The Loudest Sound

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Imagine if an explosion in California was so loud that it could be heard in New York City. This is the story of a real event that was just as loud — the loudest sound ever recorded in human history.

This sound ripped across oceans in 1883, reaching people 3,000 miles away. Infrasonic pressure waves circled the globe four times. News of its destruction traveled through the early internet, the telegraph system, and altered the course of scientific history.

In this episode of Endless Thread, we recreate this magnum opus — a hotly debated darling of Reddit — with the help of scholars and infrasonic scientists.

****** Credits: This episode was written by Ben Brock Johnson and produced by Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Paul Vaitkus. Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell are the co-hosts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Endless Thread comes from Command Line Heroes, an original podcast from Red Hat.
0:06.2	Season 8 of Command Line Heroes covers the robots that are in our midst and the determined
0:11.1	dreamers who bring them to life.
0:13.0	8 episodes compare the promise of science fiction to the reality of robots today.
0:18.3	Search for Command Line Heroes anywhere you listen to podcasts.
0:22.7	Funding for this podcast comes from MathWorks, creators of MATLAB and Simulink Software,
0:28.5	accelerating the pace of engineering and science.
0:31.5	Learn more at MathWorks.com.
0:34.2	WBUR's last scene is back with surprising news stories about people, places, and things
0:39.8	that have gone missing, all told by tenacious public radio storytellers who refuse to let
0:45.3	mysteries go unsolved.
0:47.4	Don't miss season 3.
0:48.8	Out now.
0:49.8	Follow last scene wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:54.0	WBUR podcasts.
0:56.2	This is a story about a sound.
1:06.6	We can't hear it.
1:08.3	Really.
1:09.5	Because the instruments that recorded it when it happened in 1883 were rudimentary.
1:15.7	But they still registered it.
1:17.8	Because it was so massive, so complete, it changed the atmosphere across the planet.
1:25.2	The effects that were measured the farthest have to do with airwaves.
	...

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