capacities that they also create a sense of unnerving. That's why the sound of nature is so relaxing to us.

 

On this week's podcast Cracked editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien is joined by actor/comedian Johnny Pemberton, whose podcast 'Twisting the Wind' is an incredible aural experiment, a constantly surprising manipulation of sound that pushes the boundaries of what's expected in a podcast. They talk about the power of noise pollution, incredible Tuvan throat singing rap music, how John Williams stole everything from Russian composers and sonic devices that mess with our heads like speech jammers and The Mosquito.

 

Footnotes:

 

Johnny Pemberton's Website: http://goo.gl/bZ9Tv9

 

Twisting the Wind with Johnny Pemberton: http://goo.gl/SzgA4H

 

TED Talk on Noise Pollution: https://goo.gl/YFtlrX

 

Tuvan Throat Singing: https://goo.gl/o7yX7h

 

Tuvan Throat Singing Rap: https://goo.gl/fV8RuQ

 

The Best of Shostakovich: https://goo.gl/kZp2aA

 

Timmy Thomas - Why Can't We Live Together: https://goo.gl/QlPFzP

 

Pantera - Mouth for War: https://goo.gl/MBE8pQ

 

Trailer for Glenn Gould Documentary "Genius Within": https://goo.gl/5OoTlN

 

The Daily Beast: Slow TV: http://goo.gl/0p8o6x

 

In-Browser Speech Jammer: https://goo.gl/Te4jr2

 

Reading Dr. Seuss with Speech Jammer: https://goo.gl/TmFR68

 

Infrasound: https://goo.gl/ZWe5ao

 

The Mosquito: https://goo.gl/YnYV8h

 

 

Come see us at the Now Hear This podcast festival: nowhearthisfest.com

[jarrycanada 2483]

boy, you guys really go off topic real quick it's like ease dropping on someone else phone call and your not sure if you should be listening. but I am tuning out.

[SeanBoyer 22]

Ironic that Johnny sounds like shit! Sounds like he's using a Fisher-price cell phone.

 

Never the less, an interesting episode, and great to hear from Johnny!