Taking Comfort in the Sound of Silence
Wonder Cabinet
Wonder Cabinet Productions
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2020
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Restaurants, bars, coffee shops — is there any public place left that doesn’t play background music? Loudly? In
this show, we’re making the case for more silence. Because perhaps some need the drone of TVs, traffic and Muzak, to drown out the pesky sound of thinking, but others go to great lengths to find respite from a blaringly loud world.
Original Air Date: December 09, 2017
Guests:
Erling Kagge — Gordon Hempton — George Michelsen Foy — Kyle Gann — Shawn Wen — Jennifer Egan
Interviews In This Hour:
The Contemplative Silence Of A Cold, Lonely Journey — A Nature Preserve For The Quiet Of Nature — The Volume Of Absolute Silence — The Tale of a Mute Piano Performance — A Silent Soliloquy From The World's Greatest Mime — The Pauses Between Chords of Iconic Rock and Roll
Further Reading:
One Square Inch of Silence, from the documentary "Soundtracker"
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's to the best of our knowledge from PRX. |
| 0:05.1 | I'm Anne Strangeamps, and the world is getting noisier every day. |
| 0:10.2 | Cars blaring their owner's favorite music. |
| 0:13.9 | Restaurants, bars, coffee shops. |
| 0:16.4 | Is there any place left that doesn't play background music? |
| 0:20.0 | Loudly? |
| 0:25.6 | Well, this hour, we're making the case for more silence. In the silence you meet yourself. |
| 0:27.6 | It could be beautiful, but it could also be maybe even sometimes terrifying. |
| 0:32.6 | So maybe we pollute the world with sound because we can't stand to hear ourselves thinking. |
| 0:38.9 | Also, the wartime experiences of the man who became world famous for not saying a single word, |
| 0:44.5 | the great French mime Marcel Marceau. |
| 0:47.1 | Sometimes I think that he saw his way of mime as a way of trying to repair the world |
| 0:52.2 | after it was so utterly shattered in World War II. |
| 0:56.3 | This hour, silence. |
| 1:03.0 | Wisconsin Public Radio. |
| 1:10.4 | It's to the best of our knowledge from PRX. |
| 1:13.9 | I'm Anne Strange Champs. |
| 1:16.1 | Do you ever crave silence? |
| 1:19.9 | How far would you go to find it? |
| 1:27.0 | Antarctica is the quietest place I've ever been. |
| 1:30.3 | That's the Norwegian explorer Arlen Kaga. |
| 1:35.3 | I've been forced by the company who owned the plane that flew me to bring a radio. |
... |
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