Shhhh! It’s the sound and silence episode

Albuquerque and the Rio Grande go hand in hand. The river cuts right through town, which means if you leave your office at closing time, you could have your feet in the water before 6. But, not this past summer. This August, along the river’s middle section, more than a hundred m ...  Show more

You might associate it with the foil that wraps leftover pizza and the shiny craft beer cans sold in breweries, but aluminum is literally everywhere. Scoop up a handful of soil or gravel anywhere on Earth and you’ll find atoms of bonded aluminum hidden inside. But even before it ...  Show more

Humans are noisy. The National Park Service estimates that all of our whirring, grinding, and revving machines are doubling or even tripling global noise pollution every 30 years. A lot of that noise is negatively affecting wildlife and human health. In this guest episode, the te ...  Show more

We’re constantly assaulted by “noise” all around us: crowds, vehicles, social media. As quiet spaces around us dwindle, what is it doing to our minds and bodies? Why do we need silence for our health? Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton takes Dr. Sanjay Gupta on a tour to one of th ...  Show more

If you’ve ever found your blood pressure rising because some guy down the street doesn’t know how to keep the trigger on a leaf blower pulled all the way, then you’ve experienced noise pollution. Not only is it annoying, it turns out it’s deadly too! Learn all about it in this cl ...  Show more

Original broadcast date: Friday, October 16, 2020. Sound surrounds us, from cacophony even to silence. But depending on how we hear, the world can be a different auditory experience for each of us. This hour, TED speakers explore the science of sound. Guests on the show include N ...  Show more