Summary
In the US, the National Park Service is leading a project to bring a little hush back to the wild. Cathy FitzGerald hears more on a hike with soundscape specialist, Davyd Betchkal, in Denali National Park, Alaska – a 6,000,000 acre wilderness bisected by a single road. Davyd is part of the Natural Sounds Division, a special team within the National Park Service, tasked with preserving the soundscapes of natural habitats.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I was taking my kids to school and quite young and we were taking the subway. |
| 0:20.0 | And we were at the station on 79th Street and Broadway, where there are four lines, two local, |
| 0:27.0 | the train to stop at that station and there's two express where they just run through. |
| 0:31.0 | And we happened to be there there and my kids were fighting and the local |
| 0:37.6 | train showed up on the other side then our local that we wanted showed up and |
| 0:41.7 | then the both express trains came in |
| 0:45.8 | Clatter and steel and steel rails and the brakes screech |
| 0:50.8 | And the noise level was just incredible and I thought at that point was going crazy. |
| 0:57.0 | I was going crazy. I bought a decibelometer to measure the sun's around in it and of course it took it |
| 1:08.8 | immediately into the subway and they found that the trains made somewhere between 90 and 100 decibels. |
| 1:15.0 | It's about the level of a chainsill |
| 1:20.0 | if you start it up and hold it a foot or two away from your ear. Hush, a documentary for the BBC World Service by Kathy Fitzgerald. |
| 1:43.0 | A |
| 1:45.0 | Fitzgerald. |
| 1:46.0 | A monster, I mean that's the way I visualize it. There's just a constant hum, like this |
| 1:56.7 | constant breathing of the city, which is kind of fascinating and scary. |
| 2:01.4 | This is George Mikkelsenfoy. He's a writer living in New York. |
| 2:05.0 | Author of Zero Decibels. The quest for absolute silence. |
| 2:10.0 | It's just incredibly bloody noisy city and in the summer you've got hundreds and thousands of air conditioners all working at the same time like today and that's just a constant wishing sound. |
| 2:21.0 | Aha, yeah, There's a car alarm. That's a good one. Yeah. |
| 2:27.0 | Well, and some shouting to go in it. |
| 2:30.0 | Foy thinks Western cultures actually have a soft spot for noise. |
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