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1:19

Hello, welcome to the podcast, The Shortcuts. I'm

1:21

Josie Long and today's episode is

1:23

about trying to cling on to meaningful

1:26

things when you're faced with

1:29

an absolute cacophony of

1:31

overwhelming distraction and confusion.

1:35

And I think I'm the right person to present it because

1:37

my whole life is spent being

1:39

hounded by the noise

1:42

of two children and then a deep

1:44

part of my animal brain trying to work out whether

1:46

it's just exuberance and banging or

1:49

whether

1:49

it is something that requires immediate intervention.

1:52

And then if you add on to that the allure of the portable

1:54

telephone, it's a wonder I get anything done

1:56

at all.

3:59

Specifically,

4:03

I started hearing

4:05

a

4:06

baby

4:09

crying

4:10

in my right ear.

4:16

I say a baby, but I do actually

4:18

know this baby. I recognise the cry. It's

4:20

my son, Elliot. Just

4:24

before Elliot was born, I

4:26

lost the hearing in my

4:29

right ear. The loss

4:31

happened pretty much overnight.

4:33

I just woke up one morning and

4:36

it was gone.

4:39

At the time, I joked that losing

4:42

half my hearing was going to be a blessing

4:44

when the baby came along. I'll only have to listen

4:46

to half as much crying. I joked

4:50

how wrong I was.

4:52

Because

4:54

instead of getting half,

4:56

I get it like

4:57

five times more. On

5:01

a bad day, I feel like I hear

5:03

it all the time.

5:09

As you might imagine, it's

5:12

very hard to edit together a radio programme

5:14

when you can't tell what sounds are

5:16

real and which ones are

5:18

in your head. So I've not been able to return

5:21

to work since it happened. Sometimes

5:23

I think it's the stress of this

5:26

that's making my condition worse.

5:30

In addition to the hallucinations,

5:32

I also have this wall of tinnitus

5:35

running down my right hand side.

5:39

My tinnitus tends to get worse when I experience

5:41

lots of high frequency noises,

5:43

which means recently I started

5:46

hearing my baby crying

5:48

in traffic. It's

5:51

a bit like a detuned radio, the

5:54

controller hovering right on

5:56

the edge of a station, all

5:58

the voices hidden

5:59

just on the other side. Hearing

6:07

impairment. Just

6:09

in general sensory impairment can cause hallucinations.

6:12

My actual baby could be

6:15

hundreds of miles away and still

6:19

right there

6:21

buried somewhere in that

6:24

snowbank of Sturtzich. I hear him, white, and

6:28

cool for me.

6:34

You're losing a sense

6:36

and yet your brain is kind of like not

6:38

wanting to give up on the sense. Like

6:40

it keeps on creating this information even though

6:43

there shouldn't be any information anymore

6:46

or at least less information. If

6:50

you think of Phantom Limb it's

6:53

kind of the same idea. There's

6:56

something missing, there's no input coming anymore but

6:58

yet you feel like you're still having the

7:01

Limbs that's missing.

7:04

Next I need you to put these headphones on. Don't

7:08

put them on yet. Just hold

7:11

them. You're

7:13

right handed. So far I've

7:15

had an MRI scan and four audiology exams and

7:18

counting. As yet

7:23

no one has been able to explain to me why my hearing

7:25

vanished like it did.

7:29

Now in a minute I'm going to play some short

7:31

tones into the headphones. Every time you hear

7:33

a sound I want you to tap the button as

7:36

soon as you hear it. Got it. You

7:38

can put the headphones on now. Whenever

7:44

I take one of these bleep tests something

7:48

strange happens.

7:50

Each new beep

7:53

keeps echoing over and over.

7:57

Very quickly it becomes impossible

7:59

to tell. which beeps are the real

8:01

ones and which ones are just in my

8:03

head.

8:04

My brain has started struggling

8:08

to separate sound

8:10

from memory. It's

8:12

just the same thing that's happening to me when I hear

8:15

that phantom baby

8:17

cry. It

8:20

seems like there is a memory

8:22

part involved there, so a

8:24

lot of people, for example, report that they're

8:27

hearing songs from their childhood.

8:29

Christmas carols are a common theme

8:31

or national anthems are

8:33

also a very common song to hear. And also

8:36

based on my own research we thought that

8:38

there is more activity in the hippocampus

8:40

or the parahippocampus, which is a region

8:43

that is involved in memory.

8:46

It's unsettling

8:50

to hear the past and the

8:52

present simultaneously and

8:55

to be incapable of distinguishing one from the

8:57

other.

8:57

You're not creating a new baby, you're

9:00

hearing a recording of your own baby.

9:02

See if I knew that I was hearing a recording

9:05

then I think the sound could almost

9:07

give me comfort in a way.

9:10

It would let me feel as if he was with me even

9:13

when he wasn't. But

9:16

it's very hard to

9:19

remember that the

9:21

cry isn't real, even

9:23

when the sound seems to be emanating

9:25

from an electricity generator in a back

9:28

alley. I know that sounds stupid but it

9:30

doesn't matter where the sound is coming from. When

9:33

a baby cries,

9:36

you run to it.

9:41

I had a patient once

9:44

who likes to do Sudokus to just

9:46

keep himself busy so he doesn't

9:48

listen to the music

9:50

that's going on in the sand. And

9:53

I also know that some people hear the doorbell

9:57

ringing constantly and they keep on going to the

9:59

door. And there,

10:01

one of the recommendations would be, get

10:04

the light doorbell. So if you don't

10:06

see the light going off, don't

10:08

go to the door. So there are some ways

10:10

to deal with it, but generally speaking,

10:13

as of now, I think the best way is to improve

10:16

the hearing and hope that

10:19

research will come up with some new ideas.

10:22

So let me turn your chair to face the

10:25

wall here. I'm

10:27

going to stand behind you like this. And in a second,

10:29

I'm going to say a series of words. Okay?

10:32

Okay. And after each word, I want you to say the word back

10:34

to me. If you can't fully understand the

10:36

word, just take your best guess, or you

10:39

can just say pass. Okay.

10:41

Anchor. Anchor.

10:43

Answer. Answer.

10:46

Future.

10:48

Chair.

10:51

Mountain. Mountain.

10:54

Rodeo. Rodeo.

10:57

Every time I experience

10:59

one of these hallucinations,

11:01

it's as if my brain is autonomously

11:05

writing me a poem. It's

11:07

taking a bunch of random

11:09

observations, a door slam, a

11:11

traffic light, a gust of wind, and

11:14

finding a way to reinterpret

11:17

them to uncover some

11:20

hidden memory buried in the noise.

11:24

Maybe I have to find a way to

11:27

appreciate these accidental

11:29

poems, to own them in some way. Good.

11:32

So

11:35

in a second, I'm just going to remove this wall

11:37

here. Okay.

11:40

And behind the wall, there's going to be a

11:42

forest, okay? Okay. Now

11:46

it's going to be quite loud in the forest, and

11:48

there's not going to be a tremendous amount of light

11:50

either. It's always dark in the

11:52

forest, long before the sun sets.

11:54

You start the button, don't you? Uh,

11:56

yeah. And every time you hear

11:58

a voice that isn't there, you...

11:59

give it a click. Okay. One

12:03

click for every time you hear his voice. Got

12:06

it. I'm gonna move the wall

12:09

now.

12:14

Whatever

12:18

is happening in my brain, the

12:21

scientific explanation can only

12:23

go so far. There's always

12:25

going to be gaps in

12:28

the explanation, just

12:31

as there are gaps in my hearing. Apollo,

12:37

even one that you don't understand, it's not

12:39

such a bad place to hang out. You

12:42

just have to slow down

12:45

and let yourself dream a little.

12:49

These echoes that you're hearing, it can

12:51

make it hard to know what's real. I understand

12:53

that. But it's not going to stay

12:55

like this. That whining, rushing

12:58

noise you hear now, it doesn't leave,

13:00

but it does retreat. Eventually

13:03

you're going to get a hearing device that works for

13:05

you and find a way to work again, making

13:08

your weird little audio dramas once

13:10

more. You know how I know that.

13:12

Because we're

13:15

in one right now. Bingo.

13:20

You went out on your bike one day to record the

13:22

sound of this forest tear. All

13:24

my equipment on this table, slowly

13:27

hands recorded in your kitchen. That's

13:30

the label. This

13:35

conversation is based on your first hearing

13:37

test, but I'm not the actual audiologist

13:39

who gave you the exam. I'm

13:42

your wife. Reading

13:45

a script you wrote for me.

13:49

I think I get it. I'm basically

13:52

hearing an echo. Oh, this

13:54

is an echo of something that already happened. In

13:58

a way.

16:12

In the moments of life when

16:14

it feels like the very foundations

16:17

of your reality is shaking, it

16:19

can feel hardest to make a path through

16:21

the woods. In 2020,

16:26

just after her long-time partner had died,

16:29

the radio producer Liza Jaeger found

16:32

herself trying and failing

16:34

to make stories explicitly about her grief.

16:38

Instead she kept

16:40

gravitating towards the kind of conversations

16:43

you're about to hear.

16:47

I don't know if it might need the

16:50

first explanation about the

16:54

actual witch.

17:03

Onigrat used to be my upstairs neighbor. We

17:06

lived in a brick house with a purple door, and

17:08

at the time I was hanging out with a lot of poets.

17:12

They would sometimes talk about this idea that every

17:14

poet had to have an existential wound

17:16

to use as material. I

17:19

liked the idea of turning my sadness into art,

17:22

but instead I kept finding myself

17:24

interviewing people like Onigrat about

17:26

things like witchcraft.

17:30

Yeah, so I grew up in this

17:32

little village in northern Germany,

17:34

and at the end of the village,

17:38

or a little bit outside basically, Elizabeth

17:41

Engler, the village

17:44

witch lived. What

17:45

did that

17:46

mean that she is the village witch? Well

17:48

that just means that everybody

17:51

knew that she could... Besprechen.

17:56

I just looked it up. So the English translation

17:59

would be cured. by incantation.

18:02

So everybody knew that she

18:04

can do that and if anybody

18:06

had something where they didn't want to go to the

18:09

doctor,

18:09

which farmers in northern Germany

18:11

usually don't do,

18:12

you would constantly hear, oh,

18:14

get off to the hospital, you're going to be sick.

18:18

Why don't you go to

18:19

Elizabeth and she'll cure

18:22

by

18:22

incantation?

18:27

Yeah, I don't know. It was so normal. It

18:29

was a normal part of village

18:32

life.

18:39

Normally you want the in

18:41

between the microphone and

18:43

the person's mouth, it should be like this much

18:45

space, like not that much space. Oh,

18:48

that's close.

18:51

We got a two by four, we can put under

18:53

it. You good? Good?

18:56

Good? Yeah. There's a lot of

18:58

static. Good.

19:06

My friend Molly and I interviewed Ed

19:08

in his house,

19:09

which is four barns stuck together

19:11

on a farm in Nebraska. The

19:13

first question that I thought of when I was like,

19:15

I want to interview Ed was, what

19:19

kind of cycles does time move in for

19:21

you?

19:25

That's an interesting question. Cycles

19:29

meaning, like,

19:32

how does it line up

19:34

with daylight hours, things like that,

19:36

or getting things done

19:38

on time? Not getting

19:41

things done, but that's

19:43

pretty much a cycle. A thought cycle

19:45

might be something else too. You know, you just get

19:47

lost in thoughts. Especially

19:49

out here. Pretty much out here. You get

19:52

lost in all kinds of ways out here.

20:16

Did you always like it? Did

20:19

you always like it at heart?

20:21

I

20:24

said time is

20:26

something you can deal with out here. You

20:29

know, you make your own time. The

20:32

birds

20:34

and the sun and all that and what you

20:37

create space from and

20:42

time from. The

20:44

sun and moon tell you what day it is. It's

20:47

not like you say, I

20:49

like it here. It's just like there is like

20:52

you have a spiritual base someplace

20:55

on this earth that you can return to. Here's

20:58

where you feel comfy, here's where you can relax,

21:00

here's where you can do something you

21:04

want to do, need

21:06

to do. Yeah.

21:11

You

21:11

know, you can create your own force out

21:13

here, you might say.

21:31

This is my friend Jan, playing

21:33

an out of tune piano. What

21:41

is your favorite part of your life?

21:44

I don't know, I've had,

21:50

I lost my mom when

21:52

I was pretty young and I

21:54

lost my dad a few years ago. And,

21:57

no, I

21:59

don't know.

21:59

that's the start to that. What's the start?

22:03

So people, right? They have

22:06

been here and I see so many

22:10

colleagues and artists

22:12

do works of grief because we

22:14

want to do them justice and at least giving

22:17

an account, like a witness testimony

22:20

of how they've been here and like make

22:23

a point about how they've been beautiful

22:25

and nice and how it's something

22:27

you can never forgive that

22:29

they are not there anymore and that's my gripe

22:31

with the green

22:33

stages is that you

22:35

have to have this acceptance that this is a part

22:37

of nature which I don't think we have

22:40

to have.

22:45

In Russia in the early 20th century

22:50

there were these ideas of we

22:52

have understood physics and biology

22:54

and nature in such a way now that we are just like

22:56

moments away from understanding the human

22:59

anatomy so much that

23:03

we can just like not have death anymore

23:05

because it's just an effect of nature

23:07

that you can get rid of such as polio

23:11

and

23:13

if we have cracked the code

23:15

of what a human is you can also bring back

23:17

humans that have died if you have the code.

23:25

And I feel like you described

23:27

to me like a just state will create

23:30

a good life for every person. That's right yeah.

23:32

Including the Dan? Oh right this

23:35

is yeah the idea is that

23:37

yeah at some point communism

23:40

will

23:41

win in a way that there is no more scarcity

23:44

there will be enough

23:46

living space

23:48

clothing time houses

23:53

food for everyone

23:54

my favorite communist author

23:57

Vinaya Damsak calls this moment in

23:59

time.

23:59

the point when history starts.

24:02

Because that's when, you know, humans

24:06

are free to do things

24:09

like really

24:11

focusing in on bringing back the dead.

24:14

I can't have the good life just

24:16

for us to live now. That's injustice, only

24:18

justice. Anybody who has ever lived also

24:20

gets to enjoy that. There's

24:23

also no problem of space, like

24:25

where we put these people, because at that point we have

24:27

also started space colonization.

24:31

And for you, like, why

24:33

do you like to think about it? Or what does this, how does

24:35

this idea sort of sit for

24:37

you in your life in the world that

24:40

we live in?

24:43

Like the boring answer is that I think it

24:45

makes a point about utopian thinking and that

24:47

shouldn't, it

24:50

shouldn't stop at the point where we can imagine

24:53

a thing, but go beyond that. And

24:56

the other answer is of course that I am, I

24:59

like not making peace. And

25:03

I think not making peace with death

25:06

is how it's being good.

25:10

And

25:12

then, maybe... I

25:25

do believe that we can kind

25:28

of influence more than we are, we

25:30

are of just by focusing

25:32

and just kind of connecting

25:34

to your

25:37

surroundings.

25:38

Because I think that's really what witches

25:40

basically do, they just kind of ground

25:43

themselves and they focus

25:45

on something.

27:38

You

28:30

You You

29:30

You You

29:54

Thank you so much for listening to shortcuts

29:56

I really hope you enjoyed the show and if

29:58

you did you can find many more programs

29:59

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30:03

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30:20

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30:28

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30:30

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30:33

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30:35

unwanted noise.

30:38

Who's in the news for all the wrong reasons?

30:41

Step inside the world of crisis

30:43

management and so-called spin doctors

30:45

with me David Yelland and me Simon

30:47

Lewis in our new podcast from BBC Radio

30:50

4 we tell you what's really going on behind

30:52

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30:55

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30:57

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30:59

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31:02

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