June 7, 2012 • 30 mins
Underwater operas? Submerged speaker systems? Mysterious deep sea noises and the monsters who make them? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie explore the rich world of underwater sound.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie
was starting this one off. I understand you want to
call somebody out. You want to call out an individual
by the name of j Alfred Proof Rock on something.
He said, it doesn't exactly line up with science, that's right.
(00:25):
And um, my friend Tated s Elliott had this idea
about the silent sees, right, I think we all have
to do. Right. We think about the ocean, the vastness
of it, just being this quiescent ocean of nothingness. Right. Yeah,
I'm sure they're waves and storms and crashing, but when
you put your head underwater, suddenly all or most of
(00:45):
these surface sounds just disappear, right, Right, it's really nice
and quiet. And I was thinking about that quote from
the love song of j Alfred Proof franc Case. He said,
some of you may have heard it before. I should
have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the
floors of silent seas. There's that silent part. Yeah, I
gotta call you out. It turns out that there's kind
(01:07):
of a disco going on underneath the water there. I
don't think proof Rock is gonna take this well because
he's kind of a he's kind of a gloomy dude.
He's kind of feeling down here. He's gonna take rough
huge in those silent seas. Yeah, and you just took
that away from him. So sorry. Yeah. Yeah, Well let's
talk about these seas and what happens when we eaves
drop on the ocean. Yeah, this episode is going to
(01:29):
be all about sounds underwater, sounds under the sea, sounds
in your swimming pool, but not in your bathtub, but
not in your well, it could be in your bathtub,
I guess all. The bathtub is kind of a small
environment for Yeah, I was making a part joke. I
apologize about that. Okay, Well, you know we don't throw
them in there often, No, we don't, you sparingly alright, alright,
(01:50):
let's get back to the whole eaves dropping on the
sea thing. Yes, so sound underwater, Yes, it does exist.
If anyone out there was not sure on this sound
does travel through water. In fact, it's travels four times
as fast. Where we get this weird idea of that
of course is that as humans, we have evolved, for
the most part to live on the surface. We have
evolved to hear on the surface. So when we put
(02:13):
our head underwater and water fills our earn, it cuts
down on our ability to hear and the way that
the vibrations are actually picked up by our inner ear.
We end up having to hear for the most part
with bone connectivity hearing, it means we're actually hearing with
the bones in our skull rather than with the inner
ear itself. So it's a muffled sound to us, right,
it's not really representative of what's going on. Yeah, because
(02:33):
even bone connectivity hearing is less effective than air conductivity
hearing for humans. So yeah, we're often going to hear
something kind of muddy, where they're going to be ranges
that we're not going to even be able to pick
up on at all, or we're not going to hear
them as clearly as we would hear them on the surface.
Though if we were a dolphin or a whale, we
would have echolocation on our side and we'd be able
(02:55):
to hear much differently. In fact, sonar and radar systems
are based on this idea of echolocation. And we'll talk
about this a little bit later, but certainly during the
Cold War, this idea of echo location and sonar was employed,
and the U. S. Navy set up a series of
massive arrays of hydrophones planted on the ocean floor to
(03:16):
detect submarine sounds. Now that data was transmitted to store
stations where the sounds were analyzed to direct a ship
or an aircraft to the site. And it was a
way to listen in on Soviet submarines, right, because in
sound travels really far underwater, So submarines, even when they're
trying to run silent, there's a lot of machinery in there.
There's a lot of noise to be made. Yeah, you
(03:37):
could pick up on that. With some microphones, we could
consuvably know what the enemy is doing. Yeah, And apparently
there is a phenomenon known as the deep sound channel,
and that's an ocean layer where low frequency sound waves
that enter the channel can become trapped and bounced around
in this layer for thousands of miles. So this allowed
the Navy to detect even relatively weak sounds from hundreds
of miles away. But then they began to pick up
(03:58):
on things that work really not submarines. It seemed organic,
but based on the sounds they were picking up, they
seemed enormous, like something larger than any known sea creature. Yeah,
if we should note that. Um, you know, after Cold
War ended that they were like, okay, what are we
gonna do with all these hydrophones? And they began to
just sort of listen to everything they turn in an
(04:20):
open mic night. They're like, alright, alright, ocean, what have
you got If you're squid with some sort of slam
style poetry stuff, we'll hear it. Got some stand up comedy.
Whale shark, bring it whar Yeah, born to run? Here
you go watch the monitor sing it. But no, I
mean it was sort of like open Mi night. I
like that analogy. They were gathering data on earthquakes, tremor ships, whales,
(04:42):
and unidentified sounds. And this is where it gets really interesting.
The grandaddy of all these, of course, is the bloop sound.
And we have an article on this on how stuff works.
If you'll go to the House Stuff Work webpage and
you type in bloop into the search bar, you will
find this article and they'll be and in the discussion.
But there's nothing like hearing it. So I suppose we
should we should actually play the blue. Well, I think
(05:03):
we should save the blue. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason
why I'm not trying to, you know, withhold the Blue.
We're gonna hold the blue for you because I want
to tell everybody that just a little bit about ocean
sounds and how researchers identify them. I mean, for the
most part, it's really not very hard to identify them
because you have whales that have very low frequency and
(05:23):
you can record those and they have sort of a
sound print. Same thing if you've heard sounds of whale
songs and nothing else sounds quite like it, right, I mean,
that's actually kind of the New Age call anyway, Right,
I mean, I'm sure if someone has heard the whale
call in a song before, right, it's something that again, Okay,
you got your tool reference and so other markers sound
(05:46):
prints are volcanic activity, iceberg movement. But there are these
sounds that defy explanation, and they remain a mystery as
to whether they are man made or from some mysterious creature. Okay,
so we talked about the blue, we will talk about
the boop. There's something called the up sweep. And this
is a sound that is seated somewhere deep in the
(06:06):
South Pacific near Antarctica. It's one of the few mystery
sounds that repeats itself in the spring in the fall.
And it's thought that it's due to an unusual acoustic
phenomenon linked to volcanic activity in this region, perhaps the
result of seawater and volcanic gas interacting and creating a
resonance pattern. Okay, So there's this idea that there's an
(06:27):
underlying cost for that. So let's listen to that actually
for a second, which is this is the up sweet Okay,
that's serious, right right now, There's something called the train
(06:48):
and again there's a theory behind this that says moving
fluids generate vibrations in the ocean, right, just like blowing
air through a clarinet. That's why we get this train sound.
So if you have moving ocean water in the right
conditions coming around a seamount or some other thing, that
could generate sound. Okay, So going to do some thinking. Clarinet,
(07:08):
train okay, Okay, And here's the third one. It's whistle
for obvious reasons, and it was picked up by a
(07:29):
single hydrophone located about miles west of Costa Rica. And
again no explanation here, and the full clip is something
like a minute long. But here's a nice little sample
for you. All right, Well that one was pretty mysterious
(07:52):
as well. Okay, so let's talk about this bloop. The
bloop is the best one of all because it's not
playing around trying to sound like a train or whistle
or clarinet or anything of that sort. It's just a deep,
resonating tone here that makes you think of dark and
secret things beneath the sea. I like that, and people
do think of dark and secret things. And I mean
(08:14):
bluop itself, I mean just the referring to it as
the blue. It sounds like something that would emanate from
some vast amorphous horror at the bottom of the sea.
Some people like to throws name around. Okay, well that's
because talk about for a second. Okay, Well, Cultul lose
one of the gods from HP Lovecraft's mythos. All these
(08:35):
various deities such as as is off and are left
the tap, both of which in my opinion, are much
better because I think Cotulo is a little played out
in the public spectrum. He's kind of the Tesla of
the love Crafty and Gods. But giant sea creature, slight
creature with wings. I mean he's awesome, don't get me wrong.
Prominently featured in the short story to call Qulu. There's
(08:57):
a cult that's really concerned with the fact that at
the beep, the bottom of the sea, you have this
elder creature, this vast power that's slumbering and will one
day wake and bring all this terror and horror to
the world. Interestingly enough, if you're a fan of the
Georgia R. Martin books or TV show Game of Thrones,
the Vikings in that, but the Viking light characters, the
Great Joys, their sickle is the crack, and there's a
(09:18):
lot of love Craft I and cthulhu s aspects of
their story. Okay, so now you know this is the
Smithis Ofthulu. If you want more, Jonathan Strickland wrote a
really cool article about it, and you can go to
house Stuff Works type Cathulu into the bar, or just
type Lovecraft into the search bar and you'll find that article. Yeah,
it really is a great article. So this bluep sound
(09:40):
it was recorded in originated from a point about fift
miles west of the southern Chilean coast, and it was
powerful enough to be picked up on sensors located up
to three thousand miles away, making it one of the
most powerful noises ever to be recorded underwater. And the
sound lasted for just over a minute, has never repeated itself,
and n O a A has checked with the Navy
(10:01):
and other groups to rule up human made sounds or sources,
I should say, and this and the rest of the
other cases to you that we talked about. So what
does this blue sound. Let's take a quick listen and
then we'll talk about what it could be or could
not be. Okay, so ice calving has been thrown around
(10:25):
as a possible explanation because it isn't a southerly location,
and then do just kind of make it decently possible.
But the profile of the sound is much closer to
that of an animal. And so that's what gets people's
minds really going. Because it was made by an animal,
that it must be larger than any other known organism
in the sea. Right, even the blue whale, whose record
(10:47):
length is about hundred and ten feet, would not be
nearly big enough to account for that sound that was
made by the bloop. But there's no evidence to support
the existence of what we call a super giant whale, right,
because if it were a whale, we'd have to come
to the surface eventually it would be spotted, right. It
would have to be something that resided underwater for long
periods of time. The other possibility is a massive squid. Again,
(11:08):
here comes this Cthulhu idea. But squids don't have the
organs necessary to create loud noises like whales do. That
kind of kicks that idea out of there. But ultimately
we just don't know what CAUSI sounds. But that's less
that it's like some sort of mysteriously creature which could be,
and more that we don't quite have the data right.
(11:28):
I Mean, the Pacific Ocean is vast, So what I'm
getting is that less likely that it's Cathulu or a
crack and more likely that it's got Zilla because remember
gott Zilla emerged from the deep. Yes, that was exactly
what I'm saying. You were picking up when I'm putting down. Yeah,
we're going to take a quick break and when we
get back, we're going to talk about an underwater performance
artists that makes Lady Gaga like milk toast. All right,
(11:56):
we're back. I recently was assigned an article for how
stuff Work dot com titled how Underwater Sound Systems. We
write a lot of articles here at how Stuff Works,
and you go into it knowing that not every article
is going to be your favorite, and sometimes you have
to find what's fascinating about a topic and bring it out.
Sometimes you have to sort of create something fascinating about
a topic and use that as the jam to go
(12:19):
with the medicine. You know, what you're saying is that
you use some magic here. No, no, no, Actually this
was a topic where I was expecting to have to
use some magic, but instead the more I looked into it,
the more fascinating the science was. Because I really had
to look at how to sound travel through the water
versus traveling through the air, how do we perceive sound
on the surface versus underwater, and getting into issues of
bone connectivity hearing, and then also got into the not
(12:41):
only the technology of it, the technology of creating a
speaker that works underwater, in a speaker system that works underwater,
but also the sort of subculture of listening to music underwater,
which I have not tried it myself yet, but I'm
convinced from what I've seen that listening to music underwater,
especially music that has been created for submarine listening purposes,
(13:06):
is kind of addictive. It's kind of like, once you've
used a really awesome pair of headphones, you can't go
back to the cheap ones. I think to some people
listening while completely submerged in a swimming pool, like that
is their killer headphone. That is the preferred method, the
ultimate method of listening to music. I can understand that, right,
because that would be a mind blowing way for your
(13:27):
brain to perceive something that it already delights in. Okay,
so before we start talking about underwater performance artists, let's
talk about underwater acoustic systems. Yes, there are a number
of things to take into account when you're talking about
an underwater sound system. I mean, the big one is
gonna be priced. You're gonna pay more sound system generally
for a typical system that you can actually go out
and buy and and have within the week. You're spending
(13:49):
between three and two thousand dollars on it. And this
is something you're gonna put in your pool, right, Yeah, Well,
they're they're basically two uses for an underwater sound system.
One is I want music in my pool, and you're
probably we're thinking, well, that's great. I guess music in
my pool would be great maybe if I'm swimming a
lot of laps or something, or I just have money
to burn. But actually one of the areas you see
this used a lot synchronize swimming. Because synchronize swimmers. It
(14:11):
sounds obvious now that we bring it out in the open.
They have to hear the music that they are performing too,
and so they need to be able to hear it
underwater as well as above the water, so they need
speakers that operate underwater. Also, sometimes with diving, you will
see this on the bottom of dive boats will have
a speaker system. If you need an alarm to sound
so everyone knows they need to get back to the surface,
you would have an acoustic system set up to send
(14:33):
out that signal. They're also cases where you'll have music
pipe down into underwater environments for people that are diving.
When it comes to designing such a speaker, on one hand,
you need a speaker that can actually go into the
water without dissolving. It doesn't have any cardboard parts, and
it's not going to short out speaker wires aren't raw
and naked in the water that kind of thing. But
then also they have to take into account the way
(14:56):
that sound actually moves around down there. One of the
things that was really fascinating this when you have a
speaker in a swimming pool, for instance, I mean, the
sound waves are bouncing off of everything. They're bouncing off
the surface of the water, they're bouncing off the bottom
of the pool, they're bouncing off the walls, and sound
is traveling so fast that you can't really tell like
where it's coming from. It ends up coming at you
from all directions, which is especially interesting when you consider
(15:18):
that stereophonic hearing stereo sound is not possible for humans underwater,
because not only is the sound traveling so fast, but
we're hearing with our skull bones. We're using that bone
connectivity hearing rather than our actual acoustic hearing. So we're
not getting like this year and this year, we're getting
full skull sound, which is an entirely different sensation and
way to perceive it. Right. Yes, in fact, I've heard
(15:40):
it described as omniphonic sound as opposed to stereophonic or
monophonic sound. So I don't think that's a technical terminology,
but that actually comes from Stanford University music researcher John
are the fourth. All Right, so let's say that you
are that person who has had the experience of listening
to music underwater, and you are for ever changed by
(16:01):
this experience. What do we expect here, Well, this is
the area that I found perhaps the most amazing for starters.
If you go down to Florida's Low Key Reef every
year they have something called the Underwater Music Festival, in
which they have boat mounted speakers systems cranking tunes for
hundreds of divers and snorkelers. They actually dubbed at an
underwater concert. I say, it's like an underwater rave kind
(16:24):
of except they're playing a lot of like Yellow Submarine
and get the impression that it's a lot of like
old classics rob So that's one level. But where it
really starts getting fascinating, that a probably too much research
on this dude. There's a French composer by the name
of Michael Ridolphi, and this guy is amazing his music,
not even looking at the underwater aspects of it, I
(16:44):
guess you would say he tends to focus on sort
of a new age ambient electronics sound, which in another
stuff I'm totally into that. But from early on, like
back beginning of his album Sonic Waters, he really got
into the use of not only recorded soundscorded with hydrophen phones.
So these are sounds in the ocean. Are we're in
a swing pool or yeah, He's he's interested in just
(17:06):
the sound of sort of the bubbly sound of an
underwater environment. He's interested in the sound of sea life,
the sound of an ocean environment, and so he's using
those in his music. But then he's also crafting music
that he intends for an audience to hear while their
head is submerged in water. He keeps coming back to this.
It wasn't like a one off thing where he's like, oh, yeah,
I did that Sonic Underwater album. No, it's like his
(17:28):
career has I mean, he's on some other stuff as well,
but but his career has been defined by his interest
in underwater sound. Not only these recordings that use a
mix of electronic and ocean noises, but he's also explored
the area of underwater opera. One production involved in casing
that the piece of soprano singer inside this giant plastic
bubble and having them float around in this pool. So
(17:51):
my question is, if you are a concert goer, are
you submerged in the water and listening underwater or are
you listening to the water that submerged and then pipe
out both? Really? I mean, because some of these recordings
that he's done, ideally you were underwater listening to a
piece of music that he is composed using recordings of
underwater sound for an underwater listener. Okay, let's let's take
(18:15):
a listen here. Okay, So that was gait of Mystery
from the micro Rodolphie album Underwater Music, and you can
find that on Amazon, by the way, and download the
entire thing in case you're interested to hear more. His
(18:36):
stuff ranges from tracks like that, which I actually really
dig that has a nice electronic ambient kind of sound
to it, and then some of his other stuff is
a little more operatic, and you'll find some of those
tracks on that album as well. My Heart's Sea Dwelling too.
That's a sample that you sent me and I really
enjoyed that. But I really want to talk about a
performance sources named Julianna Snapper because the clip that you
(18:58):
sent me on YouTube, I was visually absolutely blown away.
I have to say, because that this is the artist
who makes Lady Gaga look like she's just phoning it in.
How would you even describe the dress that she wore
to submerge herself in the pool. Kind Of like a
sea cloud, I guess, Okay, a netted sea cloud. Like okay,
(19:21):
if you were a Queen of the Mermaids and you
were about to be betrothed to Poseidon, perhaps I mean,
it's just a giant pieces of material floating out and
I'm not doing it justice. So you guys should definitely
look this up. Well. I will definitely include a clip
of this on the blog posted accompanying to this podcast. Yeah,
she uses a mouth to water technique when she sings
(19:43):
in the water. She spent a lot of hours submerged
in her bathtub and friends tubs and stuff and and
and also apparently did a lot of research into acoustics
of underwater sound. But yeah, I mean, this is again,
it's something that is we're discussing it. It sounds kind
of crazy, it sounds avant garde, and and it is
and it is. But I also have a feeling that
is really tied to this idea. And once you start
(20:05):
experiencing underwater sound and exploring it, you're hooked. And then
you start doing these things that and engaging in these
artistic endeavors that to an outsider might seem a little nutty. Yeah,
but you've got to stick your head underwater. But it's beautiful.
This is the thing, like you know, when you you
see we're talking about this in art right, Like how
something strikes you or takes your breath away, it's usually
(20:26):
because somehow you have taken these themes of life, love,
all these things that we experience, and you've made them
new again. You've recast it into some other language that
is recognizable but not quite recognizable. And that's really exciting.
And I think that's what's going on here. Some people
would describe it as sticking an opera in a swimming pool,
(20:48):
but I like your description better. Let's hear a quick
clip from this. This clip is from the two thousand
and nine opera You Who Will Emerge from the Flood.
The voice that you're hearing in this is actually the
underwater her mouth to water singing that we were discussing earlier. Okay,
(21:13):
So imagine her and her her giant about to be
betrothed to Poseidon dress, making these crazy bumblebee noises underwater. Yah,
while other people were getting about floating about it's really
a crazy scene. I mean it's it's great. I mean
that art should stir you and and get some sort
of a visual reaction out of you. And I'll tell
you what I got hooked phone. And that's the other
(21:34):
performance artists that you sent me, Claudia Hair. Oh yes,
this is the German production from just this last year
two eleven, I believe, yeah, and I believe the underwater
opera is called aqua Ada. Alright, So anyway, swater that
she is a German swimmer turned opera singer, which is
that's perfectly yeah, there you go, using all of her skills,
(21:55):
and it is a combination of opera, underwater musical performance
in synchronized swimming. What I love about this is that
it's it's much more simplistic in terms of this sort
of eye candy that's present. Yes, it's very German. The
(22:17):
pictures of it I've seen. Yeah, I mean she's in
a wet suit and she's singing outside of the pool
and below in the pool is someone who is playing
what looks to be like metal garbage can tops, some
sort of percussive interestments, so you can hear those instruments
being played underwater, and then she's just a beautiful meso
soprano voice. And then she's walking and submerging herself and
(22:40):
going underwater and still singing, and so all of a
sudden you can hear the quality of that beautiful voice
still coming through, but in this very eerie, muffled way.
That's what got me to be like, you know what,
I'm totally in on this underground underwater music scene, and
he's underwater percussion going on the whole time. Yeah. I
should also point out that are a friend Michael Rodolphie
then and early. Over the years, he's invented and co
(23:02):
created various instruments designed for underwater use, generally percussion instruments,
things that look kind of like xylophones that you play underwater.
And he's also engaged in the design of underwater electronic
equipment because if you're doing an underwater performance, that brings
a lot of design problems with it that you wouldn't
(23:22):
encounter on the surface. Well, I think it also shows
the level of obsession here too, right, that you're creating
new instruments. It's not just something that you're exploring one weekend,
Like I wonder what happened if I stuck an opera
in a pool, or or what happens if I'm not
really happy with this track? What have I played underwater? No,
it's not an offhand thing. They're really passionate about it,
and there's spending a lot of time with it. It's
(23:43):
very cool stuff, so they have it. This podcast, we hope,
was kind of an introduction and an exploration of not
only the natural sounds and the way it sounds naturally
travel underwater, both what we know about it in some
of the mysteries, but also how we have exploited the
way that sounds alvels underwater and at least we've begun
to appreciate it in a new and an artistic way. Yeah.
(24:05):
And I can't help but seeing the sort of technology
being used at like high end resorts one day, Well,
you do encounter underwater speaker systems that a lot of
really posh spa and swimming pool environments. Yeah, I'm just imagining, like, Okay,
here you are in the Caribbean coast. And you know,
I'm thinking neck Or Island from our friend Branson. Right,
maybe he's got the system. You take a little swim
(24:25):
out there and you have you know whatever sort of
ambient music playing for your pleasure. Well, I couldn't help
but think of our friend Lily the Dolphin. Yeah, because
he was really into well taking a lot of and
then getting in his isolation booth, which sometimes, or my
mistaken on that often includes water. I'm probably thinking of
(24:45):
altered states, but that was I think there was water
in that one. Yeah, they can to involve water. So
I'm gonna say I don't know on that one. Okay,
I'm pretty sure that you can get an isolation chamber.
It contains water, and so all the better to have
it wired for sound. Right, it's some the author has one,
let us know. Yeah, absolutely well, And I have to
say too, that's probably going to enhance his experience, or
(25:05):
would have it enhanced his experience. But but I like
the mention of Branson because I can easily imagine him
sliding naked into his his music tube like Luke Skywalker
in the Batha tank. Okay, so are you imagining some
sort of underwater tube that connects to his home that
he can just slide into out into the ocean. Well
that's good too. I was thinking like a like a
(25:27):
acrylic through it. He could swim with the sharks right
past them because he's got this vast network of tubes,
acrylic tubes, maybe like a big hamster ball full of water.
He's wearing a snorkel mask, nothing else, listening to music
because he rolls around totally. I totally see the totally cembm. Like,
you know what, I'm so stressed about not getting into
(25:48):
this asteroid mining thing. I'm going to go take a
swim out in my tube ocean. All right, Well, let's
look at some quick listener mail. What do you say,
Arnie Ring the mail please. This is from a listener
by name of Patrick Patrick Ridson and says, I recently
heard your podcast on Google Goggles and found your commentary
on featuristic contact lens is a little well too negative.
For instance, you say, and I'm paraphrasing here, that should
(26:11):
these contact micro computers indeed come to exist, we will
as a society become officially dumber. The point at first
seems valid, for if we had a computer with us.
We would not need to remember anything birthdays, important dates
for history classes, or even what the exact name of
that flesh itting bacteria currently consuming your arm is. And
this would seemingly be a problem. However, in my humble opinion,
(26:32):
remembering these things as somewhat arbitrary. What does it matter
if you can't remember how to spell a particular word.
If you can correctly correlate the word you're thinking of
to the idea it represents, then you should be okay.
I feel that if these micro computers do one day
come to fruition, that it will free the human mind
from the clasps of memorization and promote a far more
important cranial attribute, critical thinking, something that is seriously lacking
(26:56):
in much of the population, including college graduates. And with that,
I step off my stump. I love your show. It
keeps my brain from oozing out my ears while pulling weeds.
Oka's entreating. He raises the interesting point there. I mean,
perhaps by bringing us from the need to memorize all
these facts like there anniversary or our loved ones names
or faces, it don't come to that, you know, to
(27:18):
really critically. And I'm having some fun there, but but
but no, I think he has a valid point, the
counterpoint to some of the ideas that we were presenting.
Or does it just leave more room for useless facts
like you know, things that I know about Angelina Jolie
and Brad Pitt that I don't even know how I know,
but I know them. Yeah, right, in some sort of
passive way, that information has flowed through and remains in
(27:39):
the nets of my memory, whereas important things don't so much. Yeah,
you know, and that's what we're kind of afraid of.
But yeah, but who knows. And the idea is to
what extent we can actually manage it as we're bombarded
with this technology. So we'll see. Let me see if
I have another bit of listener mail here in the bundle.
Here's one from Donnie and Arizona. Donnie Ritson and says, Hey, guys,
(27:59):
just finished listening your Lucid Dreams episode and wanted to
add to it. I've been interested in lucid dreaming for
years now and have on numerous occasions lucid dream to myself.
You mentioned briefly various medicines that could affect dreams, but
failed to touch on one in particular. Kalia zach taquici.
Pardon is spelling is incorrect on that, and likewise, pardon
if my pronunciation is is a herbal cupplement used by
(28:20):
shaman's to introduce lucid and or prophetic dreams, commonly intended
to help find answers that may be plaguing in the
individual or their tribe. He's often smoked in a cigarette
with equal parts kalia and tobacco. In fact, lucy dreaming
in general seems to be very common in shamanistic ritual
practices around the world. Love the show Thanks Dying. Actually,
that's reminded me of a book called Rational Mysticism. It's
(28:43):
centered around trying to dwell deeper into the mind, and
the writer actually takes aya kusa. I know I have
to slaughtered that, but that's the same thing. It's it's
is that it search with a Yeah. I may have
heard it in mispronounced as well, but well, yeah, I'll
go with your because I always noticed it's kind of
like hiawappa Native American from the Children's story anyway. Alright,
(29:06):
so yes, anyway, it aids in the humanistic rituals. That
is very interesting. It's a good point that you make
about Lucid dreaming. The dream world is always played an
important role in her formation of spiritual ideas well. Hey,
if you have anything you would like to add, be
it about Lucy dreaming, the future of technology, or especially
about underwater sounds. What do you think the blue pits?
Let us know. We'd love to hear about it. Also,
(29:28):
underwater music. We highlighted a few possibilities there for listening underwater,
but I'm sure we missed something. So if you have
heard some music, or your familiar with some music that
either incorporates underwater sounds or is intended to be listened
to underwater, let us know about it. We'd love to
hear about it. We'd love to share it with the
rest of the listeners. And if you have solved the
riddle of the blue send us an email about it
(29:50):
and you can do so at blew the Mind at
Discovery dot com for more on this and thousand of
other topics. Is it how staff works dot com. M
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie
was starting this one off. I understand you want to
call somebody out. You want to call out an individual
by the name of j Alfred Proof Rock on something.
He said, it doesn't exactly line up with science, that's right.
(00:25):
And um, my friend Tated s Elliott had this idea
about the silent sees, right, I think we all have
to do. Right. We think about the ocean, the vastness
of it, just being this quiescent ocean of nothingness. Right. Yeah,
I'm sure they're waves and storms and crashing, but when
you put your head underwater, suddenly all or most of
(00:45):
these surface sounds just disappear, right, Right, it's really nice
and quiet. And I was thinking about that quote from
the love song of j Alfred Proof franc Case. He said,
some of you may have heard it before. I should
have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the
floors of silent seas. There's that silent part. Yeah, I
gotta call you out. It turns out that there's kind
(01:07):
of a disco going on underneath the water there. I
don't think proof Rock is gonna take this well because
he's kind of a he's kind of a gloomy dude.
He's kind of feeling down here. He's gonna take rough
huge in those silent seas. Yeah, and you just took
that away from him. So sorry. Yeah. Yeah, Well let's
talk about these seas and what happens when we eaves
drop on the ocean. Yeah, this episode is going to
(01:29):
be all about sounds underwater, sounds under the sea, sounds
in your swimming pool, but not in your bathtub, but
not in your well, it could be in your bathtub,
I guess all. The bathtub is kind of a small
environment for Yeah, I was making a part joke. I
apologize about that. Okay, Well, you know we don't throw
them in there often, No, we don't, you sparingly alright, alright,
(01:50):
let's get back to the whole eaves dropping on the
sea thing. Yes, so sound underwater, Yes, it does exist.
If anyone out there was not sure on this sound
does travel through water. In fact, it's travels four times
as fast. Where we get this weird idea of that
of course is that as humans, we have evolved, for
the most part to live on the surface. We have
evolved to hear on the surface. So when we put
(02:13):
our head underwater and water fills our earn, it cuts
down on our ability to hear and the way that
the vibrations are actually picked up by our inner ear.
We end up having to hear for the most part
with bone connectivity hearing, it means we're actually hearing with
the bones in our skull rather than with the inner
ear itself. So it's a muffled sound to us, right,
it's not really representative of what's going on. Yeah, because
(02:33):
even bone connectivity hearing is less effective than air conductivity
hearing for humans. So yeah, we're often going to hear
something kind of muddy, where they're going to be ranges
that we're not going to even be able to pick
up on at all, or we're not going to hear
them as clearly as we would hear them on the surface.
Though if we were a dolphin or a whale, we
would have echolocation on our side and we'd be able
(02:55):
to hear much differently. In fact, sonar and radar systems
are based on this idea of echolocation. And we'll talk
about this a little bit later, but certainly during the
Cold War, this idea of echo location and sonar was employed,
and the U. S. Navy set up a series of
massive arrays of hydrophones planted on the ocean floor to
(03:16):
detect submarine sounds. Now that data was transmitted to store
stations where the sounds were analyzed to direct a ship
or an aircraft to the site. And it was a
way to listen in on Soviet submarines, right, because in
sound travels really far underwater, So submarines, even when they're
trying to run silent, there's a lot of machinery in there.
There's a lot of noise to be made. Yeah, you
(03:37):
could pick up on that. With some microphones, we could
consuvably know what the enemy is doing. Yeah, And apparently
there is a phenomenon known as the deep sound channel,
and that's an ocean layer where low frequency sound waves
that enter the channel can become trapped and bounced around
in this layer for thousands of miles. So this allowed
the Navy to detect even relatively weak sounds from hundreds
of miles away. But then they began to pick up
(03:58):
on things that work really not submarines. It seemed organic,
but based on the sounds they were picking up, they
seemed enormous, like something larger than any known sea creature. Yeah,
if we should note that. Um, you know, after Cold
War ended that they were like, okay, what are we
gonna do with all these hydrophones? And they began to
just sort of listen to everything they turn in an
(04:20):
open mic night. They're like, alright, alright, ocean, what have
you got If you're squid with some sort of slam
style poetry stuff, we'll hear it. Got some stand up comedy.
Whale shark, bring it whar Yeah, born to run? Here
you go watch the monitor sing it. But no, I
mean it was sort of like open Mi night. I
like that analogy. They were gathering data on earthquakes, tremor ships, whales,
(04:42):
and unidentified sounds. And this is where it gets really interesting.
The grandaddy of all these, of course, is the bloop sound.
And we have an article on this on how stuff works.
If you'll go to the House Stuff Work webpage and
you type in bloop into the search bar, you will
find this article and they'll be and in the discussion.
But there's nothing like hearing it. So I suppose we
should we should actually play the blue. Well, I think
(05:03):
we should save the blue. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason
why I'm not trying to, you know, withhold the Blue.
We're gonna hold the blue for you because I want
to tell everybody that just a little bit about ocean
sounds and how researchers identify them. I mean, for the
most part, it's really not very hard to identify them
because you have whales that have very low frequency and
(05:23):
you can record those and they have sort of a
sound print. Same thing if you've heard sounds of whale
songs and nothing else sounds quite like it, right, I mean,
that's actually kind of the New Age call anyway, Right,
I mean, I'm sure if someone has heard the whale
call in a song before, right, it's something that again, Okay,
you got your tool reference and so other markers sound
(05:46):
prints are volcanic activity, iceberg movement. But there are these
sounds that defy explanation, and they remain a mystery as
to whether they are man made or from some mysterious creature. Okay,
so we talked about the blue, we will talk about
the boop. There's something called the up sweep. And this
is a sound that is seated somewhere deep in the
(06:06):
South Pacific near Antarctica. It's one of the few mystery
sounds that repeats itself in the spring in the fall.
And it's thought that it's due to an unusual acoustic
phenomenon linked to volcanic activity in this region, perhaps the
result of seawater and volcanic gas interacting and creating a
resonance pattern. Okay, So there's this idea that there's an
(06:27):
underlying cost for that. So let's listen to that actually
for a second, which is this is the up sweet Okay,
that's serious, right right now, There's something called the train
(06:48):
and again there's a theory behind this that says moving
fluids generate vibrations in the ocean, right, just like blowing
air through a clarinet. That's why we get this train sound.
So if you have moving ocean water in the right
conditions coming around a seamount or some other thing, that
could generate sound. Okay, So going to do some thinking. Clarinet,
(07:08):
train okay, Okay, And here's the third one. It's whistle
for obvious reasons, and it was picked up by a
(07:29):
single hydrophone located about miles west of Costa Rica. And
again no explanation here, and the full clip is something
like a minute long. But here's a nice little sample
for you. All right, Well that one was pretty mysterious
(07:52):
as well. Okay, so let's talk about this bloop. The
bloop is the best one of all because it's not
playing around trying to sound like a train or whistle
or clarinet or anything of that sort. It's just a deep,
resonating tone here that makes you think of dark and
secret things beneath the sea. I like that, and people
do think of dark and secret things. And I mean
(08:14):
bluop itself, I mean just the referring to it as
the blue. It sounds like something that would emanate from
some vast amorphous horror at the bottom of the sea.
Some people like to throws name around. Okay, well that's
because talk about for a second. Okay, Well, Cultul lose
one of the gods from HP Lovecraft's mythos. All these
(08:35):
various deities such as as is off and are left
the tap, both of which in my opinion, are much
better because I think Cotulo is a little played out
in the public spectrum. He's kind of the Tesla of
the love Crafty and Gods. But giant sea creature, slight
creature with wings. I mean he's awesome, don't get me wrong.
Prominently featured in the short story to call Qulu. There's
(08:57):
a cult that's really concerned with the fact that at
the beep, the bottom of the sea, you have this
elder creature, this vast power that's slumbering and will one
day wake and bring all this terror and horror to
the world. Interestingly enough, if you're a fan of the
Georgia R. Martin books or TV show Game of Thrones,
the Vikings in that, but the Viking light characters, the
Great Joys, their sickle is the crack, and there's a
(09:18):
lot of love Craft I and cthulhu s aspects of
their story. Okay, so now you know this is the
Smithis Ofthulu. If you want more, Jonathan Strickland wrote a
really cool article about it, and you can go to
house Stuff Works type Cathulu into the bar, or just
type Lovecraft into the search bar and you'll find that article. Yeah,
it really is a great article. So this bluep sound
(09:40):
it was recorded in originated from a point about fift
miles west of the southern Chilean coast, and it was
powerful enough to be picked up on sensors located up
to three thousand miles away, making it one of the
most powerful noises ever to be recorded underwater. And the
sound lasted for just over a minute, has never repeated itself,
and n O a A has checked with the Navy
(10:01):
and other groups to rule up human made sounds or sources,
I should say, and this and the rest of the
other cases to you that we talked about. So what
does this blue sound. Let's take a quick listen and
then we'll talk about what it could be or could
not be. Okay, so ice calving has been thrown around
(10:25):
as a possible explanation because it isn't a southerly location,
and then do just kind of make it decently possible.
But the profile of the sound is much closer to
that of an animal. And so that's what gets people's
minds really going. Because it was made by an animal,
that it must be larger than any other known organism
in the sea. Right, even the blue whale, whose record
(10:47):
length is about hundred and ten feet, would not be
nearly big enough to account for that sound that was
made by the bloop. But there's no evidence to support
the existence of what we call a super giant whale, right,
because if it were a whale, we'd have to come
to the surface eventually it would be spotted, right. It
would have to be something that resided underwater for long
periods of time. The other possibility is a massive squid. Again,
(11:08):
here comes this Cthulhu idea. But squids don't have the
organs necessary to create loud noises like whales do. That
kind of kicks that idea out of there. But ultimately
we just don't know what CAUSI sounds. But that's less
that it's like some sort of mysteriously creature which could be,
and more that we don't quite have the data right.
(11:28):
I Mean, the Pacific Ocean is vast, So what I'm
getting is that less likely that it's Cathulu or a
crack and more likely that it's got Zilla because remember
gott Zilla emerged from the deep. Yes, that was exactly
what I'm saying. You were picking up when I'm putting down. Yeah,
we're going to take a quick break and when we
get back, we're going to talk about an underwater performance
artists that makes Lady Gaga like milk toast. All right,
(11:56):
we're back. I recently was assigned an article for how
stuff Work dot com titled how Underwater Sound Systems. We
write a lot of articles here at how Stuff Works,
and you go into it knowing that not every article
is going to be your favorite, and sometimes you have
to find what's fascinating about a topic and bring it out.
Sometimes you have to sort of create something fascinating about
a topic and use that as the jam to go
(12:19):
with the medicine. You know, what you're saying is that
you use some magic here. No, no, no, Actually this
was a topic where I was expecting to have to
use some magic, but instead the more I looked into it,
the more fascinating the science was. Because I really had
to look at how to sound travel through the water
versus traveling through the air, how do we perceive sound
on the surface versus underwater, and getting into issues of
bone connectivity hearing, and then also got into the not
(12:41):
only the technology of it, the technology of creating a
speaker that works underwater, in a speaker system that works underwater,
but also the sort of subculture of listening to music underwater,
which I have not tried it myself yet, but I'm
convinced from what I've seen that listening to music underwater,
especially music that has been created for submarine listening purposes,
(13:06):
is kind of addictive. It's kind of like, once you've
used a really awesome pair of headphones, you can't go
back to the cheap ones. I think to some people
listening while completely submerged in a swimming pool, like that
is their killer headphone. That is the preferred method, the
ultimate method of listening to music. I can understand that, right,
because that would be a mind blowing way for your
(13:27):
brain to perceive something that it already delights in. Okay,
so before we start talking about underwater performance artists, let's
talk about underwater acoustic systems. Yes, there are a number
of things to take into account when you're talking about
an underwater sound system. I mean, the big one is
gonna be priced. You're gonna pay more sound system generally
for a typical system that you can actually go out
and buy and and have within the week. You're spending
(13:49):
between three and two thousand dollars on it. And this
is something you're gonna put in your pool, right, Yeah, Well,
they're they're basically two uses for an underwater sound system.
One is I want music in my pool, and you're
probably we're thinking, well, that's great. I guess music in
my pool would be great maybe if I'm swimming a
lot of laps or something, or I just have money
to burn. But actually one of the areas you see
this used a lot synchronize swimming. Because synchronize swimmers. It
(14:11):
sounds obvious now that we bring it out in the open.
They have to hear the music that they are performing too,
and so they need to be able to hear it
underwater as well as above the water, so they need
speakers that operate underwater. Also, sometimes with diving, you will
see this on the bottom of dive boats will have
a speaker system. If you need an alarm to sound
so everyone knows they need to get back to the surface,
you would have an acoustic system set up to send
(14:33):
out that signal. They're also cases where you'll have music
pipe down into underwater environments for people that are diving.
When it comes to designing such a speaker, on one hand,
you need a speaker that can actually go into the
water without dissolving. It doesn't have any cardboard parts, and
it's not going to short out speaker wires aren't raw
and naked in the water that kind of thing. But
then also they have to take into account the way
(14:56):
that sound actually moves around down there. One of the
things that was really fascinating this when you have a
speaker in a swimming pool, for instance, I mean, the
sound waves are bouncing off of everything. They're bouncing off
the surface of the water, they're bouncing off the bottom
of the pool, they're bouncing off the walls, and sound
is traveling so fast that you can't really tell like
where it's coming from. It ends up coming at you
from all directions, which is especially interesting when you consider
(15:18):
that stereophonic hearing stereo sound is not possible for humans underwater,
because not only is the sound traveling so fast, but
we're hearing with our skull bones. We're using that bone
connectivity hearing rather than our actual acoustic hearing. So we're
not getting like this year and this year, we're getting
full skull sound, which is an entirely different sensation and
way to perceive it. Right. Yes, in fact, I've heard
(15:40):
it described as omniphonic sound as opposed to stereophonic or
monophonic sound. So I don't think that's a technical terminology,
but that actually comes from Stanford University music researcher John
are the fourth. All Right, so let's say that you
are that person who has had the experience of listening
to music underwater, and you are for ever changed by
(16:01):
this experience. What do we expect here, Well, this is
the area that I found perhaps the most amazing for starters.
If you go down to Florida's Low Key Reef every
year they have something called the Underwater Music Festival, in
which they have boat mounted speakers systems cranking tunes for
hundreds of divers and snorkelers. They actually dubbed at an
underwater concert. I say, it's like an underwater rave kind
(16:24):
of except they're playing a lot of like Yellow Submarine
and get the impression that it's a lot of like
old classics rob So that's one level. But where it
really starts getting fascinating, that a probably too much research
on this dude. There's a French composer by the name
of Michael Ridolphi, and this guy is amazing his music,
not even looking at the underwater aspects of it, I
(16:44):
guess you would say he tends to focus on sort
of a new age ambient electronics sound, which in another
stuff I'm totally into that. But from early on, like
back beginning of his album Sonic Waters, he really got
into the use of not only recorded soundscorded with hydrophen phones.
So these are sounds in the ocean. Are we're in
a swing pool or yeah, He's he's interested in just
(17:06):
the sound of sort of the bubbly sound of an
underwater environment. He's interested in the sound of sea life,
the sound of an ocean environment, and so he's using
those in his music. But then he's also crafting music
that he intends for an audience to hear while their
head is submerged in water. He keeps coming back to this.
It wasn't like a one off thing where he's like, oh, yeah,
I did that Sonic Underwater album. No, it's like his
(17:28):
career has I mean, he's on some other stuff as well,
but but his career has been defined by his interest
in underwater sound. Not only these recordings that use a
mix of electronic and ocean noises, but he's also explored
the area of underwater opera. One production involved in casing
that the piece of soprano singer inside this giant plastic
bubble and having them float around in this pool. So
(17:51):
my question is, if you are a concert goer, are
you submerged in the water and listening underwater or are
you listening to the water that submerged and then pipe
out both? Really? I mean, because some of these recordings
that he's done, ideally you were underwater listening to a
piece of music that he is composed using recordings of
underwater sound for an underwater listener. Okay, let's let's take
(18:15):
a listen here. Okay, So that was gait of Mystery
from the micro Rodolphie album Underwater Music, and you can
find that on Amazon, by the way, and download the
entire thing in case you're interested to hear more. His
(18:36):
stuff ranges from tracks like that, which I actually really
dig that has a nice electronic ambient kind of sound
to it, and then some of his other stuff is
a little more operatic, and you'll find some of those
tracks on that album as well. My Heart's Sea Dwelling too.
That's a sample that you sent me and I really
enjoyed that. But I really want to talk about a
performance sources named Julianna Snapper because the clip that you
(18:58):
sent me on YouTube, I was visually absolutely blown away.
I have to say, because that this is the artist
who makes Lady Gaga look like she's just phoning it in.
How would you even describe the dress that she wore
to submerge herself in the pool. Kind Of like a
sea cloud, I guess, Okay, a netted sea cloud. Like okay,
(19:21):
if you were a Queen of the Mermaids and you
were about to be betrothed to Poseidon, perhaps I mean,
it's just a giant pieces of material floating out and
I'm not doing it justice. So you guys should definitely
look this up. Well. I will definitely include a clip
of this on the blog posted accompanying to this podcast. Yeah,
she uses a mouth to water technique when she sings
(19:43):
in the water. She spent a lot of hours submerged
in her bathtub and friends tubs and stuff and and
and also apparently did a lot of research into acoustics
of underwater sound. But yeah, I mean, this is again,
it's something that is we're discussing it. It sounds kind
of crazy, it sounds avant garde, and and it is
and it is. But I also have a feeling that
is really tied to this idea. And once you start
(20:05):
experiencing underwater sound and exploring it, you're hooked. And then
you start doing these things that and engaging in these
artistic endeavors that to an outsider might seem a little nutty. Yeah,
but you've got to stick your head underwater. But it's beautiful.
This is the thing, like you know, when you you
see we're talking about this in art right, Like how
something strikes you or takes your breath away, it's usually
(20:26):
because somehow you have taken these themes of life, love,
all these things that we experience, and you've made them
new again. You've recast it into some other language that
is recognizable but not quite recognizable. And that's really exciting.
And I think that's what's going on here. Some people
would describe it as sticking an opera in a swimming pool,
(20:48):
but I like your description better. Let's hear a quick
clip from this. This clip is from the two thousand
and nine opera You Who Will Emerge from the Flood.
The voice that you're hearing in this is actually the
underwater her mouth to water singing that we were discussing earlier. Okay,
(21:13):
So imagine her and her her giant about to be
betrothed to Poseidon dress, making these crazy bumblebee noises underwater. Yah,
while other people were getting about floating about it's really
a crazy scene. I mean it's it's great. I mean
that art should stir you and and get some sort
of a visual reaction out of you. And I'll tell
you what I got hooked phone. And that's the other
(21:34):
performance artists that you sent me, Claudia Hair. Oh yes,
this is the German production from just this last year
two eleven, I believe, yeah, and I believe the underwater
opera is called aqua Ada. Alright, So anyway, swater that
she is a German swimmer turned opera singer, which is
that's perfectly yeah, there you go, using all of her skills,
(21:55):
and it is a combination of opera, underwater musical performance
in synchronized swimming. What I love about this is that
it's it's much more simplistic in terms of this sort
of eye candy that's present. Yes, it's very German. The
(22:17):
pictures of it I've seen. Yeah, I mean she's in
a wet suit and she's singing outside of the pool
and below in the pool is someone who is playing
what looks to be like metal garbage can tops, some
sort of percussive interestments, so you can hear those instruments
being played underwater, and then she's just a beautiful meso
soprano voice. And then she's walking and submerging herself and
(22:40):
going underwater and still singing, and so all of a
sudden you can hear the quality of that beautiful voice
still coming through, but in this very eerie, muffled way.
That's what got me to be like, you know what,
I'm totally in on this underground underwater music scene, and
he's underwater percussion going on the whole time. Yeah. I
should also point out that are a friend Michael Rodolphie
then and early. Over the years, he's invented and co
(23:02):
created various instruments designed for underwater use, generally percussion instruments,
things that look kind of like xylophones that you play underwater.
And he's also engaged in the design of underwater electronic
equipment because if you're doing an underwater performance, that brings
a lot of design problems with it that you wouldn't
(23:22):
encounter on the surface. Well, I think it also shows
the level of obsession here too, right, that you're creating
new instruments. It's not just something that you're exploring one weekend,
Like I wonder what happened if I stuck an opera
in a pool, or or what happens if I'm not
really happy with this track? What have I played underwater? No,
it's not an offhand thing. They're really passionate about it,
and there's spending a lot of time with it. It's
(23:43):
very cool stuff, so they have it. This podcast, we hope,
was kind of an introduction and an exploration of not
only the natural sounds and the way it sounds naturally
travel underwater, both what we know about it in some
of the mysteries, but also how we have exploited the
way that sounds alvels underwater and at least we've begun
to appreciate it in a new and an artistic way. Yeah.
(24:05):
And I can't help but seeing the sort of technology
being used at like high end resorts one day, Well,
you do encounter underwater speaker systems that a lot of
really posh spa and swimming pool environments. Yeah, I'm just imagining, like, Okay,
here you are in the Caribbean coast. And you know,
I'm thinking neck Or Island from our friend Branson. Right,
maybe he's got the system. You take a little swim
(24:25):
out there and you have you know whatever sort of
ambient music playing for your pleasure. Well, I couldn't help
but think of our friend Lily the Dolphin. Yeah, because
he was really into well taking a lot of and
then getting in his isolation booth, which sometimes, or my
mistaken on that often includes water. I'm probably thinking of
(24:45):
altered states, but that was I think there was water
in that one. Yeah, they can to involve water. So
I'm gonna say I don't know on that one. Okay,
I'm pretty sure that you can get an isolation chamber.
It contains water, and so all the better to have
it wired for sound. Right, it's some the author has one,
let us know. Yeah, absolutely well, And I have to
say too, that's probably going to enhance his experience, or
(25:05):
would have it enhanced his experience. But but I like
the mention of Branson because I can easily imagine him
sliding naked into his his music tube like Luke Skywalker
in the Batha tank. Okay, so are you imagining some
sort of underwater tube that connects to his home that
he can just slide into out into the ocean. Well
that's good too. I was thinking like a like a
(25:27):
acrylic through it. He could swim with the sharks right
past them because he's got this vast network of tubes,
acrylic tubes, maybe like a big hamster ball full of water.
He's wearing a snorkel mask, nothing else, listening to music
because he rolls around totally. I totally see the totally cembm. Like,
you know what, I'm so stressed about not getting into
(25:48):
this asteroid mining thing. I'm going to go take a
swim out in my tube ocean. All right, Well, let's
look at some quick listener mail. What do you say,
Arnie Ring the mail please. This is from a listener
by name of Patrick Patrick Ridson and says, I recently
heard your podcast on Google Goggles and found your commentary
on featuristic contact lens is a little well too negative.
For instance, you say, and I'm paraphrasing here, that should
(26:11):
these contact micro computers indeed come to exist, we will
as a society become officially dumber. The point at first
seems valid, for if we had a computer with us.
We would not need to remember anything birthdays, important dates
for history classes, or even what the exact name of
that flesh itting bacteria currently consuming your arm is. And
this would seemingly be a problem. However, in my humble opinion,
(26:32):
remembering these things as somewhat arbitrary. What does it matter
if you can't remember how to spell a particular word.
If you can correctly correlate the word you're thinking of
to the idea it represents, then you should be okay.
I feel that if these micro computers do one day
come to fruition, that it will free the human mind
from the clasps of memorization and promote a far more
important cranial attribute, critical thinking, something that is seriously lacking
(26:56):
in much of the population, including college graduates. And with that,
I step off my stump. I love your show. It
keeps my brain from oozing out my ears while pulling weeds.
Oka's entreating. He raises the interesting point there. I mean,
perhaps by bringing us from the need to memorize all
these facts like there anniversary or our loved ones names
or faces, it don't come to that, you know, to
(27:18):
really critically. And I'm having some fun there, but but
but no, I think he has a valid point, the
counterpoint to some of the ideas that we were presenting.
Or does it just leave more room for useless facts
like you know, things that I know about Angelina Jolie
and Brad Pitt that I don't even know how I know,
but I know them. Yeah, right, in some sort of
passive way, that information has flowed through and remains in
(27:39):
the nets of my memory, whereas important things don't so much. Yeah,
you know, and that's what we're kind of afraid of.
But yeah, but who knows. And the idea is to
what extent we can actually manage it as we're bombarded
with this technology. So we'll see. Let me see if
I have another bit of listener mail here in the bundle.
Here's one from Donnie and Arizona. Donnie Ritson and says, Hey, guys,
(27:59):
just finished listening your Lucid Dreams episode and wanted to
add to it. I've been interested in lucid dreaming for
years now and have on numerous occasions lucid dream to myself.
You mentioned briefly various medicines that could affect dreams, but
failed to touch on one in particular. Kalia zach taquici.
Pardon is spelling is incorrect on that, and likewise, pardon
if my pronunciation is is a herbal cupplement used by
(28:20):
shaman's to introduce lucid and or prophetic dreams, commonly intended
to help find answers that may be plaguing in the
individual or their tribe. He's often smoked in a cigarette
with equal parts kalia and tobacco. In fact, lucy dreaming
in general seems to be very common in shamanistic ritual
practices around the world. Love the show Thanks Dying. Actually,
that's reminded me of a book called Rational Mysticism. It's
(28:43):
centered around trying to dwell deeper into the mind, and
the writer actually takes aya kusa. I know I have
to slaughtered that, but that's the same thing. It's it's
is that it search with a Yeah. I may have
heard it in mispronounced as well, but well, yeah, I'll
go with your because I always noticed it's kind of
like hiawappa Native American from the Children's story anyway. Alright,
(29:06):
so yes, anyway, it aids in the humanistic rituals. That
is very interesting. It's a good point that you make
about Lucid dreaming. The dream world is always played an
important role in her formation of spiritual ideas well. Hey,
if you have anything you would like to add, be
it about Lucy dreaming, the future of technology, or especially
about underwater sounds. What do you think the blue pits?
Let us know. We'd love to hear about it. Also,
(29:28):
underwater music. We highlighted a few possibilities there for listening underwater,
but I'm sure we missed something. So if you have
heard some music, or your familiar with some music that
either incorporates underwater sounds or is intended to be listened
to underwater, let us know about it. We'd love to
hear about it. We'd love to share it with the
rest of the listeners. And if you have solved the
riddle of the blue send us an email about it
(29:50):
and you can do so at blew the Mind at
Discovery dot com for more on this and thousand of
other topics. Is it how staff works dot com. M
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