Playing a sport without sight might sound impossible. But it turns out, there are blind athletes all around the world doing exactly that. Instead of using their eyes, these players rely on their ears to hit a pitch, block a throw, and charge across a crowded field. Featuring beep baseball player Ethan Johnston and goalball coach Keith Young.
When Matthew Shifrin was growing up, his blindness meant that trying to enjoy a movie or TV show was often a confusing and frustrating experience. But then, Matthew discovered something called video description—an extra audio track where a narrator describes the action on screen. And suddenly, everything changed. This story comes from the Radiotopia podcast Blind Guy Travels.
Art by Matthew Fleming.
This episode was written and produced by Casey Emmerling.
Technology has the power to transform the way our world sounds. It could even give us entirely new ways to experience our surroundings. In this episode, we explore the sounds of the future, and how we can use the tools we already have to build a better sounding world. Featuring Rose Eveleth, Creator and Host of the podcast Flash Forward, Acoustician Andrew Pyzdek, and Architect Chris Downey.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Wanderer by Makeup and Vanity Set
1:57 AM (The Green Kingdom Remix) by Hotel Neon
Wide Eyed Wonder by Dustin Lau
June by Uncle Skeleton
Rubber Robot by Sound of Picture
Lick Stick by Nursery
Stuck Dream by Sound of Picture
Springtime by Sound of Picture
Drawing Mazes by Sound of Picture
Dark Matter by Sound of Picture
Brackish Water by Alistair Sung
About You (No Oohs and Ahs) by Vesky
Trek by Sound of Picture
Gimme Gimme - Instrumental by Johnny Stimson
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound and hosted by Dallas Taylor.
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Discover more at lexus.com/curiosity.
Subscribe to Flash Forward wherever you get your podcasts.
You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I’m Dallas Taylor.
[music in]
In our busy modern lives, it’s not often that we stop and really think about what we hear.
[SFX: Alarm, car start, city ambience, train, office ambience]
Most of the time, we just accept these human-made sounds without a second thought. But it’s important to remember that our world didn’t always sound this way. Matter of fact, the sound of our world changes constantly. Our cities and towns sound completely different now than they did fifty or a hundred years ago.
[SFX: Horse, old timey, car horn, klaxon, car pass by]
So what will our cities and towns sound like fifty… or even a hundred years from now? What if we could collectively sound design our world? What would that sonic utopia be like, and how can we get there?
[music out]
In our future sonic utopia, there will certainly be sounds we want to remove.
Rose: The first thing that comes to mind is the screech of the New York City subway, [SFX] which is incredibly loud and is sort of emblematic of the lack of updating of that city's infrastructure.
That’s Rose Eveleth.
Rose: I'm the creator and host of a podcast called Flash Forward, which is all about the future.
[music in]
[SFX: Subway train screeching as Rose describes it]
Rose: I love New York. But standing on the one train platform and the train rolls in [SFX] and you really feel like you're being stabbed in the ear.
We all know that loud noises can cause hearing loss, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When we’re exposed to loud noise, our bodies release stress hormones. These hormones raise our blood pressure, which contributes to heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. Studies have even shown that kids who go to school in louder areas tend to have more behavioral problems, and also tend to skew worse on tests.
Rose: We know that constant sound like that has real impacts on learning, on people's ability to retain information.
[music out]
To be clear, this train problem goes way beyond the New York City subway. Anytime you have a heavy metal object moving along a metal track, like a subway, or a train, you’re probably going to end up with some screeching. But what if, in the future, that subway or train car wasn’t even touching the track?
[music in]
In recent years, some countries have begun building “maglev” trains, which is short for “magnetic levitation.” A maglev train doesn’t have a conventional engine. Instead, it uses powerful electromagnets to stay suspended above the track.
[SFX: Maglev train]
When it’s suspended, another set of magnets propel it forward.
Andrew: They don't have rails that they're rolling along physically.
That’s acoustician Andew Pyzdek.
Andrew: They're basically floating on a cushion of air, so they can be very, very quiet.
Maglev trains aren’t just quieter than normal ones, they’re also smoother and faster. The highest speed recorded on a maglev train was 373 miles an hour.4 As maglev trains replace normal ones, we can expect to hear less of this [SFX: Normal train] and more of this [SFX: Fast maglev].
[music out]
That’s a great start, but what about cars? As you may already know, electric cars can be extremely quiet. [SFX: Low-speed electric car]
Andrew: Obviously they're quieter, but most importantly at low speeds where the engine noise is the loudest thing.
As electric vehicles become more common, areas with low-speed traffic will quiet down quite a bit. But once you get on the freeway, even an electric engine doesn’t help that much.
Andrew: At high speeds on the freeway, most of the noise actually comes from the tires. [SFX: Car pass by] So the advancements that you can expect to improve roadway noise are… with the composition of the roads themselves.
In 2007, researchers developed a new paving method called Next Generation Concrete Surfaces.2 Roads that are paved this way are up to 10 decibels quieter than normal ones. That’s the difference between this [SFX: Busy freeway] and this [SFX: Busy freeway by -10bd quieter].
Andrew: As we improve infrastructure and replace old roads with new roads that are made to be quieter, we can see those freeways becoming less noisy.
[music in]
When it comes to transportation, our sonic utopia is sounding a lot quieter. But of course, people aren’t the only things being carried around in cars and trains. There’s also all of our stuff. Amazon currently ships over 6 million packages a day.6 As populations increase and countries develop, there will be an even bigger demand for quick delivery. And the latest idea to handle that demand is delivery by drone.
[music out]
Now, commercial drone delivery hasn’t taken off quite yet, but both Google and Amazon are working on changing that. Here’s a clip from a video that was made by Amazon:
[SFX Clip: “Amazon: Here’s how it works: Moments after receiving the order, an electrically powered Amazon drone makes its way down an automated track, and then rises into the sky with the customer’s package on board. Cruising quietly below 400 feet, carrying packages up to 5 pounds…”]
Amazon describes these drones as “quiet,” but in their videos, they never include the actual audio of flying drones. That’s probably because drones really aren’t that quiet. Even the small ones that hobbyists buy can be pretty loud. [SFX: drone]
If drone delivery becomes common, things could get really loud, really fast. Imagine a crowded city with hundreds of delivery drones buzzing by at all times. [SFX: Sparse drones]
Now imagine how bad it would be near the fulfillment center, where the drones actually take off and land. [SFX: Heavy drones]
This is not very utopian. But, thanks to nature, there may be ways of making drones quieter.
Andrew: There's some work that's been done looking at owls and the way that their feathers are shaped in order to reduce noise. So the edge of an owl's feather is very ragged. The feathers themselves are kind of loose and wavy. And that's why they're such stealthy fliers because their feathers aren't rigid.
For instance, barn owls fly so quietly that humans can’t hear them until they’re about 3 feet away.
Andrew: The exact opposite of that is a pigeon. And every time they take off, that pigeon sound, [SFX: Pigeon] some people think that it's a vocalization that the pigeons are making. That's the sound of their feathers vibrating as they flap their wings.
The recording of the pigeon you just heard is from a BBC special about owls. In the special, they recorded a pigeon, a hawk and an owl flying over a set of microphones. Here’s the pigeon again: [SFX: Pigeon] Here’s the hawk: [SFX: Hawk] And here’s the owl: [SFX: Owl]
Did you catch that? Neither did I. Here it is again, turned up twice as loud: [SFX: Owl]
Inspired by owls, researchers are already exploring ways of making airplanes quieter.
[SFX: Airplane]
Like a car on a freeway, a lot of the noise from a passing plane comes from air flowing around the plane. One way of reducing that noise would be to make the plane’s wings more like owls’ wings. This could be done by adding more flexible, porous materials to the edges of the wings. Theoretically, something similar might be possible with drones.
Andrew: I think that if drones start being a more everyday part of our lives, that there will be a pretty strong pressure to make those drones be a little bit less annoying to listen to. [music in]
So far, we’ve turned down the volume on future cars, trains, planes and drones. Not too shabby. But what does our sonic future sound like if you’re getting around on foot? Something that might become common is targeted audio messages that you can hear as you walk down the street. When audio is beamed to a small, specific area, it’s called an “acoustic spotlight.” These are already found in many museums.
Andrew: Say if you were looking at a painting, you might hear sounds that remind you of the space and the painting.
For instance, you may walk up to a painting of a peaceful landscape, and hear this
[music out]
[SFX: birds, light wind, blowing grass].
Andrew: And the technologies that are used to make these acoustic spotlights can range from very simple: There's parabolic microphones, where you have just a plastic shell around a normal speaker. And as that speaker generates sound, it focuses it downwards towards the person standing under the spotlight.
But acoustic spotlights can also be made with ultrasound.
[music in]
Andrew: Ultrasound is very amazing. Ultrasound is sound. It's not something different. It's just sound that's at a frequency above what people can hear.
The normal range of human hearing is from about twenty hertz to twenty thousand hertz [SFX: Sine wave of 20 hertz sliding up to 20,000 hertz]. Anything above 20,000 hertz is considered ultrasound. Making an acoustic spotlight with ultrasound involves something called a “parametric array.”
Andrew: So parametric arrays are basically you have two beams of ultrasound that you make intersect with each other. And at the point where they intersect, they create audible sound.
[music out]
A parametric array is almost like a sonic laser that lets you beam a sound message to a very precise spot [SFX: VO shifting around like it’s looking for a target]. If advertisers started doing this, it could get out of hand pretty quickly. Imagine you’re walking downtown in a crowded city. [SFX: Times Square ambience]
Every time you pass by a billboard or a store or a restaurant, you hear a little commercial or jingle. [SFX: Walmart] [SFX: McDonalds] [SFX: New in theaters] [SFX: Parasitic infection] [SFX: Pringles]
That’s definitely not what I want in my utopia. But audio aimed at your location doesn’t have to be a bad thing. For instance, rather than just playing the sound out in the open, the signals could be beamed to a device, like a specialized headset. That way, you could choose whether or not to tune in.
[music in]
Rose: I think in my utopia people would be able to kind of customize their experience to themselves. I could make the world feel safe and happy and lovely wherever I am and that might look different from somebody else. And I don't know if that means special things that go in my ear that kind of like filter in and out the sounds that are important or not. Or whether that means high-tech technology that only beams aural information to certain people who have their profile set up to be like maximum sound versus minimum sound, or whatever it is.
Rose: And you can kind of choose to customize your experience of the world that way.
In the future, headphones and earbuds won’t just be headphones and earbuds. They’ll be much more integrated. We already have noise reduction, but future hearing wearables may have selective noise reduction. They may filter out unpleasant sounds, or reduce dangerous volume levels. They may even have corrective hearing loss algorithms built in… like a merger of current hearing aids, noise protection, and traditional earbuds.
[music out]
With geolocation targeting, these headsets could give you extra information about your surroundings, without the visual distraction of smart glasses. Imagine kind of an audio tour of the entire world. This might even help people build more of a connection with their community.
[music in]
Rose: I think that there is a space for like, a sort of community audio project where you could have this living audio document that is kind of like a museum tour, but for your own space.
Rose: So you could be walking down your street and you could hear a story from your neighbor about something.
Rose: It's maybe the person who's lived on that block for 30 years being like, "You might not know this, but here's an interesting piece of history about where you're from." Or, you know "Hey, there's a city council meeting today. Maybe consider going to it."
Rose: Just little things like that where you could constantly be keeping up with your neighbors or understanding what the needs are in the community.
[music out]
A hightech headset that you wear all the time could also be a game-changer when it comes to real-time translation. If every word you hear gets instantly translated into your native language...
Andrew: People can talk to other people speaking a different language and not have that language barrier. There's already quite a bit of work happening there, and that will continue to move forward.
[music in]
New technology could positively change how our cities, neighborhoods, and homes sound. It could even give us entirely new ways to experience our surroundings. But we have to put in the time and effort if we actually want our future to sound better. To get some perspective, it’s helpful to talk to someone who really understands how important sound is to the spaces we design. Maybe someone like an architect… who’s also blind. That’s coming up, after the break.
[music out]
MIDROLL
[music in]
From acoustic spotlights to swarms of retail drones, there’s all kinds of technology that’s likely to affect the sound of our future. But as we build that future, we have to ask ourselves… What kind of sonic environments do we want to create?
The spaces we design should be acoustically functional. In other words, the acoustics of a building should support whatever goes on in that building. But it’s about more than just utility. We also want the places we spend time in to just sound good.
[music out]
That’s easier said than done, and too often, people just don’t think about it.
[music in]
Chris: Sound is so often just left to be accidental.
That’s Chris Downey.
Chris: I'm an architect located in Piedmont, California just outside of Oakland.
As far as architects go, Chris has a pretty unique background. In 2008, he was having some trouble seeing clearly. An MRI scan revealed a brain tumor right against his optic nerve. Fortunately, doctors were able to remove the tumor through surgery. But two days after the procedure, Chris’ vision started to fail. After three days, he was blind.
[music out]
Of course, adjusting to life without sight took time. But Chris didn’t let blindness stop him from doing what he loves. In fact, he says that losing his sight has actually been helpful to his understanding of architecture.
[music in]
Chris: Losing my sight, as an architect, has really benefited my work by really getting me back in touch with the human bodily experience of being in the space at any given moment in time.
Chris: The sound of the space. The acoustic soundscape of the architecture [SFX: footsteps] as you move through it dynamically, hearing it as you move through and really listening to the architecture.
The choices that are made when a building is designed have a massive impact on what it’s going to sound like. Sometimes, these choices are very deliberate, like the way concert halls are designed to amplify and enhance the sound of an orchestra.
[music out, SFX: Applause]
A lot of the time, though, it can be hard to predict exactly what a building is going to end up sounding like.
Chris: It's so hard to draw or model sound. How do you do that? As architects, we can't do that. If we talk with an acoustic engineer, they might be able to give us all sorts of scientific representations of things. But unless you're a highly trained acoustic engineer, it means nothing.
Most of the time, you won’t really know until the building is finished.
Chris: And then it’s built. It's really too late.
At that point, you might not be happy with the result. Maybe you’ve had the experience of trying to study in a library where every little noise echoes off the walls. [SFX: Library ambience with heavy verb]
One way to prevent this is to digitally emulate what a space might sound like, while it’s still being designed.
Chris: There's been a really interesting collaboration I've had with some acoustic designers that have a sound lab that they use to model sound. They use it really to anticipate and demonstrate the sound of a music hall or some other very, sort of, acoustically intentional space.
Using this technology, you can input the dimensions and other aspects of a building you’re designing. Then, the computer can emulate what a voice... [SFX: Voice with room verb] or an instrument... [SFX: Saxophone with same room verb] or a footstep… [SFX: Footstep with room verb] is going to sound like inside that space.
[SFX: Over Chris’ next line we hear those same sounds with evolving room verbs]
Chris: You can tune it. You can test it, just as we do visually with drawings and models and photorealistic computer-aided renderings and things, it's doing the same thing with sound.
Chris: We started working with that for me to anticipate the dynamics of sound as you move through a space, so they put my cane tapping inside the digital space [SFX: Cane tapping] and then we hear what it's like to hear the architecture as you move through, and anticipate that, so that I can really design intentionally
Acoustic modeling technology isn’t universal yet, but some designers have started taking acoustics more seriously.
[SFX: Noisy airport sounds]
Airports are notoriously noisy, and all of that noise can make traveling even more stressful than needs to be. But many airports have started installing noise absorbing materials to help keep people calm. The next time you’re in a new terminal that feels unusually quiet, look up at the ceiling. Oftentimes, you’ll see very unique looking tiles. These tiles can be subtle enough to fit right in with the architecture, and they make a huge difference in sound quality.
Unfortunately, though, when it comes to noise, restaurants are still way behind. We’ve all had the experience of being in a restaurant that’s just uncomfortably loud. [SFX: Crowded restaurant gradually getting louder; chatter, silverware clinking]
Chris: There are environments in restaurants that the soundscape becomes really problematic.
Since Chris is blind, he can’t read someone’s lips or pick up cues through their facial expressions.
Chris: So I'm absolutely dependent on the acoustic environment to communicate. And some of these environments are so loud, it's just so exhausting to try to hear, that within 15 minutes, I'm done. I'm exhausted. I’ve had enough. [SFX: Restaurant sounds out] And in sharing that with other people, people with hearing impairments, they have the same experience, and it could be because of a hearing aid that the sound is very different, and it becomes nauseating.
Accessibility laws and city codes are the reason we have helpful sounds at crosswalks, [SFX] and ramps for wheelchairs. And while the US government does regulate how much noise workers should be exposed to, those codes are rarely enforced in places like restaurants and shops.
Chris: Our codes don't really deal with that, so I think that there's some more wisdom and more research and development that needs to come into creating safe environments in places like that.
[music in]
We used to talk about second hand smoke in bars. Well, you know, what's that acoustic environment doing to the health of the people that work in those environments?
Whether it’s noisy restaurants or noisy freeways, it’s easy to imagine that a quieter future would be a better future.
Andrew: I think that we kind of want silence more than we get it. And that's really what it comes down to is that we live in a very loud world. [SFX: Loud city montage] Finding silence is very difficult unless you live in a place that's already pretty quiet. So I can understand why the focus on making the world sound better is to make the world sound less. Because it sometimes feels like there's just too much vying for our attention.
[music out]
If I had a giant audio board for the world, I’d pull the fader down on most of what’s human made. Our brains love the sound of nature, and it would be great to get competing sounds out of the way. However, that doesn’t mean that all human made sounds should be lost.
Chris: There's been a lot of effort going into sound masking, masking of the sound in an environment, which from the blind experience isn't necessarily a good thing, because in masking the environment, we're losing some of the necessary sound. We need to hear the environment.
For instance, making cars completely silent could be dangerous.
Rose: I mean, I think many people probably have the experience of almost being hit by a Prius in a parking lot because you didn't notice it there because it doesn't make any sounds.
Chris: I've experienced new electric buses that are so quiet it's hard to even know they're there. I've had one that pulled up right in front of me when I'm standing at the sidewalk, and I didn't hear it approach and I kind of sensed there was something in front of me, and I reached up to find there was a bus there just a couple inches in front of my face. [SFX: Bus pulls away] And that was terrifying. So in trying to remove sounds and make some of these things quiet, you have to be careful about maintaining some necessary sound for safety.
All of this can feel overwhelming, but there are things you can do to make your surroundings sound a little better. The first step is to really hear your environment. To do that, you’ll need to make it as quiet as possible.
[SFX: Subtle HVAC sounds]
Andrew: Try powering off your house. Go to the breaker, cut off the power. [SFX: Power down, HVAC off] Assuming that that's not going to damage anything, turn off any sensitive electronics first that might get hurt by a brownout. But you can flip the breaker and hear how different your house sounds when there's nothing on. And then when you turn those individual breakers on, you'll notice right away. [SFX: Click + fridge] "That's what my refrigerator sounds like." Or, [SFX: Click + AC] "Wow, I didn't realize our AC unit was that loud." You usually don't notice these things until they're gone and they come back.
[music in]
Most of us can’t just go buy a quiet new AC unit, but this can still be a good exercise to help you notice the sounds that you may have been ignoring. Maybe you can power down that video game system all the way, rather than leaving it in sleep mode with the fan running. Maybe it’s time to put some WD-40 on that squeaky closet door. Maybe you can find a tapestry to hang in your living room. Soft surfaces are a friend to good sounding environments.
Maybe you could also write a friendly email to that restaurant that you’d love to go back to, if it wasn’t quite so loud. Or maybe you can write a letter to your mayor, or your representatives, and tell them how the screeching bus brakes wake your whole building up at 6:30 in the morning. The point is, even a little sonic change goes a long way. And if enough people start doing this, our future will sound better.
Chris: Sound can affect us on a subliminal level and it can set a mood it can make us struggle. It can put us at ease. So, I think it's a sense that we really need to pay a lot more attention to, to really add to the quality of our living experience, in whatever setting we're in.
Andrew: There's a lot that can happen right now that would be possible if people just were willing to do it.
[music out]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by me, Dallas Taylor, and produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Find out more at defactosound.com.
This episode was written and produced by Casey Emmerling, and me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was edited and sound designed by Soren Begin, Joel Boyter, and Colin DeVarney.
Special thanks to our guests: Rose Eveleth, Andrew Pyzdeck and Chris Downey. Rose’s podcast Flash Forward is one of my favorites, it’s all about the possible and not so possible futures. You should definitely go subscribe. You can also find articles by Andrew at acousticstoday.org. And you can learn more about Chris’ work at arch4blind.com. That’s A-R-C-H, the number 4, blind dot com.
If there’s a show topic that you are dying to hear, you can tell us in tons of different ways. My favorite way is by writing a review. In that review, tap 5 stars and then give us your show idea. And even if you don’t have a show idea… I’d love for you to give us a quick 5 star rating anyway. Finally, you can always get in touch on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or by writing hi@20k.org.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
Original Art by Michael Zhang.
This episode was written and produced by Leila Battison.
The last few decades have seen amazing improvements in cochlear implant technology. Professor Michael Dorman reveals what they really sound like, and how they can help out with more than just our hearing. But should we be advocating cochlear implants at all? We chat with deaf graphic designer Brandon Edquist about why he chooses not to use his implant, and why the Deaf community is up in arms against them.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
A Better World by Instrumental by CHPTRS
Maggie and Bernard by Steven Gutheinz
Lovers or Bruises by Instrumental by Cubby
Drops by Sunshine Recorder
Greylock (with Kyle McEvoy) by Sunshine Recorder
Petite Suite: I. En Bateau by Sunshine Recorder
Tigran by Live Footage
Rubrik (with Blurstem) by Brique a Braq
Bokeh by Luke Atencio
Gaze by Chad Lawson
Reflects Dans l'Eau by SVVN
Lotus by Longlake
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, and hosted by Dallas Taylor.
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[music in]
You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... I'm Dallas Taylor.
Our hearing is one of our core senses, and it’s something most of us take for granted.
The laughter of a child [SFX], birdsong at dawn [SFX], or even a well-designed sonic icon can be a feast for our ears. But as much as it’s a joy to listen to the world around us, our hearing is also a protective mechanism. It works hard alongside our other senses to add context, and protect us from danger. [SFX: Tiger roar]
But a lot of people live without their hearing. Worldwide, about one in every thousand babies are born deaf. ...and right now, there are about 1 million people in the US who live with complete hearing loss.
Brandon Edquist is one of those people. He’s deaf now, but wasn’t born that way.
[music out]
Here he is through an interpreter.
Brandon: When I was two, I contracted meningitis. The illness infects the brain lining, and from that I lost my hearing.
[music in]
There are lots of ways that a person can lose their hearing. The biological machine for making sense out of sound waves is incredibly complex. And like all machines, the more complex something is, the more there is to go wrong.
Issues can range from a simple buildup of earwax all the way to a punctured eardrum.
Hearing loss can also be caused by problems in the hearing organ or the nerve that carries sound signals to the brain. They can be damaged by accidents and disease, but problems here can also be genetic, or a result of the natural aging process.
Of course, not all hearing loss is immediate, or total. But when it is, people like Brandon tend to rely more heavily on their other senses.
[music out]
Brandon: I have become more sensitive to what I see. I notice things a little more. Body language, I notice that and catch that a lot more.
But when it comes to interacting with others, it’s not always that straightforward.
Brandon: Some people I talk with, they accept and they understand, and some just walk away and get angry. I've gotten so used to it, so it doesn't bother me that much.
Brandon’s a graphic designer, which means that he can make a living while avoiding many of these awkward face-to-face interactions.
Brandon: I have to communicate with a person through email or texting. We all write so it makes it easy to communicate.
[music in]
Brandon’s experiences might seem extreme, but statistically they aren’t all that rare. And even more people live with more moderate hearing loss, with even simple interactions posing a daily challenge.
Michael: The most common complaint is the inability to function in group settings, in cafeterias when there's noise, in a party... any place where there's competing noise.
That’s Professor Michael Dormon from Arizona State University. Michael has worked with people affected by hearing impairments for the last 40 years.
Michael: If you go back far enough, you have acoustic horns, it was realized that if you created something that looks like a megaphone, and you yell into one end of it, and you put the other end up to your ear, it sounds louder.
These paved the way for the very first hearing aids.
Michael: Electronic devices have been around for a long time after Edison who himself was very deaf. They actually were decently given the electronics, they were very bulky and unwieldy.
[music out]
These days, hearing aids are commonly offered to people with moderate hearing loss. Most consist of a microphone to pick up signals from outside the ear. An amplifier then increases the volume of those signals, and a speaker plays that louder sound into the ear.
Over time, hearing aids have become smaller and more effective. Nowadays, they can even be nearly invisible, with some being placed entirely within the ear canal. You may never know if the person you’re talking to has a hearing impairment.
Michael: I had been working for about a decade with the standard hearing impaired listener. Frankly, I wasn't getting anywhere, and I thought that there had to be something better than this.
So Michael began working with a new, emerging technology. A mysterious innovation called a cochlear implant.
Michael: I remember the director of my laboratory told me “take on a good problem Michael, in life. That's what you want, a good problem.”
Michael: A good problem was a hard problem. I remember him telling me "Michael, cochlear implants are a good problem. Stay with it."
[music in]
Sometimes, hearing aids just can’t cut it. That’s where the cochlear implant comes in. These implants can handle extreme cases of hearing loss, and can even reverse total deafness.
The technology is a bit more involved, but like a hearing aid, it starts with a microphone outside the ear.
Michael: That microphone signal goes to a signal processing device about the size of the hearing aid case and then it is transmitted across the skin to a receiver that is surgically placed under the skin. The receiver then transforms the signal into a series of pulses. The pulses are directed to a set of electrodes, which the surgeon has slipped into the cochlea.
The cochlea is a hollow spiral tube in the inner ear. Normally, sound waves move through the fluid inside the Cochlea, which waves little hairs back and forth. It’s this movement that’s detected and sent as a signal to the brain.
But in a cochlear implant the electrodes deliver the sound signal directly to the auditory nerve.
[music out]
Michael: The cochlea is very handy. It's laid out distance by frequency. We can think of the beginning of the cochlea, the high frequencies live there [SFX: High frequency sine wave], and towards the top of the spiral, the low frequencies live there [SFX: Low frequency sine wave]. If we can slip an electrode most of the way to the top of the cochlea, then we can reproduce sounds from high-frequencies, to mid-frequencies, to low-frequencies.
Now, the signal that the cochlear implant sends to the brain isn’t very high-resolution. It’s filtered into a small number of bands. But it turns out that’s all we really need. The brain manages to fill in the gaps.
Michael: When I tested my first implant patient with a very primitive cochlear implant, I asked him what it sounded like, and he said, "Meh, it sounds all right." I thought, "Well, that's interesting. It should sound awful."
In fact, it probably sounded something like this: [SFX: Early implant sound sample]
And here’s the natural version of that sound: [SFX: Early implant input sample: “The remarkable versatility of the human voice”]
And here’s the cochlear version again. [SFX: Early implant sound sample]
Luckily, since then, cochlear technology has gotten considerably better. ...and every year, more and more people benefit from the implants. Many of us will be familiar with them thanks to countless viral videos that document the moment they’re switched on.
[SFX: Switch on clip 1 start]
You hear my voice?
[Crying]
Aww
[Crying]
Hooray!
It’s hard to comprehend what it would be like to suddenly gain or regain a sense that simply wasn’t there before. But the sounds implant patients hear might not always be what they’re expecting.
[music in]
Michael: Even a very mild hearing loss, very early will over time lead to a reorganization of the brain. If you've had that mild to moderate hearing loss for years and years and years, by the time you'd get to qualify for a cochlear implant, we're putting that implant in a brain that is very differently wired than the wiring of a normal brain.
Our brains are remarkably changeable. If one part stops working, another will adapt to fulfill that function to the best of its ability.
Michael: The auditory cortex becomes reorganized. It responds to tactile stimulation and visual stimulation.
So after enough time without input the part of the brain that normally deals with sound is repurposed to help out with touch and vision. In the brain at least, there might be some truth in the old saying that losing one sense will heighten the others!
But this rewiring isn’t good news for cochlear implant patients.
[music out]
Michael: By the time you put an implant in a congenitally deaf adult, you're implanting into a brain that is massively reorganized, and so it's not at all surprising that the results in terms of speech understanding are very, very, very poor. On the other hand, there are some adults who tell me that they've always wanted to hear. They just want to hear something, and they do hear with the cochlear implant.
The thing about our remarkably plastic brains is that it bends both ways. Once the auditory cortex starts receiving signals through the implant, it can begin to remember how to process them again. Which is good news for Michael’s patients.
Michael: You go from the complaint that I can't function in society because I can't hear to being able to hear and function in society, and go back to work.
[music in]
We know that cochlear implant technology has improved, and we know that the brain can adapt to make sense out of the signal the implant provides. But until recently we’ve not known what it actually sounds like.
Michael: There was no way to check of course. There was no objective measure.
About ten years ago, people with deafness in only one ear started to receive implants and Michael saw the opportunity to try and match the sound in the implanted ear.
Michael: We could inject the signal into the implant, and then I could make up things for the normal hearing ear, and ask any of them sounded like the implant could be like fitting glasses. And so we play a sound to the implant, we play a sound to the normal ear.
In this way, Michael was able to figure out what an implant really sounded like for many of his patients.
[music out]
Michael: The most common difference is that the implant sounds muffled to one degree or another. A very common report from patients is it sounds like you're talking from behind a door, or you have your hand in front of your mouth.
It might sound something like this: [SFX: Muffled sound sample: “The sun is finally shining”]
But it’s also common for the entire pitch of a sound to be shifted up.
Michael: If you remember the movie The Wizard of Oz, there are little characters called, "Munchkins."
[SFX: Munchkin clip audio]
Michael: They used a professional voice actor to produce their lines and they recorded that actor at one speed. Then they played back the recording slightly faster. And what that does is increase the pitch, and moves the whole spectrum up a little [SFX]. That's the munchkin voice.
The same thing can happen with cochlear implants.
[music in]
The last 30 years have seen incredible improvements in cochlear implant tech. And some studies show that there could be dangers of living with hearing loss.
Michael: In quiet, individuals with hearing loss may be perfectly fine. Then as soon as you go to any noisy environment… [SFX: Noisy city] performance falls apart remarkably quickly. Functionally, they just stop going out. They don't interact with others and this brings us to the most recent findings of researchers that if you have a hearing loss, then the odds of developing something awful like Alzheimer's goes up.
Faced with the alternative, Michael hopes that more people will seek out cochlear implants in the future. As the tech improves, so too will the benefits to both quality of life and long term health.
But, there are many in the Deaf community who take an entirely different view. These are people with hearing loss who will choose to reject cochlear implants, regardless of how good they are.
All this time we’ve been trying to cure deafness, but in wondering if we could, did anyone stop to think if we should? Have we got it all backwards? We’ll discuss that, after the break...
[music out]
[MIDROLL]
[music in]
In the last 30 years, improving cochlear implant technology has provided an almost miraculous cure for deafness. But there are some people who don’t see deafness as something that needs a cure. They say that It’s not a disability, and it doesn’t need fixing.
Here’s Brandon Edquist through his interpreter again.
[music out]
Brandon: At about three years old, I was given a cochlear implant.
Brandon: I remember going into the surgery room, I remember the mask and being put to sleep. After the surgery, there was some pain in my head. That's about all I remember.
The implant worked, allowing Brandon to hear sound once again. His parents hoped it would help him to live what they considered a normal life.
[music in]
Brandon: I used the cochlear implant as I went through my education. Many people explained that it would be like a mechanical sound, and it was.
Bradon: My parents really hoped that I would use it a lot, thought I would need to use it to become successful.
But the road to understanding speech was a rocky one, and Brandon worked closely with an audiologist throughout his schooling.
Brandon: The audiologist would sit behind me in a room and that person would talk and I'd try to hear the sound, what they were saying, through my cochlear.
Brandon: I'd go several times a week, but nothing of it really stuck.
Brandon didn’t enjoy using his cochlear implant and when he was a kid, he made every excuse not to use it.
Rather than rely on the noisy, electronic signal through his implant, Brandon found easier ways to communicate with his friends.
Brandon: When I was in Gen Ed school, and the classmates were hearing, but they seemed to understand about my deafness. We would communicate through gestures. They really didn't know any sign, so we used gestures.
[music out]
In 7th grade, he moved to a specialist school for the deaf.
Brandon: When I got to the school for the deaf everything changed. I very rarely had used the cochlear, I had it on, but I used sign. It was my choice to stop using it.
But Brandon wasn’t alone in rejecting his implant. His was just one voice in the growing dissent within the wider Deaf community.
Brandon: That was during a time when the idea of a cochlear implant in the deaf community was not popular. Most of the deaf were rebellious about it.
[music in]
Michael: Early in my career, the radical deaf culture individuals were very active. I remember a meeting in England where they actually chained the doors of our conference hall together, so we couldn't go in to have a conference about cochlear implants.
The message these activists were trying to get across was that cochlear implants are trying to fix something that doesn’t NEED to be fixed. Trying to cure deafness was offensive to the deaf identity. Their message was clear.
It might seem like a bit of an overreaction, but it’s born of real oppression.
Back in the 1880s, the inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell had some seriously controversial views on people who were deaf and chose to remain mute. He claimed that they would choose to intermarry, leading to what he called a defective race. He went as far as to say that deaf-mute intermarriages should be forbidden. They never were of course, but it’s not hard to see why the deaf community felt so threatened, then and now.
[music out]
In reality, many individuals with hearing loss don’t consider themselves in need of fixing. They just belong to a different culture, and like any other culture, Deaf culture has its roots in shared experiences, a common language, and a mutual understanding of what it’s like to live in a soundless world.
It can be a powerful thing to belong to such a community. But, from Brandon’s experience it can sometimes be too closed off.
[music in]
Brandon: The deaf people really are protective of their community. It's a small community. They are very careful about who joins them and who does not join them.
Brandon: There are some who are more open who are willing to accept others and are willing to teach the language and teach the culture. It varies.
Even though he chose not to use the cochlear implant he got when he was very young, he can still find it hard to navigate the deaf community.
Brandon: The deaf community is part of self-identity. I feel part of that, and sometimes it is hard to fit into that. I do identify deaf, but because of my experience in mainstream, sometimes I don't feel I fit in.
The deaf identity is such an important part of the deaf community. So it makes sense that the growing popularity for cochlear implants seemed to threaten that close-knit group by threatening the deaf identity itself.
[music out]
[music in]
Today’s cochlear implants can restore hearing to the deaf, allowing them to integrate seamlessly into the hearing community. But in choosing to live with his deafness, Brandon finds that relatively few adjustments are needed for him to live the life he wants.
Brandon: My parents use sign. My friends are deaf and we use sign. My hearing friends, we are still able to communicate very well through texting, through our phones, so it's been no problem.
But in terms of general accessibility, there’s still some way to go.
Brandon: I know many deaf who wish that sign language was used more and taught more in the school systems so that hearing people can learn more and that way the deaf community can be more part of the community.
Brandon: There's a big inequality of jobs and lack of jobs, lack of employment for the deaf community. Yes. They have the skills. They have the knowledge, but sometimes, the disability may not be clear enough, so it can be hard for deaf people, and hearing people usually try to come up with an excuse to not hire a deaf or find some other way to communicate. There's always an excuse.
Even today, cochlear implants are a touchy subject. There’s been a resurgence in people speaking out to support deaf culture and the deaf identity. But ultimately, the choice will always be down to the individual.
On one hand, Michael believes that implants can improve quality of life, and urges people to seek out the surgery.
Michael: You don't do it for yourself so much as the ones around you. It will help your family just as much as it'll help yourself.
But on the other hand, if given the opportunity to wave a magic wand and gain the ability to hear, would Brandon choose not be deaf anymore?
Brandon: No. No. No. Laughing, no.
[music out]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of defacto sound, a sound design team dedicated to making the world sound amazing. Find out more at defacto sound dot com.
This episode was written and produced by Leila Battison, and me Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound edited by Soren Begin and sound designed and mixed by Colin DeVarney.
Thanks to our guests, Professor Michael Dorman, and Brandon Edquist.
Michael is a Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. He continues to research speech understanding with cochlear implants, and hopes someday to see implants that can reproduce sound perfectly.
Brandon is a graphic designer. You can check out his work on his website, at brandonedquist.com.
You’ll have noticed by now that this season we’re sometimes asking people what their favourite sound is. This episode is a little different, so I’ve asked Brandon what his favourite sensation is.
Brandon: Visual. I like watching TVs and movies, and feeling the vibration with all the action, that's my favorite feeling, sensation, of all.
All of the music in this episode was from our friends at Musicbed. Check them out at musicbed.com.
A special thanks to Esparanza Garibay for naming this episode. Esparanza chimed in on a request for show titles over on Facebook and suggested we use the title Deaf Gain. She’s deaf and said that Deaf Gain a pretty common phrase in the deaf community. An example of when they might use it would be in a super noisy environment like a party. They’ll their hearing aid or Cochlear Implant and sign “deaf gain” to each other. They might also sign the phrase when they’re able to talk to each other across rooms. Stuff that us hearing people just can’t do. It kinda gives them a super cool superpower. Everyone on Facebook including myself fell in love with the phrase because it’s also the opposite of the term Hearing Loss. Hearing Loss, Deaf Gain. It completely changes the framing of deafness. Anyway, that’s one of the many reasons you should follow us on social… to find incredible stories like that that pop up spontaneously. You can find us on Twitter or Facebook by simply searching for Twenty Thousand Hertz. And when you’re there, be sure to say hi.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
This episode was written & produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows.
Our ears are sensitive, but we often don’t treat them that way. We are born with the ability to hear up to 20,000 Hz. As we age, our hearing range diminishes. On top of that, the more exposure we have to loud sounds, the greater the impact it has on our ability to hear. Find out what happens once we start to lose our hearing. Featuring Lindsay Prusick and Shaheem Sanchez (Instagram).
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
On the Mountain by The Sea by Utah
In Slow Motion by Utah
SFSG by Utah
0212 by Utah
One Million by Utah
Breaking the Bank Instrumental by Reagan James
Washedway by Evolv
Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by Dallas Taylor and produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound.
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[Music start]
From Defacto Sound, you’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. The stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds. I’m Dallas Taylor.
This is the story behind our hearing and what happens when it goes away.
[club music fading to silence]
Even a small amount of hearing loss can significantly impact a person. Almost forty million American adults, that’s fifteen percent, have difficulty hearing. And it gets worse the older you get. And right now, the world is louder than it’s ever been before.
Lindsay: Hearing loss for the most part tends to be a gradual thing for people as they age.
That’s Audiologist, Lindsay Prusick.
Lindsay: When people have hearing loss, largely, it's an invisible thing. You don't see it, but it has such a profound impact on people's ability to connect, communicate, even ultimately their quality of life. There are a lot of people who are born with hearing loss and it can be as a result of genetics, syndromes, things acquired through when a mother gives birth to a baby, various viruses, that type of thing.
Because it is so invisible, many people don’t think about hearing loss very much at all.
Lindsay: Really, in general, for the majority of people with hearing loss, it's a very gradual thing. People start to notice over time, "Oh gosh, it's hard to understand speech. Things sound muffled. People sound like they're mumbling," or just the quality of sound begins to decrease. [music decrease SFX]
This is a good thing to remember when you’re talking to older people...or really anyone who asks you to repeat yourself. You yourself can work to prevent hearing loss or additional hearing loss. But, it’s harder today than ever before.
Lindsay: We're constantly putting things in our ears and listening to sound. We're walking around with our smart phones that have now become basically our television [HBO SFX], our podcast source…[20K theme song, record scratch]
Hey, don’t blame me, I’m not controlling your volume!
Lindsay: Our music source, [music start] and we're placing ear buds into our ears and maybe you're getting on the subway [subway SFX] or you're on an airplane [airplane cabin SFX] or you're just in a noisy environment. So what do you do? You crank up that volume. That can be a very dangerous thing.
A great rule of thumb is if somebody is three feet away from you, and they're talking to you, and you can't hear them, the sound is too loud. And you should turn the volume down.
There are all sorts of things in our environment that can threaten our ears.
Lindsay: Try to think about the last time you were in a noisy situation, so a concert [concert SFX], maybe you mowed your lawn [lawn mower SFX], maybe you even just blow dried your hair [hair dryer SFX]. It seemed really loud at first and it's not as loud and that's because people experience a temporary shift in their hearing. They’re not nearly as sensitive to those sounds anymore. Let's say you're at a concert and you run to the concession stands. [begin muffling Lindsey] The cashier begins to talk to you and you realize they sound muffled.
Then maybe you hear a slight buzz or hum [buzz SFX] in your ears. These are all things you can notice when you're in the moment, but most people notice it the next day. I always refer to it as a noise hangover. It's typically your hearing is muffled or it's not as sensitive. You could even feel fatigued. Literally, just more tired than usual and you could have a headache. And these symptoms can last a day, they can last a couple days depending on how often you’ve exposed yourself to extreme levels of noise, you can even find that some of the symptoms go away, but others persist.
Over time the ears can take a beating and they may go back to normal, but the reality of it is anytime you exposure yourself to dangerous levels of sound, it does do damage to the hearing system.
One clear symptom of hearing damage is a ringing in the ears called tinnitus.
Lindsay: Tinnitus is the perception of sound either in one ear, both ears, or just in your head, without an actual sound occurring in the environment. It can be described in many ways. I'd say one of the most common is people will say, "I have a high pitched ringing" [high pitched ringing SFX]. They can express it as sounding like crickets [crickets SFX], buzzing [buzzing SFX], a tea kettle going off [tea kettle SFX]. There's all sorts of descriptions for it. It can be intermittent, meaning it happens at different times of the day, or it can be constant [tea kettle and ringing SFX], it is literally always there. A majority of the population when they experience Tinnitus, they find that they'll hear it and it'll go away. There are a lot of people that are highly, highly impacted.
Do you have tinnitus or other signs of hearing damage? Even if you don’t, I want you to try something with me.
For this part of the show, if you can, find a quiet space where you can concentrate for a few minutes. If you’re driving or something, just carry on. You can come back to this later.
Okay, welcome back.
Now set the volume at a comfortable level [mic check]. All set? Okay. The healthy hearing critical range is between 500 Hertz and 4,000 Hertz.
A Hertz is a measure of frequency and vibration. Imagine a speaker cone: It starts in the resting position, pushes outward, pulls back inward and then goes back to the resting position. One Hertz means this cycle would happen over the course of exactly one second. But we as humans can’t start to detect that sound until the speak is going through that cycle around 20 times a second.
That’s 20 Hertz, and it’s extremely low...at a high volume you’d be more likely to feel it rather than hear it, but that’s the threshold of where hearing begins. As we speed that speaker up, the pitch raises. Humans can theoretically hear all the way up to around 20,000 Hertz, but, you probably haven’t hear that sound since you were a kid. More on that shortly.
Now I’m going to play sounds in the critical range.
Here’s 500Hz [example]
Here’s 1,000Hz [example]
Here’s 2,000 Hz [example]
And this is 4,000Hz [example]
Now, this is in no way scientific. Your results will vary based on what type of headphones or speakers you’re using, where you’re listening, and any EQ settings you might have changed on your device. Still for most devices in most places all of those tones should have been clearly audible. So, if you struggled to hear any of those tones or couldn’t hear them at all, please go to a professional to get your hearing checked.
Now, just for fun, we’re going to go a little further. Everyone with average hearing should be able to hear 8,000 Hertz.
[example]
But, as we get older, our hearing range naturally diminishes to where we lose sounds in the top of our range. There are particular ranges that people over a certain age are not likely to hear. We’re going to play some of those now.
The first one, 12,000 Hz, is usually only audible to people under the age of 50.
[example]
And here’s 15,000 Hz, for people under 30…
[example]
And then 17,000 Hz, which only people under 18 should be able to hear.
[example]
Then there’s 20,000 Hz, here this show gets its name, it’s the highest possible sound that any human can hear.
Check it out...if you can hear it.
[example]
And finally, we’ll play a full sweep of the entire range of human hearing which is 20 Hertz all the way up to 20,000 Hertz.
Again, take all of this with a grain a salt because all listening devices vary. For example, if you’re listening in earbuds, you’re not going to hear anything in the low frequency ranges, but if you have a subwoofer in your car you might.
Now...
This is 20 Hertz [example] ...here’s 100 [example] ...200… [example]
this is 500 [example] ...1,000 [example] ...2,000 [example] ...4,000 [example] ...8,000 [example] ...12,000 [example] ...15,000 [example]. ..18,000… [example]
[example] and that was 20,000.
Based on your age, it may have sounded like we just stopped the test at some point. We all hear differently, and in a minute I’ll explain how some businesses have taken advantage of this as well as speak with someone who has experienced extreme hearing loss.
[music out]
MIDROLL
[music in]
As you now know, young people can typically hear higher frequencies than older people...and businesses have actually taken advantage of this. For instance, it’s been reported that businesses have blasted 17,000 Hertz tones in front of stores to keep kids from loitering. Most adults can’t hear it, but kids, are repelled by it.
Then, of course, kids figured out a way to use this tone to their advantage and started setting it as a text notification on their phones. This way they can get messages in class without the teacher catching on.
Just because you can’t hear something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And nobody knows that better than Shaheem Sanchez.
Shaheem: I wasn’t born deaf. I lost my hearing when I was four.
Because of a bad nerve in his inner ears, now one ear is completely deaf. In the other, he uses a hearing aid.
Since he lost his hearing at age four, he has some foundation for hearing speech. This is part of why he’s able to speak as well as he can. The other part is that he can still hear some things.
Shaheem: I can hear with a hearing aid but not everything. I can hear a dog barking [dog bark]. A car sound [car SFX]. I can hear people talk [people talking SFX] but I don’t know what they’re saying. All I hear is mumbling like bu-bu-bu-bu-bu. That’s all I hear.
He can read lips, but he didn’t learn sign language until high school.
Shaheem: I grew up speaking. That’s why now, I speak clear.
But even though Shaheem’s able to voice for himself, he still endured bullying growing up.
Shaheem: People always used to judge me. Why you talk like that? You can’t hear yourself. They call me all kinds of names. But I feel comfortable now. I’m more comfortable.
But dancing was something that he always felt comfortable with.
Shaheem: I started dancing when I was 11. It’s what I love to do. I started dancing because my dad he also a dancer. He was killed before I was born so I never met him. So my family told me about him. I started to feel inspired. And then I started teaching myself how to dance.
But I didn’t hear so I only watched body language. Sign language is like body language, so that’s how I’m so good at that.
About ten years ago, when he was in high school, Shaheem was dancing on the street when he was approached by a dance instructor. That’s when he started taking formal lessons.
Shaheem: I have my own style but I’m learning different styles. Like ballet, jazz, hip hop, breakdancing, salsa, a lot of different styles.
But his favorite style?
Shaheem: I’m really into, like, R&B songs. I like dubstep. I also like hip hop, too. I feel the beat. The vibration. Most of the time.
He listens to songs by putting his hand on the speaker and feeling the beat. He also watches music videos with the captions on. It’s a painstaking process...
Shaheem: Study. Memorize. Listen to it over, over, over, and over. So I’m memorizing it. It’s not easy. Normally takes me, like, three weeks. I know a lot of songs. It’s crazy.
Shaheem’s the only one in his immediate family who’s deaf, but he isn’t the only dancer.
Shaheem: My brother, he looks up to me. I taught him how to dance. He picked up fast. I don’t know how he do it. He got better and better and better and better. Now, he better than me.
Shaheem’s brother, who goes by the name Lil Kida, got so good, he actually won a season of the TV show “So You Think You Can Dance.”
But Shaheem didn’t just teach his brother to dance…he taught him his drive too.
Shaheem: If you love to do it, put your heart into it. Never give up. No matter what. Deaf or not, you still can do it. Anything is possible.
A lot of hearing people just don’t know enough about what it’s like to be deaf. He knows visibility is crucial to understanding and has taken on raising awareness about the deaf community like it’s his job.
Shaheem: I want to show the world that deaf people can do anything equal to everyone. I want people to know that we may be different, but we do the things you can do. We can drive. We can read. We can learn. We can listen to music. We can do anything.
Our society is based around having all of your senses. And hearing is something a lot of us take for granted even though we shouldn't.
Hearing is fragile. Fleeting, even.
If you have it, protect it. And if you don’t, don’t apologize for it.
Whatever your situation, try to keep in mind that you’ll never know what other people’s experiences are unless you put in the work to find out.
Twenty Thousand Hertz is presented by Defacto Sound a sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound insanely cool. Find out more at defactosound.com.This episode was produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and me. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound designed and mixed by Nick Spradlin.
Thanks to audiologist Lindsay Prusick and to Shaheem Sanchez. You can see videos of Shaheem’s dancing on his instagram page at instagram.com/shaaheem. We will have a link to this and his Youtube page in the show notes.
We’d also like to thank Malonda Hutson and Susan Thompson-Gaines for their advice on the topic.
The music you’ve hearing is from Musicbed. They represent more than 650 great artists ranging from indie rock and hip hop to classical and electronic. Head over to music.20k.org to hear our exclusive playlist.
Finally, please tell your friends about the show, and connect with us on social!
You’ll find all of the links I’ve mentioned in the show description.
Thanks for listening.
This episode was written & produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows.
Did you know there might be a track of audio on your favorite movies and television shows that describe all of the actions on screen? This technology was designed for the visually impaired, but it could be used for the masses. It’s still not as widely provided as some would hope. Meet the consumers and activists fighting for a better-described tomorrow. Featuring Tommy Edison, Robert Kingett, and Colleen Connor.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Washedway by Evolv
Unspoken by Am Architect
Joining Hands by Evolv
Clear Blake by Ewing
You Are Not What You Think You Are Evolv
20K is made out of the studios of Defacto Sound and hosted by Dallas Taylor.
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[Music start]
From Defacto Sound, you're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. This is the story behind a cool hidden audio track in movies and TV.
[The Matrix clip]
Tommy Edison is a successful film critic. And there’s one famous movie he just couldn’t ever get through.
Tommy: Everybody was like “Oh, you gotta see The Matrix. It’s the greatest movie in the world it’s so great, blah, blah, blah.” And I must of watched it half a dozen times and got nowhere. Maybe 10, 12, 14 minutes in and that was it.
But Tommy’s movie going experiences tend to be different than most.
Tommy: I’m known on Youtube as the Blind Film Critic.
That’s right, Tommy is blind and a well known film critic on Youtube. When he discovered audio description, everything changed.
[The Matrix clip with audio descriptions]
That was from the audio described version of The Matrix. When you watch a movie online, you usually have multiple audio options. These audio options can include different languages like Spanish or French. But in this case it’s a track describing what’s happening on screen for those with visual impairments.
Tommy: Then I understood what made this movie so great. And what was so special about it. That was the thing that really turned me onto audio description. It sort of changed my life. For example, [Daredevil clip] Daredevil I tried to watch the first couple of episodes without audio description and I could not have been more lost. And then they got it together and got the audio description on. And like I knew the flashbacks were happening, all different kinds of things and it made so much more sense. Plus the descriptions of the fights are incredible.
[Daredevil audio description clip]
Many online shows don’t have audio descriptions. And even Daredevil, a Netflix original series about a blind superhero, had to have activists rally to have it described.
Robert: It was kind of strange because I thought, you guys are making a show that features a blind character, why is it not accessible to the blind?
My name is Robert Kingett. I am a journalist, author and essayist. I was legally blind until my last birthday, when I had a glaucoma attack. Now I don’t see light, I don’t see shadows, I don’t see anything at all. You tend to rely a lot more on your vision than you might realize, so I kind of have to learn everything over again.
Whether it’s your everyday life or while consuming entertainment, when you’re blind, your understanding of what’s going on can hinge completely on your sense of hearing.
Robert: Hearing is everything. The first time I watched a TV show with description, it was That 70’s Show. And from then on I was hooked. I was like, “Oh now I get why my sighted people around me are laughing, ok.”
Federal law requires major television networks to each provide 50 hours a year of visually impaired accessible shows. But that’s only in the top sixty markets. And there are no requirements at all for online streaming platforms like Netflix or Hulu.
Robert: I don’t have cable in my house, I have an Apple TV. And I had to hunt and hunt for a movie that has audio description. In about ten years or so I don’t think many people are going to be actually watching TV, I think everything is going to be online. So, let’s try to get ahead of the curve and make things accessible for streaming platforms. And the law is not in the twenty first century as of yet.
More and more people are tuning in online. And even the shows and movies that had audio descriptions elsewhere, like on broadcast for BLU-Ray, didn’t offer the track during streaming.
Robert: I was trying really hard to at least say, "Okay, well here's the TV show that has has audio description. Why can't you just reach out to the studios and get the track and then layer it on as a separate track on your service?"
And for years they said, "We did not have the technical means." They said that, "We don't know where to begin."
Regardless of how much people at a company might want to help, cutting through all of the bureaucracy to get any corporate entity to spend money can be difficult.
Robert: The American Council of the Blind jumped in so... in a settlement, Netflix has agreed to describe all of their original content, and they will make efforts to get the tracks from movies and TV shows, if they exist. And now that it is on Netflix, Hulu should have no technical problem. If it's on Netflix, then it can occur on YouTube and other places.
The demand for audio descriptions is finally on the rise. But it’s a relatively new technology and there are still no real standards for it. But that’s beginning to change. We’ll get to that, in just a minute.
[music out]
MIDROLL
[music in]
Audio descriptions are becoming more and more common in media, but it’s still a relatively new development with little standardization. Fortunately, people like Colleen Connor are working to change that.
Colleen: I started a business called Audio Description Training Retreats with a woman who has been a describer for about 10 years. We are training people to be audio describers for media and art for the blind. We want to create a certification. We want to create at least a standard of audio describers coming up with some sort of rules and some sort of curriculum for practice.
And of course, that starts with quality.
Colleen: Something that makes a good audio describer or a good script is being able to pare down your words. They don't have to be complete sentences. The person can still hear what's going on. You have to think of it as what is the dialogue cover? What is that sound effect cover? If the phone rings, you don't have to say, "The phone rings." Because we just heard it. So, it's a different way of thinking about things. You have to be observant as a describer and the best description is something that eventually, about 15 minutes in, you don't even notice it anymore. It becomes the narrator of the story.
[Frozen audio description clip]
Good audio description will get you set up for whatever emotionally needs to be conveyed, but it doesn't try to describe absolutely everything, so that you can have your own conclusions for things. Audio description is not there to interpret. You are not belittling your audience by interpreting anything. You wouldn't say, "Mary is really, really sad." You would say, "Mary cries."
You don’t want to distract from the action. You're being someone’s eyes and filling in that visual picture so that they can follow along with the rest of the experience.
Having access to the movies and television shows that influence our culture is important for all of us. And many people who are blind can sometimes feel isolated from the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, the biggest hurdle for this technology is simply, awareness.
Colleen: If the studio and the directors and the people writing this content, if they're not aware of that audio description is existing, they're not going to put it in the contract. It’s so important to focus on the positivity and have it be a positive thing for everyone. It’s such a cool service.
And this service just doesn’t have to be for the visually impaired. Think about it, you’re listening to a story right now, not watching it. How cool would it be to catch up on your favorite TV shows and movies on a road trip or on your morning jog or while doing the dishes?
Storytelling empasses all of our senses. There are times where seeing something tells a story or hearing something tells a story. Touch, taste and smell all tell a story. Even if you’ve watched a movie or television show in the past your mind might unlock something new simply by hearing it.
Audio descriptions were created as a tool to aid in accessibility, but this is simply storytelling. And it’s a huge win win for all of us.
Twenty Thousand Hertz is presented by Defacto Sound. A sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound insanely cool. Find out more at defactosound.com. This episode was produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and me. With help from Sam Schneble. It was edited by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and mixed by Nick Spradlin.
Special thanks to Tommy Edison. He has some really cool videos on Youtube that you should definitely check out. You can find him on Youtube under The Blind Film Critic. Also, a big thanks to Robert Kingett and Colleen Connor.
All of the music in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed. To find out more, check out their website at musicbed.com. Also, if you open your browser right now and go to music.20.org, it will take you to a playlist of tracks that we used in this episode and past episodes. I think you’ll really enjoy hearing them. We’ll also put this link in our show description.
Thanks is always to Mast who created our artwork and Pocketknife who built our website. In addition to building the Twenty Thousand Hertz site, they also recently rebuilt the Defacto Sound website from the ground up. And it’s packed full of some very cool projects.
So, if you want to peek behind the curtain and find out more about the people behind this show check out defactosound.com. Be sure to tell your friends in the TV, Film and Game industries all about it.
Take our very short listener poll at poll.20k.org. It shouldn’t take longer than thirty seconds. This poll is really helpful in determining the direction of our show and who is listening.
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Thanks for listening.
