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You're listening. You're

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listening. You're listening. To 20.

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Thousand. Hertz. 20,000

0:48

Hertz. Listener stories. Listener

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stories. Listener stories. Is it

0:53

listener stories? Mm-hmm. Call

0:56

and Response by Andrew. That

1:06

is our family whistle. When

1:09

I was growing up, my parents came up

1:11

with that so we could always find each other

1:14

in a crowd or in the grocery store when

1:16

we were little kids and would get lost. So

1:19

it was a call and response kind of thing. If

1:22

ever you were somewhere out in public and

1:25

you heard the first, it

1:28

was obligatory to respond with

1:31

the, and then to help zero in

1:33

and find each other, again there'd be a, and

1:37

you'd respond, and

1:39

then you'd find each other. And

1:42

I just think that's really neat. It was

1:44

pretty embarrassing when I was little, but

1:47

that's kind of what makes family special, I

1:49

guess. It's the really embarrassing things

1:51

that are actually really neat when you think about them.

2:00

Drings by Renee. My

2:02

story about sound is about something

2:05

that happened to me years ago.

2:07

It's one of the weirdest experiences

2:09

of my life. And what

2:11

it was, was I had

2:14

auditory hallucinations for days after

2:16

I contracted a flu, which completely

2:19

plugged up my ears so that

2:21

I couldn't hear anything or

2:23

I could hear very little. The

2:28

first day of the flu, mostly my head

2:30

felt like it was wrapped in a big

2:32

cotton ball. You know, I had

2:34

that white noise sound in my ears

2:36

all the time. And

2:40

I kept thinking I just can't stand this.

2:45

And I woke up the second

2:47

morning hearing music, very

2:50

distinct music. Not

2:53

imagining it, sharing it. And

2:56

what it was, was a kind of 101

2:59

strings perpetual repetitive

3:03

violin adagio. Ta

3:05

da da da da da da da da da da da da

3:07

da da. I

3:11

thought there's a radio somewhere, the sound must

3:13

be coming from somewhere. Of course there wasn't

3:16

a radio. It was coming from my head.

3:18

And my brain was constructing

3:20

this music out of the white noise

3:22

that I hated so much in order

3:24

to sort of give itself something to

3:27

do auditorily. And

3:30

if I tried, if I paid attention to

3:32

it, I could control it. I could make

3:34

it play a Beatles song.

3:43

I could make it play Creedence Clearwater,

3:45

something I like. But

3:53

as soon as I started thinking about something else,

3:56

I would come back. When

4:03

I finally got to the doctor, he

4:06

looked at my ears and said that

4:08

there was a lot of fluid behind

4:10

my eardrums, which explained what I had

4:13

been experiencing. Of course, when I told

4:15

him what exactly I'd been experiencing, he

4:17

looked at me like I had two

4:19

heads, like I was just babbling wildly.

4:24

The music faded away as my

4:26

ears cleared, and I've

4:28

never experienced anything like it again.

4:34

I've since learned that this is

4:37

not a rare phenomenon, that

4:39

people who suddenly lose their hearing

4:41

or who suddenly have nothing to

4:43

listen to, that their brains do

4:45

this. It caught me, one,

4:48

that one of

4:50

your senses going haywire

4:53

is extremely disorienting. The

4:56

other thing I learned from it is

4:58

that what you hear is

5:00

not just a function of your

5:02

ears, it's also a function of

5:04

your brain interpreting the signal,

5:07

and boy can it interpret it. In

5:19

the summer of 1978, when I

5:21

was nine years old, my friend Dale moved

5:23

out of the neighborhood. We

5:25

still went to the same school, but as there

5:27

was a year difference in our age, we never

5:29

really saw each other again. Fast

5:33

forward to the winter of 2011, and

5:35

I'm seated in a booth with my

5:37

parents at our favorite restaurant. And

5:40

in the very next booth was a lady

5:42

with her back to me, who was directly

5:44

across from the person she was eating with.

5:47

I couldn't see their faces and really

5:49

hadn't bothered to try, until I heard

5:51

her friend speak. I

5:56

couldn't even quite hear what he said, but a

5:58

strong sense of deja vu came out. came over

6:00

me. I leaned

6:02

nonchalantly in both directions trying

6:04

to get a glimpse, and

6:07

mom noticed something was wrong, and

6:09

I asked her, do you remember

6:11

Dale, the one that lived two

6:13

houses up? Yeah, and

6:16

I would bet you $50 right now

6:18

after not hearing him all

6:20

these years that that's him just a couple

6:22

of booths away. Just

6:24

then I heard him say, I'm going to run out of

6:26

the car for a minute, I forgot something, and

6:29

as he walked by our table, I stopped him

6:31

and asked, Dale? It

6:33

was him. Over three decades

6:35

later, after last hearing an eight

6:37

year old kid's voice, I was

6:39

able to recognize him as an

6:41

adult after just one muffled sentence.

6:49

A constant reminder by Robin.

6:53

So about 10 years ago when I was 30, I

6:56

tore the artery in

6:58

my neck that goes to part of my brain, and

7:00

it clotted and threw little clots to my

7:03

brain. So

7:05

at the age of 30, I was the only

7:08

breastfeeding mom on the stroke floor, and

7:10

I would not stay in the hospital,

7:13

I would not go to rehab, I had a

7:15

baby at home and a toddler, so they officially

7:17

discharged me. A few

7:19

weeks later, I was home on blood

7:21

thinners to keep me from throwing more

7:23

clots to my brain, and I

7:26

heard this sound. And

7:30

I was like, I hear my heartbeat in my

7:32

ear. That is bizarre. And

7:36

I'm a doctor, I'm a family physician,

7:38

and I was like, that's also really

7:40

scary. His pulsatile tinnitus

7:42

is bad. Not always,

7:44

but it's possible that if it's a

7:46

vascular cause from blood vessels, it's bad,

7:49

and I had just had quite a

7:51

bad experience with my vessels. The

7:56

first time I went to the hospital, they gave me about a

7:59

40% chance of getting a blood of dying that night. And

8:02

I made it through. I didn't dissect any further into

8:04

my brain, so that was cool. But

8:06

I didn't want to repeat that experience. I

8:09

called my neurologist, and he

8:11

sent me straight to the emergency room where

8:13

they did another image of my blood

8:15

vessels. And what they discovered is

8:17

that my blood vessel had started to open up

8:19

a little bit. And when

8:21

blood vessels are open all the way, they don't make

8:23

any noise. Just like if you open your mouth really

8:26

wide and you blow, it doesn't really

8:28

make any noise. But if they're really tight,

8:30

then they do make sounds. Kind of like

8:32

if you're going to whistle. You hold your

8:34

lips pursed in order to make the whistling

8:36

sound. So

8:39

my blood vessel whistles, only it

8:41

just sounds like my heartbeat. And

8:44

ever since then, it's been about 10 years now, I can

8:47

hear my heartbeat at all times. And

8:50

if there's a lot going on, I don't notice it. If it's

8:53

quiet, I notice it. And

8:56

if I get sinus symptoms, if

8:58

I'm stuffy or congested, it's super

9:01

loud. So

9:04

now I'm always with my heartbeat. And

9:06

once in a while, it gets me

9:08

extremely anxious, because hearing your own heartbeat

9:10

all the time is unnerving,

9:13

to say the least. But

9:16

I've learned to use it as

9:18

an opportunity to remember my heart is still beating.

9:25

And I'm still around for my kids and

9:27

my life and all the things that I

9:29

want to be doing. So

9:33

sound is important in many, many

9:35

ways. And thanks to your

9:37

podcast, everywhere I go, I'm monitoring the sounds and

9:39

saying, how did they make that and why do

9:41

they have it that way? And

9:44

how did mine get made? Why do

9:46

I have it? Well, how it got

9:48

made is that I tore my artery and almost died.

9:51

And why? I guess

9:53

it's so that I can remember that I'm alive. The

10:02

Night Whistler by Matt. Back

10:05

in college, junior year was my

10:07

first year off campus and I was renting a

10:09

house with some friends and

10:12

it was kind of off the beaten path. You

10:14

couldn't really see lights outside of the house. So

10:16

when it's dark outside, you can't really see three

10:19

feet away from the house. Anyway,

10:21

my roommate asked if I wanted to go

10:23

to a party with her that night. And

10:26

I declined and said, I need to stay

10:28

back and practice because I was a dorky

10:30

music major. And so

10:32

I'm just back at the house by myself, all

10:35

the windows open in late August, playing trombone.

10:38

["Trombone in D'Argentine"] And

10:43

I hear this strange whistling,

10:45

something like... ["Trombone

10:48

in D'Argentine"] And

10:55

I was freaked out. In my mind, the

10:57

only thing it could have been was someone

10:59

looking in the windows at me and it

11:01

being so dark, I couldn't see out and

11:05

figure out who is possibly looking at

11:07

me, practicing and whistling at

11:09

me. It was

11:11

really unsettling. So I went around and locked

11:13

all the windows, put my

11:15

trombone away and went to bed.

11:22

So I get up the next morning, I make some coffee

11:24

and I'm sitting in the living room and

11:27

I hear again. ["Trombone

11:31

in D'Argentine"] And

11:36

I am wondering what is happening.

11:42

So it turns out my roommate

11:44

had put a hourly bird clock,

11:46

a different bird sings on every

11:48

hour. It turns out at 10

11:50

o'clock the last night, the

11:52

morning dove had done its morning

11:55

dove thing. Woo woo

11:57

woo woo woo woo woo. And

12:00

at 10 a.m., the morning dove did its

12:03

morning dove thing again. So the mystery was

12:05

solved and I thought it was hilarious that

12:07

I'd been so freaked out

12:09

the previous night about a clock. Up

12:17

next, a final story from a listener who had

12:19

to give up almost all of the sound in

12:21

her life. How that happened and

12:23

what she did next, after the break. This

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That's netsuite.com/20k. Congratulations

13:38

to Nick Storrs for getting last episode's

13:40

mystery sound right. That's

13:43

the message notification sound from ICQ,

13:45

one of the earliest instant messaging

13:48

programs. Here's a few more ICQ sounds.

13:52

System message. Ribbit. I'd

13:55

love to tell you the name of the person

13:57

who designed these sounds, but unfortunately, as much as

13:59

we tried, We just could not find it. So

14:01

if you know who it is, let us know

14:03

at high at 20k.org. And

14:06

here's this episode's mystery sound. If

14:19

you know what made those sounds, tell us

14:21

at the web address mystery.20k.org. Anyone

14:24

who guesses it right will be entered to win a

14:27

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15:43

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babbel.com/20k. Rules

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and restrictions may apply. First

16:56

and found by Bethany. About

17:00

seven years ago, I had

17:02

a concussion

17:05

pretty serious, which resulted

17:08

in me developing chronic

17:10

post-concussion syndrome. It's

17:13

basically a brain injury

17:15

that results in chronic

17:17

symptoms of headaches, really

17:20

severe fatigue, sometimes

17:23

nausea or dizziness.

17:26

But more importantly, for this story,

17:28

it was really severe light

17:31

and noise sensitivity. So

17:35

basically, it just made

17:37

my brain extremely sensitive

17:39

to all noise. At

17:44

its worst, every sound

17:46

to me was like

17:48

nails on chalkboard. It

17:50

was just cringe. There's

17:54

certain sounds that I just hated more

17:57

than anything, like crinkling

17:59

chips. bags like that noise,

18:02

like clinking cutlery that

18:05

or like loading the dishwasher that

18:07

like kind of just oh it

18:09

was just awful. I couldn't be

18:11

in the same room as noises

18:13

like that because it was just

18:15

painful. Made my ears

18:17

throb my head pound. Some

18:20

days even just the

18:22

sound of my own voice just

18:25

reverberating in my head was too

18:27

much for me to handle. So

18:32

basically my health just

18:34

continued to get worse and worse for

18:37

a few years and with

18:39

that the noise sensitivity just kept

18:41

getting worse and worse and it just

18:43

resulted in me being very

18:47

isolated. I'd

18:51

spend most of the day alone. All

18:54

I wanted was silence. But

18:58

at the same time there was kind of

19:00

this love-hate relationship

19:03

with sound because as

19:05

much as I just wanted

19:08

silence forever I was

19:10

also just desperate to

19:13

hear things. I felt so isolated

19:16

from sound. I

19:20

don't know how to explain

19:22

this empty kind of feeling

19:24

when you don't have that

19:26

variety of new sounds in

19:28

your life. It's

19:30

like there was this desert inside

19:32

of me. I was

19:34

like thirsty for sound.

19:38

I live in Canada so it's cold

19:40

in the winter and I remember

19:43

January, February was always

19:46

so hard for me

19:48

because that was the months when

19:50

the birds didn't sing in

19:52

the morning like they did in the spring

19:54

and summer. It made

19:57

such a difference because there was

19:59

so little sound. with my life

20:01

that waking up and just

20:03

hearing the chirping of

20:05

the birds was like an

20:08

important moment of my day.

20:10

And when that wasn't there I really

20:13

felt its absence. Another

20:16

big thing was that I could

20:18

not listen or hear any music.

20:24

Not even a little snippet

20:26

or a few minutes. I couldn't

20:28

handle it at all but it

20:31

really makes a difference. I

20:34

was longing so much to hear

20:36

music even though I knew that I

20:38

couldn't. I feel

20:41

like it's something you don't notice until it's

20:43

gone. Music is everywhere these

20:45

days. You know, you can just pull out

20:47

your phone and play anything you like. I

20:50

don't think a lot of people have

20:52

the experience of just nothing. No music

20:55

at all for years. Another

20:58

part of my brain injury was that it

21:00

really affected my vision. I was very sensitive

21:02

to light. Very hard for me to look

21:05

at things. So I really

21:07

relied on sound instead of

21:09

sight. And I

21:11

want to talk about what a big

21:13

change it was going from being

21:16

mostly in my bedroom alone

21:18

in silence to going

21:20

and being an inpatient at

21:23

a hospital. I mean it

21:25

was a huge shift in

21:27

so many ways but one of those

21:29

was the change in soundscape. There

21:33

was all kinds of sounds I

21:36

hadn't heard before going on all

21:38

the time and it was really overwhelming

21:40

and over stimulating but at the

21:43

same time it was

21:45

really exciting. It was like a breath

21:47

of fresh air that I finally had. Sound,

21:50

new sound to listen to. Like

21:53

I found it very invigorating. I

21:56

remember sitting on a bench

21:59

in the lobby. of the

22:01

hospital and just sitting there

22:03

with my eyes closed and just how

22:05

much there is to listen

22:07

to. Like

22:10

all the different footsteps and the

22:12

different ways that people walk. You

22:14

know the heavy footsteps and soft

22:16

footsteps and if they're wearing running

22:18

shoes or flip-flops or high heels.

22:21

There's just so much information

22:24

and character in sound

22:26

that I think we forget about when

22:28

we're always using our eyes. I've

22:33

come a long way since then and

22:36

my tolerance for sound has

22:38

increased a lot. I can

22:41

now handle chip bags

22:44

and cutlery. But

22:47

I think the thing that has stayed with me

22:49

is just that new perspective

22:52

on sound and on music. A

22:55

real deep appreciation. Like

22:58

this sense of almost reverence or

23:00

wonder. You know

23:02

we're such visual creatures. I

23:04

think often we forget

23:07

that we have this whole other

23:09

sense that we can explore

23:11

the world around us with. Even

23:16

today I still have the habit of

23:18

taking the time to take in a

23:20

new soundscape. When I

23:22

go somewhere I haven't been before.

23:25

You know at a school, a

23:31

store, or

23:36

at a park. It's

23:41

always different. It's like a unique signature

23:43

of that place and

23:46

I like to just sit

23:48

there and take it in. can

26:00

get 55% off at babble.com/20k. You

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sponsor codes at 20k.org/sponsors. Thanks.

26:15

Before we go, here's another podcast

26:18

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26:20

called Imaginary Worlds. Hosted

26:22

by Eric Malinsky, Imaginary Worlds is a

26:24

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26:27

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26:29

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26:31

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26:33

I think of their show as kind of a

26:35

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26:38

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26:40

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