The Sunday Read: ‘Could I Survive the “Quietest Place on Earth”?’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

In a room in a modest concrete building in a leafy Minneapolis neighborhood is silence exceeding the bounds of human perception. Technically an “anechoic chamber,” the room is the quietest place on the planet — according to some. What happens to people inside the windowless steel room is the subject of wild and terrible speculation. Public fascination with it exploded 10 years ago, with an article on The Daily Mail’s website. The article left readers to extrapolate their own conclusions about the room from the short, haunting observations of its proprietor, Steven J. Orfield, of Orfield Laboratories. “You’ll hear your heart beating,” Orfield was quoted as saying. And, “In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.” Much of the lore about the chamber’s propensity for mind-annihilation centers on the concept of blood sounds. Hearing the movement of blood through the body is supposedly something like an absolute taboo, akin to witnessing the fabrication of Chicken McNuggets — an ordeal after which placid existence is irreparably shattered. Despite this, Caity Weaver, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, wanted to give the chamber a go.

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Katie Weaver.
0:06.0	I'm a staff writer at the New York Times magazine, and I like to write about weird things that
0:10.2	no one asked me to write about.
0:12.9	For today's Sunday read, I'm going to be sharing a story that I wrote for the magazine about
0:16.6	my visit to an anechoic chamber, one of the quietest places on earth.
0:23.6	Last time one of my stories was on the Sunday read, it was about my attempt to experience
0:26.9	a fun, glamorous vacation riding around in a tricked-out camper van.
0:31.2	It did not go well.
0:39.8	In a leafy Minneapolis neighborhood, under a thick cloak of ivy stands a modest concrete
0:45.0	building.
0:46.3	Contained within the building is silence exceeding the bounds of human perception.
0:50.9	This hush is preserved in a small room, expensively engineered to be eclos.
0:56.2	Some people find the promise of such quiet irresistible.
0:59.6	It entices them like a soundless siren call to visit the building at great personal cost.
1:05.4	The room of containment, technically an anechoic chamber, is the quietest place on the planet,
1:10.9	according to some.
1:12.6	According to others, it's more like the second quietest.
1:15.9	It is quieter than any place most people will ever go, unless they make a point of going
1:20.2	to multiple anechoic chambers over the course of a lifetime.
1:24.3	What happens to people inside the windowless steel room is the subject of wild and terrible
1:28.7	speculation.
1:30.5	Public fascination with the room exploded 10 years ago, with an article on the Daily Mail's
	...

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