Original subtitles

CHARLIE: Hey guys! Charlie here, you know my sister, Kirby. KIRBY: Hey guys!

CHARLIE: Weird but True, did you know the world's first digital recording studio was

built right here in Minneapolis, Minnesota?

And you hear that? Me either.

This is the quietest place in the whole world.

KIRBY: It's time for Weird but True!

(theme music plays)

CHARLIE: And that just about wraps things up for today's episode,

a quick shout out to our sponsor, Bo Patrevia's Encyclopedias.

KIRBY: There's no Encyclopedia, like a Patrevia.

CHARLIE: I'm Kirby's brother, Charlie.

KIRBY: And I'm Charlie's sister, Kirby.

CHARLIE: We'll see you on the next podcast episode of "Crafternoons!"

Keep craftin' out there.

KIRBY: Well, that was a disaster!

CHARLIE: Hey, guys. Glad you're here, we're having a little trouble today.

KIRBY: A lot of trouble.

CHARLIE: We started a new podcast.

"Crafternoons," where we talk about scissors, glue, and the variable bonding abilities of

epoxy based adhesives.

You know, the good stuff.

KIRBY: But we're having a lot of trouble recording.

CHARLIE: Welcome to another episode of "Crafternoons."

Today we're talking about.

MAN (off-screen): How come you never take out the trash?

WOMAN (off-screen): What? MAN (off-screen): The trash! WOMAN (off-screen): Huh?

KIRBY: So when you hold this.

(barking)

When you hold this.

(barking)

When you.

(barking)

CHARLIE: You fold the corners in.

KIRBY: And then you flip it over.

And repeat the process.

CHARLIE: Corners to the middle.

(barking)

Fold it in half. Put your fingers in the pockets.

And there you go!

KIRBY: You should have a basic fortune teller.

CHARLIE: Birds. KIRBY: Neighbors. CHARLIE: Winnie.

KIRBY: Everything. CHARLIE: Madness.

KIRBY: If we could control all these sounds around us, our podcasts would be amazing.

CHARLIE: So that means today, we're unraveling the world of.

BOTH (off-screen): Sound!

KIRBY: First things first. What is sound?

CHARLIE: Well according to this, sound is just vibrations.

When you make a sound you're causing a vibration,

which means you're making a bunch of particles wiggle around.

Those particles bump into other particles near them, which bump into

more particles, and more particles, and more particles.

It's like a domino effect.

This is called a sound wave.

KIRBY: So sound's not a physical thing.

It's a wave of vibrations.

CHARLIE: Mhm. And the cool thing is, that means sound can travel through things.

We all know that sound can travel through gases like air, but it can even travel through

liquids and solids too!

Weird but True!

Sound can travel four times faster in water.

And 15 times faster in steel.

Kirb, it's like sound cannot be stopped.

KIRBY: Weird, it's gonna be hard to figure out then.

'Cause sound starts at a source, it vibrates all the particles around it,

then it can travel through water, through steel, through the walls of this room,

into our ears.

CHARLIE: What happens next?

KIRBY (off-screen): Well let's take a look at how our ears work in our heads.

Imagine, this is your ear, and this is your brain.

And this is all the stuff in between.

So sound waves enter our outer ear and travel through the ear canal into the middle ear.

The sound waves vibrate our eardrums.

Those vibrations are transferred to the inner ear where they move fluid that

stimulates these tiny hairs on this thing, the cochlea, that create nerve signals,

which the brain interprets as sound.

CHARLIE: So we need to stop these vibrations from entering our ears.

We need to block them.

KIRBY: But how can you block something that can move through stuff?

CHARLIE: Have you ever heard of noise cancellation?

Like noise canceling headphones.

I feel like it's exactly what we need.

KIRBY: How do those work? CHARLIE: Let's check it out.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Weird but True flight 2251 bound for

Hush Town, Pennsylvania with continued service to

Peace & Quiet International Airport.

Thank you so much for flying with us today.

If at any moment during your flight there's an increase in background noise,

panels above your head will open, revealing noise canceling headphones.

These headphones employ two different techniques to block background noise.

Feel free to follow along in the information guide located in the back seat pocket in

front of you.

First, these headphones use passive noise control, which is a super fancy way of saying

they cover your ears.

Some headphones do this by creating a seal around your ears.

This is functionally similar to taking a pillow, wrapping it around your head,

and blocking your ears.

Other headphones feed into your ear.

To mimic this idea simply take a finger and insert it into both ears located on either

side of your head.

In the likely event that passive noise control does not block out enough background

noise, the headphones employ a second technique, active noise control.

Simple physics principles and regulations require noise to travel in waves.

When two sound waves meet each other, they combine and then pass through,

like actual waves in the ocean.

As part of this form of noise control, we've place a super tiny microphone on the

headphones where sound enters the ear.

It registers the incoming noise, and plays a sound that has a waveform exactly

180 degrees opposite, like this.

When these waves combine, they cancel each other out.

Breathe easily and note that although you can't hear that microphone, it is working.

Adjust your own headphones, before helping others, and let passive and active noise

control do their thing.

Thank you so much for choosing Weird but True Airlines.

Enjoy your flight.

KIRBY: That's exactly what we need!

No more Winnie, no more neighbors, no more birds.

CHARLIE: Already ahead of you, Kirb. Check these out.

Kirb? Kirb, can you hear me? Kirby, can you hear me?

KIRBY: Oh, hey! CHARLIE: How cool are these? KIRBY: Amazing!

CHARLIE: They muffle everything!

KIRBY: Yeah! CHARLIE: Let's try them out!

Craft scissors, not just a tool for craft projects.

KIRBY: They say a lot about the real you.

Good show. Never interrupted. No outside noises.

Let's play it back.

They say a lot about the real you.

CHARLIE: I can still hear the birds!

KIRBY: And Winnie. CHARLIE: The microphone's picking up everything.

How do you make a room that's completely quiet?

KIRBY: Have you ever heard of the quietest place in the entire world?

CHARLIE: Nope.

KIRBY: Well if anyone knows about making a room quiet, it's gotta be these guys.

CHARLIE: We gotta go.

The future of our podcast depends on it.

We're off to Minneapolis, Minnesota to visit Orfield Laboratories.

Minnesota is a Midwestern state that borders Canada and Lake Superior,

and it's nicknamed, "Land of 10,000 Lakes."

KIRBY (off-screen): Hey guys.

CHARLIE: We made it. We're here at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

KIRBY: We're here to visit the quietest room in the world, to figure out how

we can soundproof HQ.

CHARLIE: And finally record the perfect podcast.

And the guy who's gonna help us out is Steve Orfield.

Sound expert.

His lab mainly does research, testing, and design of all kinds of products based on how

they sound to the people that use them.

And his favorite Weird but True fact is, there's a new acoustic technology that

allows you to visualize sound.

Hey Steve. How's it going?

KIRBY (off-screen): Hi Steve. STEVE: Welcome.

CHARLIE: What can you tell us about this place?

STEVE: We're the only multi-perceptual lab in the United States or Canada.

CHARLIE: It seems like everything related to sound but a lot of how people

perceive sound in different spaces.

Is that correct?

STEVE: Yeah. Everything related to sound and all the other senses that impact sound.

If you're in a quiet restaurant, that steak is going to taste differently

than if, in fact, you're in a noisy restaurant.

CHARLIE: How? STEVE: Because your senses work in combination.

And as one sense works harder, another sense works less.

KIRBY: Sound is a full body experience. CHARLIE: Yeah.

KIRBY: So what kind of methods and instruments do you guys use here?

STEVE: To measure sound? KIRBY: Mhm.

STEVE: Well, we have probably a dozen different sound level meters with different levels

of complexity.

CHARLIE: And this is one of the pieces of equipment that you use right here?

STEVE: Yeah. This is a head and torso simulator.

These guys record sound by using artificial ears with microphones.

And so this is a?

CHARLIE: Oh my gosh, you just rip them off. KIRBY: Oh!

STEVE: This is the pinna, or the outer ear, and the outer ear provides a set of

reflections that give you your three-dimensional sense of the world so you can know where

sound is coming from.

So this torso is designed to imitate your ears so that when you listen on a stereo

headset, you can hear side to side, up to down, and front to back.

CHARLIE: Yeah.

STEVE (off-screen): Now we have something called an acoustic camera,

which is the first piece of measurement gear of its type in the United States.

The acoustic camera, actually, is a disc of about a foot and a half that has

128 microphones in it.

KIRBY: Whoa. STEVE (off-screen): And you aim it at a device and it'll

show you where the sound is coming from on the device.

It's the first device that can visualize sound.

CHARLIE: That's absolutely incredible.

KIRBY: That's amazing. STEVE: Yeah.

CHARLIE: It seems like that's your specialty here, trying to capture sounds and record

things perfectly.

We'd love to check out some of these spaces so we can maybe pick up some ideas.

We heard that you guys have a pretty quiet room here.

Is that true?

STEVE: Pretty quiet. CHARLIE: Pretty quiet? Alright, let's do it.

We're heading off to the quietest room in the entire world,

but Steve's got a surprise stop along the way.

KIRBY (off-screen): Weird but True.

CHARLIE (off-screen): Hey guys! We're here at Orfield Laboratories to learn

everything we can about sound, mostly how to control it.

And Steve's got a really cool surprise for us.

Wow! Whoa! Hello!

What room is this?

STEVE: It's called the reverberation chamber.

CHARLIE: Is this echoiest room in the entire world? Because it's very echoey.

STEVE: It's one of the better ones. CHARLIE: Yeah?

STEVE: Reverberation chambers are 99.9% reflective.

CHARLIE: 99.9% reflective? STEVE: Right. CHARLIE: What does that mean?

STEVE: The walls are completely solid concrete block.

The ceilings are solid concrete, so there's no sound absorption in the room.

CHARLIE: So it just keeps bouncing around inside?

(whistles)

(barks)

Woop!

(whistles)

The other room that you got is not as echoey as this, correct?

STEVE: It's the opposite of this. It's a 99.9% absorbent room.

CHARLIE: Oh, the exact opposite. Let's go check it out.

Whoa.

KIRBY: What are we doing?

Wow. This room, you have padding on all the walls, the floor, the ceiling,

and it's soaking up any other noise.

STEVE: Yeah. This is called the full anechoic chamber.

CHARLIE: What's the magic behind this room? What makes it so quiet?

STEVE: So we've got two double wall steel barriers with absorption inside.

The walls are about this thick, and they're, they have insulation inside and steel

sheet on both sides, so we have an inner chamber and an outer chamber made of that

substantial steel construction.

And that's what stops the sound.

CHARLIE: These two rooms Steve's shown us could not be more opposite.

Kirby's gonna demonstrate the difference.

KIRBY: You wanna go first?

Go ahead. Okay.

One, two, three.

CHARLIE: How many decibels is the background noise in this room?

STEVE: Negative 13 decibels or 13 decibels below the threshold

of perfect human hearing.

CHARLIE: Alright guys, a decibel is one of the few units that we can use to

describe sound.

That negative 13 decibel reading is so crazy small.

Check it out.

Atta boy, Billy! Good hustle kid!

KIRBY: Shhh! CHARLIE: Hey! KIRBY: Hello!

CHARLIE: So you wanna learn about sound?

KIRBY: We know all about sound.

CHARLIE: Jimmy, get back on defense! KIRBY: Shhh!

CHARLIE: There are two ways to measure sound.

The first, frequency.

KIRBY: That measures how high. CHARLIE: Or how low.

KIRBY: A sound can be. And it's measured in hertz.

Humans can detect sounds as high as 20,000 hertz.

CHARLIE: Or as low as 20 hertz.

KIRBY: The second way to measure something is with intensity, which is how.

CHARLIE: Loud something is! Come on boys, serpentine!

Serpentine boys!

KIRBY: Shh! This is measured in decibels.

Something with a low decibel readings is very soft.

CHARLIE: Sounds with high decibel readings are really loud!

KIRBY: Human breathing is around ten decibels.

A whisper is around 20.

And my library is around 40 decibels.

CHARLIE (off-screen): A garbage disposal's around 80 decibels.

A jack hammer is around 100 decibels.

And a jet engine is around 150 decibels!

Come on boys, touch and pass!

KIRBY: The quietest room in the world is negative 13 decibels,

which is nearly indiscernible.

CHARLIE: Indiscernible!

Ref! Are you kidding me, ref? Come on!

KIRBY: Shh!

CHARLIE: This feels like. KIRBY: Contained.

CHARLIE: There's cotton in your ears. KIRBY: Mhm.

CHARLIE: Or like you're almost in a, a dream.

STEVE: If you sat in here for a period of time, you'll begin to hear your joints in your

elbows and your wrists and your arms, you'll be able to hear your heartbeat,

you'll be able to hear the flowing of your lungs.

If your stomach starts to gurgle, it'll sound really loud.

CHARLIE: Oh, man. I don't know how I feel about this.

STEVE: So you'll become the source of entertainment.

CHARLIE: Can we give it a shot? Kirby, you feeling up to it? KIRBY: Absolutely.

STEVE: You just can't talk to each other.

You have to both be quiet as if no-one's here.

CHARLIE: Alright. Let's go, I'm ready.

Roar!

Mwahaha!

KIRBY: Stop! CHARLIE: Spooky room!

KIRBY: Stop shh, shh, shush turn the light off. CHARLIE: Ready? Set?

KIRBY: Shh, shh, shh. Shh.

(heartbeat)

Hey Steve.

CHARLIE: Hi. STEVE: Are you awake? KIRBY: How's it going?

CHARLIE: Yeah. STEVE: You got off the chairs.

CHARLIE: Yeah, we had to move around a little I guess.

STEVE: Was it bothering you?

KIRBY: No. CHARLIE: I felt a little weird throughout the whole thing.

STEVE: I knew you would.

CHARLIE: Oh man. KIRBY: I liked it. Nothing is going on in there.

STEVE: That's right.

CHARLIE: It's like for the first five minutes, you're just kind of in the space,

but after a while, things start changing.

My ears are all fuzzy.

I could feel these, I could feel these little pops happening in my tummy and I

couldn't figure out what was going on!

How'd you feel, Kirb?

KIRBY: I felt good. My mind didn't wander.

I thought about that at the end, how I expected to have all these thoughts

swirling around.

Eventually, they went away.

STEVE: Your, your mind went peaceful.

KIRBY: Mhm. STEVE: Yeah.

CHARLIE: You were thinking about nothing, the whole time in there?

KIRBY: Eventually, yeah. STEVE: See, brother and sister are opposite.

CHARLIE: I'm glad to be out of that room.

I feel like we picked up a bunch of stuff.

KIRBY: Oh yeah. CHARLIE: To help us give us some ideas of how to soundproof HQ,

which is the number one goal right now.

KIRBY: We're ready. CHARLIE: Alright, Steve thanks so much.

STEVE: You're welcome. CHARLIE: We had a blast here. Thanks for your help.

KIRBY: Thanks, Steve. STEVE: You're welcome.

CHARLIE: Alright guys, we're gonna hop back to HQ, start sound proofing things and

we'll see you there in a bit.

Sounds good? Awesome?

KIRBY (off-screen): Weird but True.

CHARLIE: One final touch. And. We're done.

KIRBY: That didn't take too long.

CHARLIE: We got that super quiet room that we're looking for.

We applied everything that Steve mentioned back at Orfield Labs.

To stop outside noises from coming in, we added a bunch of stuff to the walls,

including pool noodles on the window, our weak point.

To stop reverberations inside the room, we added blankets to the walls,

carpet on the ground, and we put stuffed animals all over the place to mimic those cones

in the quietest room in the world.

No sounds getting in here.

KIRBY: It's like we got our own quietest room.

CHARLIE: Not even a decibel.

KIRBY: Not. CHARLIE: A. KIRBY: Decibel.

CHARLIE: Mm. Ooo, this feels kind of weird in here.

It's like a weird thing. Do you feel kinds of like weird?

KIRBY: It's quiet. I like it.

CHARLIE: Gee, I don't like it at all. This is exactly how I felt in Minnesota.

I feel kind of weird and I'm already seeing colors.

It's like I'm antsy and I wanna run around and just like make a lot of noise and I

don't, I don't get it Kirb!

It's like when sound is there it's bad, but when it's not there I feel really weird

about it and I wanna solve this problem, but nothing's working.

KIRBY: Charles.

Do we have to talk some things through?

CHARLIE: I think we do.

KIRBY: So Charlie, tell me, how have you been feeling?

CHARLIE: It's these sounds.

It's like I want them to go away but when they're gone it's too quiet.

Are sounds good? Are sounds bad? What's going on?

KIRBY: You know it depends.

It's all contextual.

Here's a good example from one of my good friends.

He's an auditory neuroscientist at Brown University.

CHARLIE: Listen to this sound.

It's pretty good, right?

It sounds like rain pitter patter on a tin roof.

Think of how you're feeling right now.

Mm.

The truth is, it's not the sound of rain on a tin roof.

It's the sound of a bunch of mealworms gnawing on a bat carcass.

How are you feeling now?

KIRBY: So you see it depends on what you associate those sounds with.

CHARLIE: That was gross.

KIRBY: Precisely!

And here's something that might help you feel a bit better.

You see, there are some good sounds and some bad sounds that are communal for everyone.

So meet good sound cop and bad sound cop.

(groans)

CHARLIE: Bad cop, settle down!

KIRBY: You think you're so tough?

You want to hear some bad sounds?

CHARLIE: Bad cop, take a break.

So they did this study at Salford University in Britain where they found some very,

unpleasant sounds.

KIRBY: The most unpleasant sounds.

CHARLIE: Here's what they found.

KIRBY: Bad sound number one is a human just vomiting.

Bad sound number two was a microphone feedback sound.

You know? Like, eeee.

And sound number three is a baby just wailing, crying up a storm.

Like wah wah wah.

You think you're so tough?

I can break you in two seconds with these sounds.

CHARLIE: Okay okay, okay, but these studies also found the most pleasant sounds.

Here's what they found.

The number one most pleasant sound, a friendly applause.

Number two, a giggly baby.

And number three, a nice roll of thunder off in the distance.

KIRBY: Aaaahhh! CHARLIE: I like these puppets.

KIRBY: So, yeah, you see sound doesn't just have to be overwhelming.

They found that premature babies gained more weight when they listened to Mozart.

CHARLIE: Hmm.

KIRBY: Thought that the music relaxed them and encouraged them to use less energy.

So yeah, sound can be used for good.

CHARLIE: Hmmm.

I think I get it now.

I need to embrace the good sounds.

KIRBY: Maybe we're just lacking good sounds.

CHARLIE: Yeah, like we need to Mozart this premature baby of a podcast.

KIRBY: If you want to use that wording, sure.

CHARLIE: Kirb, grab the mic.

I got an idea.

Guys, we're gonna go outside real quick but when we get back, I guarantee,

we're finally gonna have the perfect podcast.

We'll see you soon.

KIRBY (off-screen): Weird but True.

CHARLIE: And that just about wraps up today's episode, a quick shout out to our

sponsor, Madame Eruption's Geological Art Guides.

KIRBY: They'll make your art skills explode.

CHARLIE: I'm Kirby's brother, Charlie.

KIRBY: And I'm Charlie's sister, Kirby.

CHARLIE: We'll see you on the next episode of "Crafternoons!"

Keep craftin' out there.

KIRBY: Charles we crushed it!

CHARLIE: Guys, we solved all of our problems, check it out.

As you know, HQ is sound-proofed to control all the background noise levels.

KIRBY: We recorded nature sounds, and now that we can control the levels,

they've become good background noise.

CHARLIE: It finally sounds good in here.

We have noise-canceling headphones to help us focus, pump in some Mozart every now

and then to relax the listeners, and control the decibel levels.

This podcast is off the charts.

KIRBY: We got a new episode coming up.

It dives into the big paperclip versus stapler debate.

If you're a regular listener I'm sure you know I am a big fan of the paper clip.

CHARLIE: Alright guys, it looks like we have a new project on our hands.

KIRBY: And Charles is a passionate member of Team Staple.

CHARLIE: But thanks so much for stopping by.

KIRBY: I guess he just likes poking holes in perfect paper.

CHARLIE: Come by again when we discover more things that are weird.

KIRBY: But true! CHARLIE: We'll see you later! One word Kirb, "Slippage."

You ever experience slippage with a staple?

Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services