In short
This Sound Barrier #5 episode explores what “silence” sounds like when people actually listen for it. It opens with a 4 minutes 33 seconds shared silence, then features listener-recorded moments: water running until shut off, fridge hum stopping, makeup sounds, spring rain, peeling yams vs parsnips, cicadas/birds/wind, and city quiet behind a wall. Guests include: Dan Pauly (director, Lauer Tinnitus Research Center; Harvard Medical School) and he discusses tinnitus, misophonia, and why silence can be comforting or uncomfortable.
Key claims
tinnitus isn’t a simple on/off switch; it’s brain activity that becomes consciously perceived; misophonia involves strong negative emotional reactions to real sounds via auditory-limbic threat circuitry.
Notable examples
Remembrance Day moment of silence; a hard-of-hearing person removing hearing aids; tinnitus described as a constant high “G” drone; “embracing” tinnitus compared to guitar case dents.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOPersonal Reflections on Silence
1:20 to 3:22
Hear personal insights about experiences of silence and everyday sounds.
“I just finished the third installment of your sound barrier series, which my cat and I both appear to have loved.”
The Soundtrack of Life
3:22 to 5:20
Explore how everyday sounds create a personal soundtrack to our lives.
“The four minutes and 33 seconds of silence coincided with the exact moment I began to do my makeup this morning.”
Nature's Sounds and Moments of Silence
5:20 to 9:01
Listen to different people's experiences with nature sounds and moments of silence.
“Very interesting and almost tactile experience for someone typically irked by the repetitive noises of life.”
Comfort in Silence and Hearing Perspectives
9:01 to 14:07
Understand the different perspectives on silence, especially for those hard of hearing.
“You might be able to hear the doves, and my next-door neighbor, apparently she was a former magician's assistant, and she keeps doves in her back garden, and you can hear those occasionally.”
The Beauty of Silence in Nature
14:07 to 15:17
Explore the unique sounds of nature and the appreciation of silence.
“And so sometimes when I'm trying to listen to something quiet, it takes a lot of effort.”
Politics and the Trump Era
16:17 to 17:06
Discuss the influence of Donald Trump on American politics and the potential for a post-Trump narrative.
“And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat.”
Understanding Tinnitus and Its Causes
18:04 to 20:59
An in-depth discussion on tinnitus, its triggers, and the brain's activity in silence.
“and professor at Harvard Medical School.”
The Science Behind Misophonia
21:07 to 22:43
Explore the condition of misophonia and its emotional reactions to specific sounds.
“blinking lights of neurons firing from being read out as a percept versus not?”
Connecting Tinnitus and Misophonia
22:44 to 24:58
Investigate the relationship between tinnitus and misophonia in the context of emotional responses.
“sometimes like tapping on the keyboard or clicking a computer mouse will be triggered.”
Embracing Tinnitus and Understanding Its Impact
24:59 to 28:03
Discuss the idea of embracing tinnitus and the insights gained from studying it.
“I mean, what makes them different is that in tinnitus, it's a sound that doesn't exist in the external world.”
Show all 11 chapters
Understanding Tinnitus and Biological Insights
28:03 to 28:44
Learn how studying tinnitus enhances our understanding of normal bodily functions.
“And so, yeah, studying tinnitus gives me a foothold to study those operations and appreciate them more.”
Transcript
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1:19Yeah, just a minute.
1:33I just finished the third installment of your sound barrier series, which my cat and I both appear to have loved. So I had to stop doing my dishes to come and record something. It is the day before Thanksgiving. I was cooking some cornbread while you guys had that section of silence. And I heard the sounds of cracking eggs and the mixer going. I heard the brush of my finger against my cheek. And I heard the electronic noise of the inside of my headphones. It was interesting to me when Noam has experienced silence together. You know, I'm doing my dishes. Suddenly, there's nothing. And then I realized there is not silence.
2:48There's the water that's running until I shut it off. then I could hear my fridge and my cat in the other room demanding my attention. And as I sat there for the four minutes and 33 seconds, my fridge stopped making noise, which was more interesting to me than it had ever been before. I got goosebumps afterwards, and it just felt really powerful to think about all these people sitting in silence together and what are all of us doing and how wonderful that was.
4:00The four minutes and 33 seconds of silence coincided with the exact moment I began to do my makeup this morning. The pencil going into the sharpener, filing layers away. I heard every stroke of my eyebrow pencil as I swiped my brows to fill them in. During my four minutes and 33 seconds of silence, I was able to hear the quiet patter of spring rain coming down on the roof and water dripping down the side of the house. The scratch of placing the cat back onto the pencil when I was finished. The ticking of the war clock, the buzzing of the fridge. The pop of my mascara wand going in and out of the tube.
4:46The trains passing nearby As well as the water pipes piping water to the kitchen The twisting of my highlighter cap opening and closing The wheel rolling in the track of my bathroom drawer I heard my stomach processing the pizza I'd eaten about an hour earlier Finally The smack of my lips after an application of gloss The sounds always with you, which usually fade into the background the soundtrack to your very own life. Very interesting and almost tactile experience for someone typically irked by the repetitive noises of life.
5:42This is Alex in Atlanta, Georgia. Hello from Daniel in suburban Melbourne in Australia. I'm in Toronto. It is dark and early and there is a sliver of orange rising above the city. My partner is in bed. My dog is on the balcony. And this is the sound of my morning.
6:15bard go
6:28lunatic
6:42But listening to the silence, I discovered that the sound of peeling yams is actually distinctly different from peeling parsnips. Peeling parsnips was somehow a softer sound. almost comforting. My name is Robin Moore. I'm going to record the silence here in my kitchen.
7:53Liverpool
8:15This is Dan Shepard in San Dimas, California. Most excellent place to live.
8:32We had just gotten a lot of rain and the mosquitoes are back out again. You will hear me slapping my leg to try to keep the mosquitoes away.
8:44This time of year, the rufous hummingbird and the anise hummingbird, they like to argue and fight so you can hear a little of them in the background. I heard goldfinches. We have a couple kinds of goldfinches, the American goldfinch and the lesser goldfinch, mostly the lesser goldfinches.
9:05You might be able to hear the doves, and my next-door neighbor, apparently she was a former magician's assistant, and she keeps doves in her back garden, and you can hear those occasionally.
9:30Today is November 11th. Here in Canada, we do Remembrance Day on November 11th. And I've participated every year. You go to the semitath at the corner here in town and watch folks lay a wreath. And at one point, they do a moment of silence. My dad was in the Navy, so I like to go every year. It's just interesting. Every other year, the moment of silence has been what I thought was longer than needed. But I think I will think of that differently today.
10:25I am in downtown Rochester, tucked away behind a wall to not catch the wind.
10:42It can be very strangely peaceful and still feel kind of natural when you're in the middle of a city. It's wild sometimes.
11:18ika meik comfortable comfortable
11:41It was hard not to fill that silence with my own thoughts. I was really amazed by the reaction people had to the room of silence where it seemed super uncomfortable for people to be immersed in absolute complete silence. And that's because for me, I take my hearing aids out and I'm in absolute complete silence.
12:24I don't hear my heartbeat, I don't hear myself breathing, I don't hear anything. And that, for me, is quite comforting, actually. It's my place of being sort of home. You know, like that home base feel of, ah, yeah, now I'm, you know, I'm good.
12:48I do that every night. I take my hearing aids out. I'm in complete and utter silence. And then I wake up in the morning totally silent until I put my hearing aids in. And then all of a sudden, I am tuned in. I'm awake and alive with the world that's going on around me. It's things are moving and shaking. You can hear just the gentle hum in the room. You can hear yourself walking across the room. You hear everything. It's like suddenly turning a switch and being kind of, well, more awake. I just thought it was fascinating that people are, in general, uncomfortable with silence and thought, well, I'm not.
13:41And I wonder how other very hard of hearing people feel and how the deaf community feels about silence. It must be totally different than the hearing folk. One of the things that you won't hear when you're listening to it is the din of the tinnitus that is in my ears, which is constantly going as we speak. It is this high drone. It's like a high G. And so sometimes when I'm trying to listen to something quiet, it takes a lot of effort. But I always like to take a moment anyways when there is some quiet time and try to either focus on that sound to tune it out or to listen to the world around me.
14:35G'day, Gordon Taylor from Malumbi, Australia. I'd just hit off the third tee and was walking down towards my ball with my headphones on when Noam started the silence.
14:49I think it was when I heard him cough in the studio that I realised what I was hearing was just so beautiful and unique to me. The early cicadas of spring, the bird life, the wind noise, the rattle of my clubs.
15:08and the whole time I thought it was someplace quiet
15:17anyway I think I'm going to go take a walk in the woods later and listen to the silence in the woods
15:45yes yes
16:01so
16:16For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items.
17:00It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon. And welcome to America Actually.
17:22Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday.
17:58I'm Dan Pauly, and I'm at Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary, where I'm the director of the Lauer Tennis Research Center and professor at Harvard Medical School. I might have to do this often because of where you are right now, but I'm just going to do that again in one second after the siren is gone. After the siren, yeah. Which just confirms I work at a hospital. Exactly. I don't know if this is... Ambulance is behind me. We'll try this one time, and then I don't know if we need to keep doing it. But yeah, one more time, if you can just say your name and the best way to introduce you. I'm Dan Pauly.
18:28I'm the director of the Lauer Tinnitus Research Center at Mass Eye and Ear and a professor at Harvard Medical School. Okay. So last time we talked was for the tinnitus episode in the Sound Barrier series. Yeah. And we just got tons of questions from listeners that I'd love to run by you in a sec. But before I get there, I kind of want to ask you a question I had that came up while I was doing this episode. Basically, you have tinnitus, right? You told me you got it after you became a researcher. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. So the other researcher I talked to, Stefan, he also got it after becoming a researcher.
19:10And the psychologist I know listened to the episode and told me he got it after working with tinnitus patients for years. and I was even obsessing about tinnitus so much while making this episode that I kind of thought I started hearing things. And I guess I'm wondering, do you think there's anything going on here that's more than just irony, that there might be some kind of connection between focusing on tinnitus a lot and getting it? Okay, so let me play the skeptic. As researchers, you don't really ever get to choose what you're going to do research on until you're a little bit older. And number one risk factor for tinnitus is age.
19:51So I think there's a, okay, all right. So like a little bit of a coincidence there, but I started doing research after the Boston marathon bombings. You know, there were a hundred people standing near those blasts that developed it afterwards. You know, I just kind of felt a calling because of wanting to feel useful to something that was like big and eventful. in the city I lived in and the people I worked with. And then I was able to relate to it personally because I went to this wedding of a Scottish postdoc in my lab and the bagpipers and the sound of the music that basically was like the straw that broke the camel's back, I guess.
20:29After that event, the tinnitus that came from being around loud sounds that normally clears up didn't and it's still with me. But the brain is always perched right on the razor's edge of being able to produce tinnitus. If you look at the activity of the brain in silence of somebody without tinnitus, it's very active. It's not like the brain is quiescent when there isn't a sound. It's just that that activity that's ongoing isn't being read out by your consciousness as a sound. So really, what distinguishes all this sort of blinking lights of neurons firing from being read out as a percept versus not?
21:15What is the line between a hallucination and just the ongoing sort of noise of this massive machine at work? This is the key question of why is there a tinnitus? It isn't like a switch that goes on or off. It's probably very subtle. What distinguishes activity in the brain during silence that is just not perceived as anything versus the activity that is perceived at this never-ending sound. That's not just a philosophical question. That's like what gives me confidence that we can defeat tinnitus because it's not like you have to take this aberration in the brain and turn it back to nothing. You just have to disorganize it enough to go back to what it was before you didn't have tinnitus, which is still plenty of activity in the presence of silence.
Read the full transcript
22:02It just isn't being read out consciously as a sound.
22:08All right, let's get to some of the questions we got from listeners on tinnitus and silence. Yeah. The first one I wanted to get into was a question about misophonia. Can you tell me a bit about misophonia, like what it is, how it works? Sure. Misophonia is a condition where certain sounds elicit a very powerful, very negative emotional reaction. Irritation does not do it justice. It's closer to almost like anger or like rage. It's like extremely unpleasant. So chewing, burping, coughing, sometimes like tapping on the keyboard or clicking a computer mouse will be triggered. So these are often sounds that when they're experienced by someone on the other end, they're like, ah!
22:57Yeah, it's extremely irritating. I don't know. I've felt like I've had something like misophonia for a long time. I remember as a child, when I would hear certain types of mechanical noise, like a fridge or an AC unit, it's hard to describe. It would sometimes sound like it was angry, and I would kind of freak out as a kid. Is that sort of what misophonia is, this sort of profound fear, discomfort response to sounds? I'm a neuroscientist, so the way I look at it, of all the senses, the auditory system has a really strong interconnectedness with the limbic system. So limbic system regulates mood and emotion.
23:45It also is surveilling the environment for threats. So imagine all of these bridges between the hearing parts of the brain and the limbic parts of the brain. if the weights are changed slightly on them, they can quickly take on an emotional significance. It seems in a way almost like arbitrary, like why does listening to the sound of a refrigerator sort of elicit this sort of emotional reaction? But the hearing system is the watchman of our bodies, right? It is doing 24-hour surveillance. And so, of course, it sort of has a privileged connection with the parts of our brain that are assessing threats, because that's what we depend on the auditory system for threats that our other senses might not catch, threats we might encounter while we're sleeping.
24:30So it's a good thing that the auditory system is so heavily interconnected with brain systems that evaluate threats, but it's also a vulnerability. That just makes me think of what you said last time about how people with tinnitus have a whole brain problem, that it's not necessarily just hearing a sound. It's actually that that sound is maybe getting hooked into their other emotional centers of their brain. I wonder if you think there's a way of connecting them or thinking about them in the same way. In that regard, yes. I mean, what makes them different is that in tinnitus, it's a sound that doesn't exist in the external world.
25:07In misophonia, it is so about an actual physical sound. So when you think about their upstream, how are they elicited? They couldn't be more different. But they become very similar when you think about the common relationship they share between this emotional response to activity that's flowing out of the auditory centers of the brain. Yeah. Someone else wrote in and was talking about rather than trying to get rid of tinnitus, trying to embrace it. Has that ever been a conversation you've had to maybe even try to see the beauty in tinnitus? I think about those guitar cases that as somebody has owned a guitar for a while, it just accumulates dings and dents.
25:56I mean, as we age, our bodies accumulate injuries and the world has acted on it. It is me and this is my guitar case. It's not brand new. So I really love the spirit of that suggestion. If you experience it as other, you experience it as being assaulted by it. It's irrepressible. I want to oppress it. It is an adversarial relationship. And of course, it's going to bother you. You're going to come to hate it. If you understand that it is being produced by you, it is a part of you, that's nice. I mean, I think I say all this, I'm a researcher because I don't accept that tinnitus. I don't think that people should have to get used to it.
26:35I think there is a way to silence it. And I am totally hell-bent. It consumes my every waking professional moment of how are we actually going to be able to do this? So I don't mean to just offer the glib advice of like, try to embrace it. But at the same time, like, it's a good approach in the absence of some wonderful therapy that my lab or clinician will come up with. Like, you know, you got to use the tools available to you. That's the one that we all have. You know, I was talking to a musician I play with who told me that he's had tinnitus for a while because of playing loud music without earplugs.
27:12And he told me that when he thinks about his tinnitus, it shows him how much of what we hear is kind of like a trick our brain is playing on us. And it reminded me of what you said last time we talked. You said the brain doesn't have direct contact with the physical world, so everything we perceive as consciousness is constructed from the activity of our brain. Yeah. And I guess I just wonder, does working on tinnitus make you amazed or surprised or humbled by what the brain can do? Oh, my gosh, yes. Yes, yeah. You know, it seems like so ineffable, you know, just like, how does the brain work?
27:51You're like, good luck figuring that out. You almost need a foothold. So, you know, tinnitus is so, you know, you would never design a brain that way, you think. But it's one of those flaws that there's that line that medicine is the great tutor of biology, that by studying these sort of exceptional cases of when the human body doesn't work as it should, that you actually figure out how it manages to work at all. And so, yeah, studying tinnitus gives me a foothold to study those operations and appreciate them more.
28:32Because to know that it can fail in this very specific mode gives me an insight into how it works normally. It fuels a huge amount of the research we do in the lab. It makes me appreciate that it works, you know, 99 % of the time.
29:03This was the fifth installment of our Sound Barrier series. We might keep putting these out once in a while, so let us know if you have any thoughts or suggestions or questions you want us to look into on the science of hearing. We've also heard from a few teachers who've wanted to use some of the stuff from our series for their students. If you're using any of our episodes in the classroom, please let us know. We'd love to hear about different ways you're using them. And if you need resources, we're always here, so feel free to give us a shout. This episode was produced by me, Noam Hassenfeld.
29:34I also wrote the music. Editing from Jorge Just, with help from Joanna Salataroff, who's also running the show. Mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala. Fact-checking from Melissa Hirsch. Sally Helm is trying to take over the sky. Amy Padula is trying to take over the sea. Meredith Hodnot is our senior supervising producer. Julia Longoria is our editorial director. And Bird Pinkerton took off toward the platypuses. Where's platy? She yelled. Where's platy? Finally, one of the platypuses pointed toward a hole in some tree roots by the river. And just barely sticking out of the hole, there was a small guitar.
30:16Thanks to all the listeners who sent in emails or voice memos for this episode. Brett, Haley, Alex, Daniel, Daniel, Dan, Alessandro, Jay, Robin, Glenn, Gordon, Sarah, David, Mary, Brad, and so many more of you that we didn't get to feature. Every sound in the first half of this episode came from your recordings. I really can't tell you how much it means to me that you listened so carefully and that you wrote in with such thoughtful and generous messages. Thank you. Thanks also to Vartika Sharma and Paige Vickers for the artwork for the Sound Barrier series. Thanks as always to Brian Resnick for co-creating the show along with me and Bird.
30:57And if any of you out there have thoughts about the show, send us an email. We're at unexplainable at vox.com. You can also leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen. It really helps us out. And if you're into supporting the show even more and all of Vox in general, join our membership program. You can go to vox.com slash members to sign up. And during the holidays this year, your membership actually goes further. When you join Vox as an annual member, we're going to gift a complimentary membership to a reader facing financial barriers. You can read more about all of this at the same site, vox.com slash members.
31:32Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we will see you next time.
From the publisher
This episode is a follow-up to The Sound Barrier series, which explores our brain's relationship to sound. In our third episode of the series, we asked listeners to try to experience silence and record what they heard. Today, we share the sounds of quiet from across the world in a tribute to John Cage’s 4’33”. Plus, Tinnitus researcher and Unexplainable guest Dan Polley answers your questions from the series.
Guest: Dan Polley, tinnitus researcher at Mass Eye and Ear.
Thank you to everyone who wrote in and shared their silences. If you still have thoughts or questions about the series, write us!
We also heard from a few teachers who plan to use the series as a part of their curriculum. Is this you? Let us know!
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For more, go to vox.com/unexplainable
And please email us! unexplainable@vox.com. We read every email.
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