What are the Strangest, Craziest Sounds in the Universe?

car and starts wailing away on his bagpipes. Can you imagine this? I mean they sound like one thing from a distance, but up close. So he's been a partying mood and he genuinely wants to keep the party going, but you know, using his bagpipes. So he starts playing a rousing rendition of Yellow Submarine. I mean, I guess that's sort of upbeat. But does everyone get into it? No,

just the opposite. So the chorus comes around and you think people are going to start breaking out singing, and then everyone just keeps staring at him in total anchor. It's pretty amazing, and the comments were brutal. One person said he'd rather opt for water boarding, then hear that noise again. But you know, remembering this Piper's tale made me wonder, what are some of the most unusual sounds

in history? What did the Big Bang sound like? Or taranno sources roar and what are some sounds worth blocking out? And that's what today's episode is all about. Let's dive in Heither podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man Guesh Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass singing the hit song from The Bodyguard,

a friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I really wish you could hear it because Tristan sings like an angel, and you know, every time I hear that song, I will Always love You You tear up right no. But every time I heard I think about the fact that Saddam Hussein used it as his campaign song, like it's just so ridiculous to me. I know, that's one of my

favorite facts of all time. So I did look it up again recently because I wanted to see the ads again, and the song he used was actually an Arabic cover by a pop star from Syria, so still still the same emotional impact, but slightly different. Well, I've already gotten his off track, or I guess Tristan's gotten his off track. But uh, well, I I know where episodes all over the place. So today we're covering some of the strangest, loudest, and most irritating sounds in history. Where do you want

to start? I think we should go back to the beginning. So I think we should start with the actual earliest sound in the universe. What do you think? Yeah, I mean it sounds a little theoretical or theological, I guess. And you know, in Hinduism there's that sound of home that's supposed to be like the beginning, middle, and end of time. Sound like I mean you heard in yoga classes too. But in Christianity, I'm guessing it's like when

God flipped the light switch? Is that right? Well, before there was light, I think there was actually the sound of a slashing if I remember correctly, you know, since there's water and earth referenced than that darkness. But I was actually taking more of a scientific slant here. I was talking about the earliest sounds in the universe, as in, you know, the big Bang. Yeah, that makes more sense. Although the word big bang already seems descriptive, right, I'm

guessing it just sounds like a massive crash. Well that's what I thought too, and I think most people would assume. But the truth is actually weirder than that. So there's a physicist from the University of Washington. His name is John Kramer, and back in two thousand one, he wrote this article that described the sound of the Big Bang.

You know, the physics here is above my pay grade, but according to the Atlantic article quote, during the first one hundred to seven hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, the universe was far denser than the air on Earth, which means that the sound waves could actually move through it.

So he published this piece about how the universe kept ringing in the slow, low frequency way until the universe grew to you know, these massive proportions and it stopped making the hump, and the sound would have been too low frequency for human years to pick up on. But then a couple of years later, this was in two thousand three, I think, a mom who was helping her eleven year old with a fifth grade project asked if there's a recording of it. Anywhere, and when Kramer responded no,

he then decided to synthesize it for them. I mean, that's awesome that we know what the Big Bang sounds like because of a fifth grader. And it's also crazy to me that the universe is what like fourteen billion years old and we have indications of what it actually sounded like from the start. I mean, that's insane. But what's it actually sound like? Well, so, like you, I assumed the Big Bang was gonna sound terrifically big or powerful, but as our friend Lucas Riley puts it, it sounds

a little bit more like a motorcycle fart. I vote don't know what that means. And also it seems gross. But wouldn't it sound like do you? Well? Kramer has a few versions up on his site and they're worth checking out, and they ranged from twenty seconds to even eight minutes long, and they're all pretty similar. So to me, it sounded somewhere between like a video game character dying or like an old school computer powering down or something like that. If I don't know if that makes any sense,

or or just maybe we'll go with motorcycle fire. All these noises I don't know what they mean, but you do have a link to the sound, right, So I mean, I think we should put a link of it to Facebook, and then we can ask listeners to describe it, and we'll send teachers to like the funniest three descriptions. Sound good to you, sounds good to me. But now I'm curious, how did Kramer make this sound for human years? Like I think he said it was too low frequency for

us to actually be able to hear. Well, that's a good question. So from the way I understand it, he used data from satellites and and pulled something called a cosmic microwave background. The site futurity dot org refers to it as a fossilized fingerprint of the Big Bang, and then he made some calculations and pulled the data into a sound file. But you know, to create something we could hear, Kramer had to boost a frequency a hundred septillion times. You know how big that is. That's one

followed by twenty nine zero. And so when he played it in his office for the first time, his sheep dogs ran in and started how like they were not fans of this. Maybe their creationists. I love that, but it reminds me of when I started playing the violin in third grade and I was so awful, but when I screeched and played, my puff would just run and face me. And that's just howl along. And I think both my family and my dog were so relieved when I finally quit. About it sounds familiar, but I love

this idea of cataloging sounds. And we've got the Big Bang on file now, which is awesome. And there's actually a guy who's gone around New Jersey catalog and all the sounds of New Jersey for future generations. This just sounds like a joke. That's true. Yeah, it's real. His name's are Bernie wagon Blast. That's just a joke, right, that's also true, Okay, But he's visiting every county trying

to capture something that feels rare about each place. So he'll like tape the rumble of the King dakr roller coasters. It's going up for the sound inside this old covered bridge, or even like the music of ice skates cutting and gliding across the ice and an old historic rink. Yeah, it's really beautiful and poetic, and it's like a sound library of New Jersey. But there's this even more ambitious project I want to talk about, and it's called The

Sonic Wonders of the World. It's from this British acoustic engineer named Trevor Cox, and it's kind of like these beautiful sonic destinations that are worth visiting. It sounds like a lot of fun. So so what all is on the list? Well, one of the first things I saw was the singing sands in California in the Mojave Desert. So, according to CNN, when you slide down the sand on your backside, the unusual sand makes a quote deep parping

sound resembling propeller aircraft or a susophone accident. Yeah, Cox calls it more of a weird droning. So does this have to do with like the shape of the sand or the size of the sand? Yeah, that's right, So it has to do both with the shape of the dune and the size of the sand grains. Apparently that's pretty cool, all right. So what else does he talk about? Well, some of his men made sounds like there's some acoustic wonders.

There's this chirping Mayan pyramid where when you clap your hands it echoes back with the sound of the sacred Mayan bird. It's pretty awesome and it was used for religious ceremonies. But there's also a place in Carnatica, India where I've actually been. It's called gold Gum Buzz, and uh there's this massive whispering gallery. You can speak into a column on one side and hear the message on the other side, and if you speak in a different part, the dome kind of echoes the sounds over and over.

And the way it was described in the article was it's almost like a nineteen sixties horror flick where they're all these like layered, sampled sounds just echoing over each other. But it's actually way less terrifying and more like, uh, I don't know, like the open swim at your YMC.

That's a little different. Yeah, But my favorite thing he talks about is the musical road in California, which has the William Tell and Lone Ranger song like grooved into the pavement, and as Cox and Cena put it, it is a very bad rendition of the William Tell overture, like someone gargling with water in an adjacent room. But it does make you laugh. Wow, I mean, I do love the musical highways and runways. I know we covered

in a previous episode the one at Disney. You know where they they when the when the plane goes over to you hear when you wish upon a star. I guess it says they land, I think. But now that we've covered one sound no one has heard and a bunch of sounds you travel to hear, I think we should probably cover some terrible sounds that nobody wants to hear. So I'm a little hesitant about what that means, but I'll go with it. But let's pause for a quick break. First,

welcome back to Part time Genius. So before the break, you were teasing that we get into some awful sounds. Well, I found this list from two thousand seven and it's of the worst sounds in the world. Okay, so two thousand seven. I'm gonna put myself back in the mindset of when Ratatoui was in theaters and that show Chuck was on the air. Chuck, I'm not sure you have

to think that deeply about it. But so this is a British list, So most of the sounds are pretty similar as the ones that we might think of here and there are things like feedback from a microphone or crying babies. And I guess maybe they knew about your violin playing you were talking about, because poorly played violin is actually number six on the list here. But what about something like nails on a chalkboard. Honestly, just saying that phrase gives me the shivers. It makes me uncomfortable.

You know. Surprisingly that wasn't on there. I mean, I guess the closest thing to that they have here. Let's see the train scraping on the track. So that's on there. But there are a few on here that I actually didn't see, now, okay, or this feels a little bit like British family few. But I'm still gonna make you take a guess. So what are some of the other top ten worst sounds in the world in England specifically? I think anyway, Um, I don't know. I have to

say throwing up is probably top of the list. Nicely done survey says that's actually number one. Didn't expecting to nail that, so, I mean, vomiting is definitely a sound people would love to block out. But there are others on here that are pretty hilarious. So Squeaky Seesaw comes in at number five, and I think that's that annoying of the noise right above violin. It's on there. Whoopee cushion comes in at number seven. I don't know what makes people think about these things. Number eight is an

argument from a soap opera, is so specific it is. Well. The funniest thing on the list, though, is number ten, Tasmanian devil. I mean that makes no sense. How did that many people in England even know what a Tasmanian devil sounds like? All right, well, here's the strange thing though, I mean, I had no idea you were going to bring up Trevor Cox earlier. He's the guy that's been collecting sounds from around the world, but oddly enough he's

also responsible for this survey. Basically, he and some colleagues took thirty or repellent sounds and they played them for a group of men and women. And part of the reason he did this is that Cox has been trying to figure out what drives such strong emotions and reactions, you know, the various sounds, and also the engineers are trying to find out if there are ways to re engineer these sounds to be less offensive, I guess, So do they find out anything interesting? Well, there were some

differences in gender. You know, women, for instance, tended to find a baby's crying a little less jarring than men. But I think what's interesting is how some of the things you think would annoy people were far lower on the list. Alan kats and things like snoring were far less annoying to most people than Tasmanian Devil's snoring ranked number twenty six on the list. That's such an annoying sound. I mean, you'd obviously take snoring over the sound of

someone vomiting. But this idea of re engineering sounds is pretty interesting. So what does that mean exactly? Well, I don't know what Cox is thinking about exactly, but actually

there is this ignoble study about nails and chalkboards. So these scientists isolated the high pitch frequencies as well as the middle and low frequencies, and then they tried to figure out what made people cringe, and they realized it's actually not the high frequencies, but actually the middle ones that cause the hair to go up on your neck. So you know, in a movie, taking out or reducing

that middle frequency would be much easier to watch. All right, But two last quick discoveries about this before we move on. So number one, if you're given warning about someone scraping a chalkboard before you do it, you actually react way,

way worse than if you just hear the sound. That's actually pretty funny because I heard that behavioral economist Dan Ry Ellie talk about removing bandages and how if someone tells you or warns you that they're going to do it and then gently pulls the bandages off your body, you've got this higher tolerance for pain versus the idea of just ripping them off and getting it over with. And it's fine to think about what your mind can

and can't handle knowing in advance. That's pretty interesting. Well, here here's the other thing I was gonna say. So scientists have wondered whether our aversion to that nails on a chalkboard sound is actually it's just the same frequency as some primate warning calls. That's crazy. So primate warnings and nails on the chalkboard are actually emitted at the same frequency. Yeah, that's right, So it might accidentally be

triggering this danger instinct that's in all of us. Well, I'm certainly glad that part of the show is over, and I know we want to talk about earworms too, which are the songs that get stuck in your head. But before we do that, how about we have a little palate cleanser of cute facts. Al right, sure, So what do you have for us? So? Did you know that baby turtles all hatch at the same time because they're actually communicating through their eggshells. Oh that's like synchronized hatching.

That that is pretty cute. Good job, ango, Yeah, it gives them a better chance to survival. And actually, I've got another one for you. So did you know that scientists at Georgia Tech have created software for barns and henhouses that tries to create happier chickens. It does this all by listening to their clucks and squawks. Apparently you can tell whether a chicken is stressed, or too cold, or a whole host of other things by listening to

a group's cluck king. And this smart barn software actually listens to the sound feed of chickens and adjust things like the lighting or temperature or whatever makes chickens a little happier in their coupes. Apparently it makes for more eggs and plumper chickens. That's pretty crazy, all right, Well, why don't we move from eggs to earworms? And as you know, earworms are those catchy songs and refrains that gets stuck in your head. And sometimes they're there for

a few hours. Sometimes honestly for me, it feels like they'll stay there for days and days. But the founding director of the Music, Mind and Brain program at Goldsmiths in London, her name is Lauren Smith. Well she's been studying this phenomenon since two thousand nine, but earworms feel like to been around for longer than that, right, Well, the phenomenon is a whole lot older. And there's a great New Yorker piece by Maria Knakova. You know, we

actually had her on the program before. Oh yeah, she

was so great. She did that wonderful podcast The Griffin. Yeah, it was a really interesting what do But in this piece specifically, she references this Russian musical prodigy named Nicholas Lanimski, and he wrote a book in the nineteen is all about creating musical patterns that quote hooked the mind and force mimicry and repetition, And I don't know if he's exactly talking about earworms here, but he is talking about catchy music, and Frank Zappa and John Coltrane, among others,

were influenced by Slenemski's work. So the term earworm then gets coined back in the nineteen seventies and this happens in Germany. But even that has some old roots kind of Covid writes about the old folk music that was known to stick in your crawl, like quote a piper's maggot. Exactly what that means, but it sounds gross. Which is all to say that earworms have a long history, but it was only with Lawrence Smith in two thousand nine that they really studied what makes an earworm. So what

does make a earworm? Well, part of it has to do with hearing a song a few times, but another part is that the song itself normally has notes that are very close together. So you're talking about like musical intervals here. Yeah, that's right, a lot of half steps or whole steps between a lot of the notes. But also you know the notes getting held for a long

time and then it repeats. So if you're thinking about something like you know the White Stripes seven Nation Army where the song is repeating that like bum bump bump bump, bum bomp, and that those notes are all right there next to each other on the keyboard. I mean, that's both fascinating and terrifying to me, that like Justin Bieber or Fifth Harmonies, songwriters or whoever know exactly what makes a song stick in our heads? Why is that terrifying?

Things wonderful because I don't need any more than my head, They're already there. But do you have any insight on why songs catch or like why they pop up when we don't expect them to. Well, we don't know for sure, but there is one hypothesis that's pretty interesting, and it's the idea that people either get an earworm because it matches their mental state or because it's helping you change

your mental state. So, as this article points out, if you're feeling super sluggish, you might hear a song that revs you up, or alternately, you know one that can calm you down if the situation demands it. And that's amazing that, like your body is your mind's regulating your body. That right, So one last question on this before we move on? How do you get rid of them? Like I I heard the best way was to just sing yourself another catchy song. But that seems like a terrible

cure to me. Well, distracting yourself is one way, but the better way, according to researchers, is just to belt the song out. Like, if you sing it, your mind gets over it, or at least gets closer to being over it, and then you can actually move on. Crazy. Well, I want to talk about some of the more weird funny sounds, but before we do, let's go to a break.

Welcome back to Part time Genius. Now we're talking about some of the biggest, strangest and most irritating sounds in the universe and basically a whole lot of noise you'd love to block out and listeners what Well, we did mention this in the episode description. Both this episode and the one we did a few episodes back on the art of trash talking were made possible by beats by

Dre and their noise canceling headphones. And just for the record, Dr Dre did not personally collaborate or participate in this episode, but we do look forward to working with him in the future. Right of course. Well some ango before we get back to it. You wanted to talk a little bit about sound in history, right, Yeah. I was reading this story at the huffing In post by David Hendy about the history of sound and Nolan pointed it to me.

But it's filled with all sorts of great stories, and one of them is like how medicine changed when stethoscopes were invented. So doctors have been listening to the body for clues forever, you know, heartbeats and paulse and whatever, but suddenly there were all these gurgles and rattles and hisses that they could now hear, and there was this new level of sophistication, and it made the body so much more wondrous and opened up all these new mysteries

and ideas through advances and sound. That's pretty cool. So what else, Well, there was a bit on how the early phonographs and g the phones weren't really exciting to people because of their ability to play music. It was really more because they were thought of as these recording devices, like there were a way that you could preserve your dying uncle's voice and his words of wisdom for posterity. Instead of I don't know, just like a way of playing your Power of Love, best of the eighties power

ballads album. So the article had these interesting things I hadn't realized about sound in history, But the most fascinating thing to me was just how music has been used to control people. All right, well, you'll have to explain

this to me, what do you mean? So in one section the article talked about town bells in history and how they were used for the whole town to know, I don't know when to get up in the morning or when to sleep, but they also let you know when to pray, or when to take up arms, or when to do dinner. And this all sounds so harmless, but as the article put it, it actually tightens both the secular and religious authorities hold over the daily life of all within hearing distance. Yeah, so that's one part

of it. But in terms of things like music, it also works, right, Like how background music is often organized to this rhythm that and that tries to calm you down or get us to work harder, or eat faster or buy more. Yeah, I mean you always hear about that at restaurants where they don't want you lingering or that old story of the mall parking lot and when I think it was in Australia where they were playing Barry Manilow and music like that, just to keep the

kids from lloitering there at night. All right, well, I know we've got a fact off to get to, but before we do, why don't we each tell one story of an annoying sound in history? Do you want to do this? Yeah, all right, why don't you go first? How one of the best and worst venues to be a performer, which was Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Shakespeare's Globe Theater and you get to work with Shakespeare performed for royalty. Why would this be a terrible place? Honestly, it was

because the crowds were so awful. I mean, the sound is only part of the experience, and for the actors, they were constantly under the threat of, like having rotten vegetables thrown in their direction, you know, if the rowdy crowd didn't like their work. But the smell was a huge assault on the census. So, according to literary traveler dot com, the penny seats in the yard which went to the folk known as I don't know the groundlings,

or sometimes the stinkers. It was full of drunks and they were just waiting and standing ankle deep in mud. And according to the site, because the crowds were so thick, like the bathroom breaks for men, just ment aiming between your shoes. Oh my god, that's so gross. I know it wasn't exactly hygienic, but you get what you pay for. And for the actors it was even worse because in

addition to all the stink the acoustics were miserable. Like the crowds would be yelling and chatting and fighting, and so just to get the stories communicated, the actors would have to over exaggerate their gestures and like boom their lines, which totally changes how you'd imagine like a Shakespeare play. If you're thinking about Hamlet, just yelling to be or not to be over this noisy crowd. It's pretty funny though, just always angry. I could see why an actor would

want to tune that out. All right, Well, my story is about music being used by interrogators. I'm or remember how the FBI played Tibetan monk Chance outside the Branch Davidian Compound and Waco, you know, just to drive them crazy. But it isn't the only case of them doing this. Apparently. In two thousand three, the BBC reported that the US was blasting songs from Metallica, Skinny Puppy and of course the theme song to Barney to get people to talk.

How about it that like Barney gets thrown in that next somehow that feels like even crueler. Yeah, I just don't think that should be allowed. Well, but according to news Week, twenty four hours of it will drive someone insane. Twenty four hours. I'm thinking like thirty minutes of this and I'll be ready to talk. That's definitely a sound

you want to block out. But you know, the story got weirder because when the band Skinny Puppy heard about this, they realized the government owed them royalties for playing their music. So they sent the Department of Defense a six hundred thousand dollar bill for royalties. Actually was six hundred and sixties six thousand, because you know, I guess they were trying to make a point here. That's funny and pretty cavalier.

But now that gotten a little warmed up with a back and forth, why don't we start the fact off, all right, I'm for it. Well, we knew we'd be talking about some terrible sounds, so we agreed in advance that we would keep this one focused on you know, it makes something a little happier. So we're going to do a cute animal edition. Are you still up for this? That's right, all right, well let's do it. So, I know, we both watched that David Edinburgh clip on YouTube about

the liar bird. It's amazing because in it, like this bird imitates all these sounds like a car alarm and a cell phone or even a chainsaw in the wild, and the doc makes it seem like the liar birds picked up those sounds from I don't know, developers invading the forest. But the real reason the bird on camera could actually make those sounds was that it had been living in captivity at the zoo. So apparently the bird name Chook, had overheard construction on the new panda enclosure.

And that's how you did all this like hammering and drilling and sauce sounds to his repertoire. That's still incredible though, that they can do that, It's it's it's pretty wild. Well, did you know that dolphins actually don't have vocal cords? So when they're squeaking and chirping, they're actually doing it through a lip shaped tissue in their nose and and these are called phonic lips. That's super weird. Speaking of water critters, did you know that walruses come with bells

and whistles. They make a bell sound underwater, not from their vocal cords, but instead from these inflatable sacks called pharyngeal pouches. It's actually kind of beautiful. Well, you know what isn't beautiful, mango? When that's the sound of a kowal. They might look like bears, but they actually grunt more like pigs. So this isn't exactly an animal. But I did want to talk about Wolverine and the sound his claws make and the X Men movies. You're right, he

is not an animal. But to make the sound of him flashing and retracting those atmantium claws, the sound designer used the sound of a knife being drawn from a sheath. Right, that makes sense, But because the sound make it seem like the clause we're emerging and then slipping back into Wolverine's flesh, enough, sound designer mixed it with the juicy sound of a chicken carcass being pulled apart, so you get like a little squishing noise in there too, if

you listen closely. It's weird, just saying squishing noise kind of makes react. All right, we'll Speaking of movies, I've got a great one from Jurassic Park. And obviously it's hard to figure out exactly what a t rex roar would have sounded like, so the sound designer sampled and blended a number of different sounds, everything from a baby elephant crying to a hissing tiger to an alligator's gurgle. Apparently I don't know exactly what that is, but that's

what it says. But they all got slowed down and mixed together to make for this what they considered a realistic t rex roar. That's pretty amazing, and it is better than a motorcycle fart. I guess I think you're probably right about that. Also, to make the dinosaur's breathing sound, the engineers modified the sound of air coming out of a whale's blowhole. That's pretty cool. Huh. Yeah, that's all.

And while none of those are sounds I seek out, I am sufficiently impressed that I'm going to crown you this week's winter Well. Thank you very much, and and thanks to Beats by Drey for sponsoring this episode. If there's some great noises from the natural world or history that you'd love to share with us, remember you can always email us part Time Genius at how Stuff Works dot com. You can always reach us one fact hotline that's one eight four four pt Genius, and of course

you can hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. Two. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does

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